BODY

He was young and unfamiliar with his sudden helplessness, he mostly sat still, and when he had to move around the living room he helped himself with his hands and threw himself from chair to chair. He was busy thinking up a new lifestyle, it was a strange occupation for the born sailor, indeed sometimes he stopped in astonishment. He was decrepit, he was crippled! For the time being he was able to get himself a boat and fish a little for the house. He had suffered a bad injury, an absolute and reliable defect in his body, but when he had thrown off this gangrene-stricken leg and overcome the consequences of this, he was left with a heavy residue after all, a net force. (The Women at the Waterpipe, 1920)

Hamsun's vitalism (from Latin vita : life) can be read, among other things, from his positive depiction of a good and strong physique.

The preferred body in Hamsun's writings is a working body, as depicted in Isak på Sellanraa. A thorny, refined body, such as that worn by Eleseus in Markens grøde (1917), is the negative opposite. Also negative is the stark description of bodily decay in connection with old age, the most striking example of which is the old men Mons and Fredrik Mensa in Benoni (1908). Nevertheless, deformed or damaged bodies can signal mental strength and power, as is the case with Minunt in Mysterier (1892), Oliver in Konene ved vannposten (1920) and Anton Moss in Siste kapittel (1923).

The architect behind The Hamsun Centre on Hamarøy, Steven Holl, has said of the building that it "...is like a body, a battlefield for invisible forces".