My Struggle, Book Two: A Man in Love by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Real life, ad nauseam

About fifteen years ago, Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard made a big splash in the literary world with his six-volume work My Struggle (Min kamp). Is it an autobiography or a series of novels? Only Knausgaard and his family know for sure, but it’s written as ostensibly an autobiography, so I will consider it as such. My Struggle has received much critical acclaim, but when I read Book One, I wasn’t terribly enamored with it. These volumes, however, often come up as inexpensive Kindle daily deals, so I impulsively bought Book Two and eventually felt compelled to read it.

Book Two, first published in 2009, does not pick up where Book One left off. Book One was mostly about Knausgaard’s teenage years in Norway. In his mid-twenties, he married a woman named Tonje, but we don’t really learn much about her. That period of his life isn’t covered in either of these first couple volumes. As Book Two opens, Knausgaard and Tonje have separated, and he makes a spur-of-the-moment relocation to Stockholm. In Sweden he reconnects with a prior acquaintance, Linda, and they fall in love. Despite the fact that she’s bristling with red flags, Knausgaard quickly decides to make babies with her. From that point on, the book is mostly, “Heaven knows I’m miserable now.”

Book Two is much like Book One in that Knausgaard spends many pages describing scenes from his life in minute detail. The first tenth of Book Two is occupied by a lengthy depiction of a children’s birthday party that Knausgaard and Linda attend with their two kids. This extended vignette is a skillful piece of realistic prose, but so what? I’ve already been to this party dozens of times with my own children. Hundreds of years from now, some historian studying the social customs of 21st-century Nordic parents could use this book as a reference, but to me, spending so much time reliving the author’s experience felt pointless. Knausgaard’s writing is at its best when he delivers brief essay passages with his philosophical thoughts on life, death, love, and marriage, but unfortunately such interludes are only a few pages out of each hundred otherwise devoted to the mundane details of everyday life. Much of the book is spent discussing Knausgaard himself and analyzing his character, which he obviously finds fascinating. Such is the subject of a very long evening Knausgaard spends in conversation with a friend over a few beers that amounts to an egomaniacal My Dinner with Andre.

Most of the narrative takes place in Sweden, but Knausgaard doesn’t really like Sweden. Based on his descriptions and comments, Norway seems a lot like the Wisconsin I grew up in—very alcoholic and a little rednecky, but charmingly unpretentious and laid-back. Knausgaard’s take on Sweden, on the other hand, is very pretentious, uptight, and cumbersomely woke. I feel like I have a lot in common with Knausgaard: none of his good qualities, like his creative passion for writing; just the bad ones, like his misanthropy, low self-esteem, degrees of cynicism, nihilism, and narcissism, and a longing for solitude. It’s his ability to write with authentic psychological realism that allows me to identify with him, but am I supposed to take some kind of pleasure or satisfaction from that? While reading this book, I didn’t. Book Two is an exploration of, or perhaps more accurately a wallowing in, everything that sucks about marriage and parenthood. Even worse, it just comes across like Knausgaard is blaming everything on his wife (I don’t know if Knausgaard and Linda were ever legally married, but they’re at least common-law spouses). This volume reads like it was written as a deposition to support his claim in a custody battle, except Knausgaard doesn’t want custody; he just wants to be left alone.

I thought My Struggle was worth a second look, but Book Two was even more frustrating and disappointing than Book One. Knausgaard is very good at the descriptive diary stuff, but after about a thousand pages, I feel like I wasted a lot of time on one guy’s obsession with his own not-so-extraordinary life. I don’t know if Knausgaard ever got the freedom from his wife and kids that he so desperately craves in Book Two, but from now on, I for one will leave him alone.

The Power of a Lie by Johan Bojer

Decent Norwegian realism built on a flawed premise

Johan Bojer (1872–1959) is a Norwegian novelist who achieved some popular and critical success in his native country. Several of his books have been translated into English. His novel The Power of a Lie (Troens magt) was published in 1903.

