LINDA HAMRIN NESBY: HAMSUN'S PLACES
The importance of place for love in Pan and the Tramp
Large parts of Hamsun's life were characterized by wandering and rootlessness. His childhood was dramatically initiated by the move from Lom to Hamarøy. And on Hamarøy, the move from his home farm Hamsund to the rectory at Presteid represented a dramatic separation from parents and siblings. Both of these departures were beyond the young Hamsun's control. The journey into the world, on the other hand, was the result of his own desire and initiative. Symptomatically, he is unable to find peace and stability when, as a budding poet, he returns to the Hamarøy of his childhood and youth.
Knut and Marie Hamsun stayed at Skogheim for five years, before, at his request, they left the place for good. Perhaps Hamsun was already aware of the connection between wandering and writing poetry at this time? For despite the fact that in 1918 he bought the farm Nørholm outside Grimstad, where he would live for the rest of his life, the wandering continued. When he was to write, he had to get away, and countless hotels and guesthouses on the southern coast can boast of having had the poet visit. It was not until he had published his last novel, The Ring Ended in 1936, that Hamsun truly settled at Nørholm. In the years 1936–45, Hamsun mostly stayed at home on the farm, with the exception of two fatal trips to Germany. When the war settlement forced him to move again, this helped to stir the creative power in him for the last time.
Wandering is a recurring motif in Hamsun's writings as well. The wandering figures he depicts are countless, from the nameless self in Hunger (1890) to the autobiographical portrait in On Overgrown Paths (1949). Wandering as an expression of artistic quest and existential rootlessness has been discussed by many, including Øystein Rottem and Allan Simpson in connection with Wanderers (1936) – the first volume in the trilogy about August.
It is easy to overlook the connection between travel and artistic and existential quest. But travel also involves visiting new places, meeting new people, and being confronted with new values and ways of living life. Using travel as a motif, one can approach the significance of place in Hamsun's writing. What does it mean to move between different places? Are the places merely backdrops in the portrayal of the characters, or do they play a role in development or stability?
Just as important as the journey itself are the places the characters arrive at – or stay at. The places play a greater role than as metaphorical devices to depict stations on a life path, signals of rootlessness. A place is not just a place, a backdrop and a backdrop for the action. A place has its own value and is an important tool in character portrayal, not least because of the value and temporal aspects it associates with it. The place says something about the people who choose to be there – or leave it. Here I want to show what role the place plays for the characters and the relationship between them in two of Hamsun's perhaps most famous novels, Pan (1894) and Landstrykere (1927).
The action in Pan takes place in a northern Norwegian location. That this is important for the novel is beyond doubt. The romantic setting at Mack's trading post, the nature and the surrounding islands make everything in place to tell the ultimate love story. And that is how it seems to go. The first-person narrator Thomas Glahn describes in detail the northern Norwegian location he has come to, and the depictions of the northern Norwegian nature are particularly poetic. With this nature as a setting, it is with this nature that his love for Edvarda, the merchant's daughter, dawns and takes shape. Over the course of a few hectic summer months, Glahn and Edvarda live out their romantic love with nature as an idyllic backdrop. Although backdrop is not the right word. Glahn acknowledges that the course of nature affects him, and not just him: When the shepherdess Henriette, with whom he has had a relationship, simply walks past without paying attention to him, he explains it by saying that "it was winter, her senses were already asleep".
But when Glahn and Edvarda's relationship falters and they eventually break up, such an explanatory model falls short. Instead, it is obvious to see how Glahn's depiction of the romantic northern Norwegian nature has laid the foundations for the love affair that grew between them. In light of the romantic setting, Glahn's former lieutenant title and current hunter status fit well. And the depiction of Edvarda as a child of nature, young, unruly and spontaneous, is also apt, considering the setting. But is that really how Edvarda is?
Glahn's insistent first-person narration and the way he transforms nature into a romantic space lay the foundations for understanding Edvarda. However, if we look at how Edvarda relates to the same natural space, a different picture emerges. Edvarda's view of the northern Norwegian natural space is different from Glahn's, and is a significant reason for the break between them.
By establishing a love idyll, Glahn creates an arena for self-realization, and by living in line with the conventional guidelines of the idyll, he gives meaning to existence. Glahn's life world represented by this romanticized perception of nature is meaningful, in the literal sense of the word, and gives him an experience of calm, harmony, contemplation, and pantheistic unity. The problem arises when he tries to involve other characters in this idyll, and they do not want (or are aware of) the role they are intended for. Both the shepherdess Henriette and the blacksmith's wife Eva act according to Glahn's unspoken expectations and desires.
