NORTH COUNTRY

I remember from my childhood in Nordland a lonely night, it was a quiet summer night in the sun. I came rowing in a boat, but I didn't row, I was limping and sitting with my face turned forward in the boat. Every seabird was silent and there was nothing living to be seen on land. Then a head appeared from the shiny water, the water filtered off it. It was probably a seal, but it was like a being from another world, it lay looking at me with open eyes and pondering. Its gaze was like a human's... (In Wonderland, 1903)

Hamsun was born in Gudbrandsdalen, but his family moved to Hamarøy in Nordland when he was three. Despite eventually leaving Northern Norway, he continued to defend and promote Northern Norwegian values.

In "The Theologian in Fairyland" (1910) he taunts priests who seek to avoid an office in the north. Northern Norwegian nature, social life and language play a central role in his poetry. In Pan (1894) the northern Norwegian nature is a premise for Glahn's dreamlike experiences. In the same book, but also in Benoni and Rosa (both 1908), the trading post and the nesse king Mack are important to the plot.

Hamsun's use of the North Norwegian language in fiction was novel, and the mixture of misunderstood foreign words, redundant Bible passages, and North Norwegian words and expressions constituted the essence of Hamsun the language artist.

Hamsun's depictions of the Nordic countries appear at regular intervals in his writings, from Pan (1894) to August (1930).