The story takes place in a rural provincial Norwegian town. I don’t believe the town is ever named, but it’s somewhere in the vicinity of Lake Mjøsa and the city of Lillehammer. Knut Norby is one of the wealthiest landowners in this region. In years prior, had invested in the business venture of a neighbor named Wangen. Norby co-signed a loan to help Wangen establish a brickworks. Desiring to keep this financial dealing a secret from his wife, Norby hasn’t told anyone about his involvement in Wangen’s business. Now that brickworks has failed, gone bankrupt, and the creditors have come a-calling. Norby is liable for about two thousand krone—not an exorbitant sum for a man of his standing.

Since nobody knows that Norby has co-signed as surety on Wangen’s behalf, a rumor gets started that Wangen forged Norby’s signature on the document. Norby does nothing to dispel this rumor, and, as the story of forgery spreads, he becomes hesitant to counteract the ever-growing lie. Hoping to avoid the ire of his wife and some embarrassment in the face of his friends and neighbors, Norby decides to affirm the accusation. Thus accused of forgery, Wangen faces prison time. If the forgery is disproved, however, Norby could also face a prison sentence for bringing a false accusation against an innocent man.

I had previously read Bojer’s novel The Great Hunger and liked it well enough. I was less satisfied, however, with The Power of a Lie. The premise on which the plot is based just seemed unreasonable to me. Once the lie gets started, then the book becomes a good naturalist novel with realistic human behavior and an inside look at Norwegian village life. Establishing the lie in the first place, however, seems to me a hurdle over which the novel stumbles. First of all, Norby himself doesn’t come up with the lie, so that lessens his moral culpability somewhat. Then, the fact that he would reinforce this false rumor feels unrealistic and farfetched. I’m certainly not a paragon of moral virtue, but I wouldn’t send a man to prison just to pacify my wife and avoid a little embarrassment. The hearings, depositions, and trials would be more trouble than it’s worth. This whole crisis seemed avoidable. Norby could have easily come out with the truth early on, and he really wouldn’t have suffered much from it. Instead, the novel needed a plot premise to get the snowball rolling, and here that plot premise feels forced.

The novel does have its moments, however. Potential witnesses face compelling moral dilemmas of whether they should testify of not. There are some interesting revelations of class struggle in the story. Within this isolated country corner, Norby is somewhat of an aristocrat, a feudal lord of sorts who governs over a corps of peasant laborers. He has conservative views on capital and labor, while more liberal views are starting to encroach into his domain. Wangen, on the other hand, is decidedly less well-off, and the destruction of his reputation clearly creates a financial burden on him. His wife, who suffers along side him, is a particularly sympathetic character. The Power of a Lie is a decent but flawed work of Norwegian literature. Bojer’s probably got better novels in him, but I can more consistently count on the works of his countrymen Knut Hamsun and Alexander Kielland.

Mysteries by Knut Hamsun

Inside the erratic mind of an eccentric outsider

Norwegian author Knut Hamsun’s literary career spanned seven decades, during which time he produced a plethora of novels, plays, stories, poetry, and essays, not all of which have been translated into English. Hamsun, who won the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature, was an innovative literary pioneer who had a profound influence on modernist literature, not just in Norway but worldwide. His first novel, Hunger, published in 1890, is probably still his most renowned and widely read work. His second novel, Mysteries, published in 1892, is not as well known.

The title Mysteries is as generic as it sounds. It could pertain to anything or nothing going on in the story. Like many of Hamsun’s novels, it is difficult to summarize the plot of Mysteries in a couple of sentences. The plot just kind of meanders from scene to scene, without any overt agenda, much like real life itself. The novel follows Johan Nagel, an eccentric outsider who shows up one day at a small coastal Norwegian town and decides to settle there. Nagel states his profession as agronomist, but although only about thirty years of age, he seems to have inherited a sufficient sum of money so as to be no longer required to work for a living. Upon arriving in the unnamed town in which the novel is set, he takes a room at a main-street hotel and decides to stay indefinitely, as something of a retiree.

Nagel may be a stranger, but he’s no recluse, and he soon becomes involved in the social life of the town. He gets to know some of the citizens, both the fashionable set and some of the lower classes. He attends parties, where he is both a popular attraction and a gauche curiosity. Nagel has a habit of saying whatever’s on his mind, whether it’s socially appropriate or not. He talks a mile a minute and often runs on into extended stories and soliloquies. He will regale a crowd of partygoers, for example, by recounting the details of a dream he has had. This hardly seems realistic among polite society, but his audience listens enrapt while the dream goes on for several pages. Being socially active in his new hometown, it’s not surprising that Nagel would fall in love. His choice of soulmate is a complicated one, however, and their relationship is anything but easy and smooth.

