Knut Hamsun

MR. ALFRED A. KNOPF
has been appointed the sole authorized American publisher of
KNUT HAMSUN

The following books are now ready:

• HUNGER
• GROWTH OF THE SOIL
• SHALLOW SOIL
• DREAMERS
• PAN
• WANDERERS

The following are scheduled for later publications:

• CHILDREN OF THE TIME [Spring, 1923]
• VICTORIA
• THE VILLAGE OF SEGELFOSS
• BENONI
• ROSA

Knut Hamsun
Photo by Wilse

Knut Hamsun

by

Hanna Astrup Larsen

Editor "The American-Scandinavian Review"

New York
Alfred · A · Knopf
Mcmxxii

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.
Published, October, 1922

Set up and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y.
Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York.
Bound by the H. Wolff Estate, New York.

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The author wishes to acknowledge her debt to The American-Scandinavian Foundation for the Fellowship which enabled her to study the works of Hamsun in Norway during the winter of 1920-1921.

Contents

• The Wanderer:
  • Early Life in Norway 3
  • From the Wheatfields to the Fishing Banks 20
  • The Author of Hunger 32
• The Poet:
  • His Own Hero 45
  • The Hero and the Heroine 58
  • God in Nature 76
  • With Muted Strings 89
  • The Literary Artist 104
• The Citizen:
  • Holding Up the Mirror to His Generation 119
  • Growth of the Soil 148
  • The Wanderer Arrived 163

Portraits

• Knut Hamsun Frontispiece
  Photo by Wilse
• Hamsun as a Young Man 38
  From a drawing by Erik Werenskiold
• Knut Hamsun 86
  From a painting by Henrik Lund
• Hamsun and His Family 134
  Photo by Wilse

THE WANDERER

EARLY LIFE IN NORWAY

Knut Hamsun has become identified in our minds with the lonely figure that recurs again and again in his earlier books, the Wanderer who is for ever outside of organized society and for ever pays the penalty of being different from the crowd and unable to conform to its standards. That this lonely creature is really himself in a certain period of his life we know from the testimony of his own works. Yet this vagabond and iconoclast sprang from the most conservative stock of Norway. He is the descendant of an old peasant family in Gudbrandsdalen, one of the interior mountain valleys in the heart of the