Glahn regards the natural space as a mythical place added to a bygone era. Edvarda's relationship to the natural space of northern Norway, on the other hand, is progressive, and Edvarda herself is a cautious incarnation of "the new woman". The fact that she and Glahn use the natural space as a meeting place does not mean that the place means the same thing to them. Edvarda arranges parties and social events in nature, while at the same time drawing elements from nature into her cultural sphere. When she once speaks about her dreams for the future, her desire to break away from Sirilund, this happens at a party on one of the islands around the trading post. The dominant, seductive and grandiose depiction of the nature of Nordland envelops both, but the consequences of staying there are vastly different. Thomas Glahn's striving to take part in an idyll is so insistent and monomantly conveyed that he almost succeeds in giving the impression that his experience of nature also applies to the novel's female protagonist, Edvarda. Only by following Edvarda's own gaze and listening to her own voice does it become clear that the idyllic space has different implications for her than for him. The use of the same place may explain part of the reason why the question of why things went wrong between Glahn and Edvarda is constantly asked, because the two put different understandings into the same place.
In Landstrykere we see that the place takes on some of the same significance as in Pan . The relationship between Edevart and Lovise Magrete begins when they meet at her home, Doppen. Doppen is described as an idyll:
At Fosenlandet they went into a green cove to get water, it gushed out to them from a waterfall in the forest. There was a lonely farm at the bottom of the cove, from there a couple of children came down to the river and stood watching the strangers from the hunt. A little later a young woman came running down to them, she was barefoot and very scantily dressed, with nothing on but a sarong and skirt.
Doppen represents the idyll of love within Landstrykere's universe, and the presentation of the place expresses peace and harmony. It is this idyll that Edevart then comes to wish to return to, and it is based on this idyll that he imagines his relationship with Lovise Magrete. She, for her part, has completely different dreams, both of reconstructing family life with her husband Håkon and of going to America. For Lovise Magrete, Doppen is synonymous with hardship and poverty. The place is the same, but it carries with it completely different expectations and obligations for Edevart and Lovise Magrete. In August, however, we find the connection between wandering between different places and poetry – as we find it in so many of Hamsun's works. August visits places without becoming attached to them; he approaches them in a contemplative and rational manner. This distanced, yet curious observer role culminates in the depiction of how the two explore Trondheim: “they even visited churches and museums, they looked over the whole city and had their eyes with them. When they walked down by the harbor, August could point out certain features in the various quay buildings”. It is an approach that today can remind us of the tourist’s way of visiting a place, which is non-binding, simple, experience-oriented and restless. One of the most important things about August’s wandering between different places is the nourishment it gives his imagination. The travels become the origin of the fantastic stories he tells. August’s storytelling enthusiasm is an interesting characteristic of him that, in addition to being socially inclusive and outward-looking, completes the universe of wandering, wanderlust, the urge to work and market life that August represents. Through the stories, August brings his experiences together into a whole. And with the help of the role of narrator, his outgoing and popular character is emphasized.
Both Pan and The Wanderers show how the same place means different things to different characters. This difference in perception of place is the cause of several misunderstandings and eventually erotic ruptures between the lovers.
The significance of this place in a gender-relevant and erotic plot has received little attention in the study of Hamsun's novels. Women and men attach different significance to places, and contrary to what one might think, it is the man who pursues the ancient, regressive ideals associated with a place, while the woman wants to attribute freedom and modernity to the place. While studies of Hamsun's many male wanderer characters have emphasized their restlessness, search for freedom and independence, it is interesting to see that in the two love relationships that the male wanderers in Pan and Landstrykere enter into, they represent values that are completely opposite to these. Both Thomas Glahn and Edevart embrace an archaic model of love that not only entails a pre-modern state for themselves, but also implies that the women they love must adopt the same conservative attitude towards values. In a subtle way, Hamsun has failed to let the characters be the target of their values. Instead, the places they want to be, or to wander away from, become indicators of their value standpoint.
Linda Hamrin Nesby is a PhD with the thesis An analysis of Knut Hamsun's novels Pan , Markens grøde and Landstrykere based on the concept of chronotope , University of Tromsø 2009.