Early in his literary career, Hamsun had an antipathy towards realist and naturalist literature. He is considered the leader of a neo-Romantic resurgence in Norwegian and Western European fiction. Mysteries is realistic in the sense of this is what provincial Norway was like in the 1890s. The story touches on political and social issues of the time, but not so much as to be obtrusive to ignorant outsiders unfamiliar with Norwegian history. The novel is predominantly Romantic, however, because it’s almost entirely concerned with what’s going on inside Nagel’s noggin: his struggle for love and self-actualization. Through the love story that arises, Nagel eventually develops into a modern variation on Goethe’s Young Werther.

In addition to Nagel’s extensive and revealing blatherings, Hamsun employs some early use of stream of consciousness narrative. Such interior monologues do not venture into the abstract excesses of later modernist authors but rather quite brilliantly capture the authentic imaginary conversations that we all engage in from time to time. Hamsun’s work reads as if influenced by the psychological studies of Sigmund Freud, but Mysteries actually precedes by a few years almost all of Freud’s published works. Nagel’s dreams and interior monologues show that Hamsun is clearly interested in the power of subconscious thought on human behavior. By exploring both the subconscious and conscious components of Nagel’s mind, Hamsun constructs a character that is much deeper and more multidimensional than the typical literary protagonists of his era.

Hamsun’s writing was years ahead of its time, and his work is still far and above most of today’s literature. He has become one of my go-to authors. I’ve never read a bad book by him, I can always count on him for a thought-provoking read, and I intend to eventually read my way through his complete output of novels. Growth of the Soil is my favorite thus far.   

Aku-Aku by Thor Heyerdahl

Chasing secrets on Easter Island

Thor Heyerdahl was an explorer who achieved worldwide fame in the 1950s and ‘60s—not quite as famous as Jacques Cousteau, perhaps, but close. The Norwegian adventurer and experimental archaeologist is best-known for riding a raft across the Pacific Ocean from Peru to French Polynesia, a journey he recounted in his book and Oscar-winning documentary film, both entitled Kon-Tiki. His follow-up to this much-celebrated achievement was an expedition to Easter Island in 1955 and 1956, which is recounted in his book Aku-Aku, published in 1957.

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, is known for its giant stone heads carved out of lava rock. At the time of Heyerdahl’s trip, little was known about who made them, how they were made, and how the incredibly heavy rocks were transported to and erected at their various locations around the island. The thesis that Heyerdahl spent his life trying to prove is that Polynesian islanders are of American origin, essentially descendants of seafaring Inca or other Indigenous Peruvians. On Easter Island, he looked for evidence to support that theory and did find some correspondence between the artworks of Easter Island and those of the Inca. Heyerdahl was not an academic scientist, which opens him up to criticism by those with PhDs who regard him as merely an adventurer and pseudoscientst, so on this expedition he invited three professional archaeologists along on this expedition.

What amazed me the most about this book was learning that when Heyerdahl’s team arrived on Easter Island, all of the famed statues had been toppled face down in the dirt. This happened during a civil war on the island a couple centuries earlier. Heyerdahl, with the help of Indigenous workers, used traditional non-mechanical techniques to raise one of the statues upright. This was the first of such modern re-raisings. When you see photographs of a dozen monolithic heads lined up along the coast of Easter Island, all of those were raised after Heyerdahl, most of them not until the 1990s, when major restoration efforts were undertaken to encourage tourism. Heyerdahl was really the spark that set that flame of tourism alight, for better or for worse. On the one hand he brought attention to the cultural heritage of Rapa Nui; on the other hand his tactics trained the Natives to exploit that heritage for commerce.

While the giant stone heads, or moai, are quite fascinating, most of the book is not about that. It’s about Heyerdahl trying to convince the islanders to grant him access to their secret caves or hand over to him the artifacts that are contained therein. Heyerdahl’s methods of persuasion were not entirely ethical by today’s standards, nor is what ultimately happened to the artifacts (I think he just took them away on his boat). He starts out by bartering cloth and knives for small statues. He then moves up to chicanery in the form of exploiting the Natives’ superstitions to his advantage. Not only is this disturbing, it’s also rather boring. Long chapters go by in which Heyerdahl is just conning his way into these families’ caves, then not much is really said about the artifacts themselves and what they reveal about the island’s cultural history.

Heyerdahl’s theories on the Peruvian colonization of Polynesia have not stood up well to scientific scrutiny. Still, he’s usually very good at writing the adventure stories of his expeditions. Kon-Tiki is an excellent read, and I also enjoyed Fatu-Hiva, his account of roughing it in the Marquesas. Aku-Aku, however, is not as engrossing as those other books. It gets dull and repetitive, and Heyerdahl doesn’t talk much about the discoveries of the archaeologists who accompanied him. Other than collecting a lot of statuettes that aren’t thoroughly described to the reader, it’s unclear what exactly Heyerdahl and his team accomplished on Easter Island. Perhaps more is revealed in his more scientific publications, such as Archeology of Easter Island (2 volumes), published in 1965.

The Great Hunger by Johan Bojer

Norwegian naturalism

Norway’s Johan Bojer is known as one of that nation’s important realist authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Bojer garnered enough critical respect to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. Several of his novels were translated into English in the 1910s, ‘20s, and ‘30s. He is known for writing novels about Norwegian immigrant life in America, but his novel The Great Hunger, published in 1916, takes place entirely within Norway.

Peer Troen is a typical boy growing up in a small town in Norway. Troen is not his birth name, however. Peer is the illegitimate child of a prosperous former military officer from Christiania (today’s Oslo), Captain Holm, who pays the Troen family to board and raise his son. Peer’s mother was a prostitute, so his father, though friendly enough, refuses to claim him as a son. In fact, Captain Holm has another, legitimate family, and admitting that Peer exists would be an embarrassment to them all. Though Peer is certainly not happy being disowned, he learns to come to terms with his lot in life. He dreams of becoming a priest, at that time an upper-class profession requiring higher education. When both his parents die, however, there is no one left to pay the Troen family for his upkeep. Peer finds out his father was not as wealthy as he thought, and his inheritance is paltry. Peer is dropped into a life of poverty, but he still manages to work his way through engineering school in hopes of succeeding in a career.

The title of the book is both literal and figurative. While there is no mass famine here, the story does deal with the poverty and hunger of one Norwegian family. The “hunger” in question, however, more pointedly refers to the desire of humans to create, accomplish, and/or conquer and to leave behind a legacy for posterity. Bojer asks the question is enough to simply enjoy life? Are love and happiness the purpose of our existence? Peer seems to think so, for a while anyway. But can a man, or mankind, be truly satisfied with blissful complacency? One of Peer’s close friends begs to differ, asserting that the irresistible force of evolution imparts to everyone a Promethean drive to create, build, and strive toward progress, even at the expense of comfort and joy. This novel is chiefly concerned with the conflict between these two attitudes toward human nature and the meaning of life.

The Great Hunger is strongest in its first act, when it adheres most strictly to the tenets of naturalist literature. Peer must deal with the hand that’s dealt him by his heritage, and through him Bojer realistically depicts the struggles of poor and working class life in Norway. At about the halfway point, the novel starts to get more didactic and preachy, as if Bojer were delivering a sermon. This sermon, however, is a secular one that appeals to my personal freethinking inclinations. Bojer makes many openly atheistic statements that are a breath of rationalistic fresh air. By the early 20th century, more Scandinavian writers were penning literature from an atheist viewpoint, such as Bojer in Norway and Jens Peter Jacobsen and Johannes V. Jensen in Denmark.

I was less impressed with the later chapters of the book. For a while, it seems like Bojer is going to follow up on Peer’s bastard upbringing. Peer becomes friends with his own half-brother, who is unaware that they share the same father. That plot thread is never followed through, however, and remains inconclusive. The ending of the book in general is rather week, but adhering to realism often means that expectations of closure remain unsatisfied, much like real life itself. Nevertheless, I found Bojer to be a writer certainly worth investigating further, and I’m sure this won’t be the last of his books that I’ll read.

Wayfarers by Knut Hamsun

Workingman’s blues, Norwegian style

Wayfarers, a novel by Norwegian Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun, was published in 1927 (Norwegian title: Landstrykere). Be careful not to confuse this with another Hamsun book, Wanderers, or his novel A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings, part of his Wanderer trilogy. (Only the English titles are confusing, not the Norwegian titles). Wayfarers, on the other hand, is the first book in Hamsun’s August trilogy, the second and third books being August and The Road Leads On.

Edevart Andresen lives with his parents and siblings in Polden, the small Norwegian coastal village where he grew up. Like most men in his village, he makes his living primarily from fishing. Every winter the Polden men go on a fishing expedition to the Lofoten Islands and then return to dry their fish on the rocks of their hometown shore. One day, Edevart meets another young man, August, who has been away from Polden, traveling the world as a sailor, and has now returned. August, with his gold teeth and boastful talk, is frequently the object of ridicule from his neighbors. Edevart and August strike up a fast friendship. August is a big-idea man who’s always looking for a scheme to make a fast buck. He convinces Edevart to enter into various business enterprises with him. The two travel up and down the Norwegian coast like vagabonds, engaging in assorted occupations. Sometimes flush with cash and sometimes hard-up for a meal, the two traveling companions form a share-and-share-alike, what’s-mine-is-yours bond. The dynamic between the two is often comical, sometimes calling to mind the two tramps from Waiting for Godot. Though not much different in age, Edevart is still an inexperienced, naive young man while August is more a shrewd man-of-the-world. Edevart is still very much a “good boy,” but he begins to fall under the corrupting influence of August’s looser morals. Their relationship is not without conflict, and sometimes they separate for months, only to reunite for another adventure..

The story takes place in the late 1860s. Judging by the fickle fortunes of the characters in this book, Hamsun depicts a time of economic hardship in Norway. While much of Europe has transitioned into an industrial economy, the denizens of these small villages on the Norwegian coast still live a subsistence lifestyle not much changed from many generations past. No source of income, not even the fish, can be relied upon, so Edevart and August must turn to other avenues of income, including itinerant peddling, storekeeping, farming, and thievery, among others.

This novel meanders just as much as its two protagonists. The story often proceeds at a lackadaisical but pleasant pace. As you become involved with these characters, you are content to take life as it comes, just as they do. If there is a message to this story, it isn’t hammered home. This book is about the journey, not the destination. Hamsun considers the question of whether it is better to accept one’s lot in life and be whom one was born to be, or to venture afar, forge one’s own path, and try to determine one’s own destiny. This novel shows both the positive and negative aspects of wanderlust and vagrancy. Another issue that’s discussed is emigration to America. No doubt Hamsun saw many of his countrymen leave Norway for the United States during hard times. Here he questions the milk-and-honey, rags-to-riches image of America and asserts that crossing the Atlantic is no happily-ever-after panacea.

After completing this book, I was pleased to find out that it’s part of a trilogy. I enjoyed following the lives of these two men, and I look forward to catching up with Edevart and August in the second and third novels of the August series. Because these books were published late in Hamsun’s career, however, there are no English translations in the public domain, and paper copies of August are not cheap.   

The Lottery Ticket by Jules Verne

Foregone conclusions in Norway

The Lottery Ticket is a novel by Jules Verne published in 1886. It was also published in English translation under the alternate title of Ticket No. 9672. Like most of Verne’s fiction, this novel is one of his Voyages Extraordinaires, a series that consists of about 60 books. Although Verne is largely remembered today as a science fiction writer, the one element that really ties all of his work together is a love of travel, geography, and exploration. The Lottery Ticket is not science fiction but rather one of Verne’s geographical adventures. To be honest, however, there really isn’t even much adventure in this one.

The Lottery Ticket is set in the Telemark region of Southern Norway. The Hansen family, consisting of the widow Dame Hansen and her young-adult children Joel and Hulda, run an inn in the village of Dal near the Rjukan Falls, a popular tourist destination. Hulda is engaged to a fisherman named Ole Kamp, who is off on a commercial fishing voyage to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. The two young lovers’ wedding is set to take place when he returns. His ship, the Viking, however, misses its expected return date by over a month. The Hansens fear the vessel is lost at sea and Hulda may never see her betrothed again.

Like many a Verne novel, this one takes forever to get going. The story doesn’t really start until chapter 11 or 12 (out of 20). Everything prior to that is just getting acquainted with the characters and the setting. Through the daily lives of the Hansen family, Verne delivers a primer on Norwegian geography, culture, and scenery. Verne traveled to Norway in 1861, and I would assume many of the towns and sites mentioned here probably comprised his itinerary during that trip. He definitely visited the Rjukan Falls. The lottery ticket mentioned in the book’s title is really a ridiculous plot element that can only lead to a predictable conclusion. The novel would have been better without it. The one real opportunity for adventure in this novel is the search for Ole’s lost ship, but all of that happens “offstage.” The main characters are not involved in that manhunt, and the details are only relayed secondhand and after the fact.

Despite being utterly predictable, The Lottery Ticket is a pleasant enough read. The characters are likable, and the setting is inviting. There is a satisfaction that comes from watching the events unfold in their obvious manner. Verne provides enough of a travelogue of Norway to maintain one’s interest. Verne was very good at writing about the scientific and geographical aspects of his fiction. He was able to get readers excited about those subjects. When he describes an exotic locale, he typically gives you enough of an education to make you want to go and visit those places. When it came to putting plots together, however, Verne’s efforts were often clumsy and formulaic, by today’s standards anyway. There are exceptions, of course, such as the excellent Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Even given his faults, I still think Verne was a better storyteller than H. G. Wells. The Lottery Ticket is certainly not one of the more extraordinary voyages in Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires, but like almost all of his books, it’s a satisfactorily fun ride nonetheless.

Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature by Thor Heyerdahl

Polynesian Walden

Norwegian explorer and author Thor Heyerdahl achieved fame in the late 1940s and early 1950s with his book and documentary film Kon-Tiki, about his voyage from South America to Polynesia on a primitive wooden raft. The Kon-Tiki expedition was not his first adventurous journey, however. As early as his teenage years, Heyerdahl had dreamed of escaping civilization to live a self-sufficient life in an unspoiled wilderness. He decided on Fatu-Hiva, an island in the Marquesas, as the ideal destination in which to live this dream of getting “back to nature.” Heyerdahl deliberately searched for a wife to share this vision, and he found one in Liv Coucheron-Torp. The day after their marriage in 1936, the couple sailed for the Marquesas, where they would be dropped on the shore with little more than the clothes on their backs. In 1938, Heyerdahl published in Norway an account of this unconventional honeymoon entitled Hunt for Paradise. After achieving worldwide fame from his later expeditions, he revised the account and published it in English in 1974 as Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature.

At the time, Fatu-Hiva was home to a few small coastal Indigenous communities and a handful of white men. The Heyerdahls ventured into the interior of the island to live a semi-isolated existence in the jungle. They relocated a few times to different locations around the island, where they built their own homes and mostly foraged for fruit and shellfish. Heyerdahl doesn’t just describe what they saw and did but also, much like Henry David Thoreau in Walden or Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, philosophizes quite a bit about nature and man’s place in it. This includes much eloquent lamenting on environmental degradation. In this travelog, Heyerdahl’s account goes beyond the romantic stereotype of a South Pacific paradise and presents the realistic pros and cons of living on a tropical island.

It was here in the Marquesas that Heyerdahl first got the idea that Polynesians are descended from seafaring Peruvians, an theory he tested with his Kon-Tiki expedition. On Fatu-Hiva, the Heyerdahls encountered many Polynesian ruins and anthropological artifacts. Heyerdahl points out the stylistic similarities between the art of the Polynesians and Indigenous South Americans. He also discusses in much detail the migration or transplantation of plant and animal species between the Americas and Polynesia. He hypothesizes on which species were brought to Fatu-Hiva by white explorers and which preceded them (thus brought by ancient South American mariners). This theory of the American ancestry of Polynesians was controversial for its time, since most scientists believed that Polynesians were descended from mainland Asians who migrated Eastward. Today, Heyerdahl’s theory is considered racially problematic pseudoscience, and DNA evidence doesn’t support it. Nevertheless, when it comes to expedition narratives, Heyerdahl knows how to write a good book. For those who like exotic adventure, Kon-Tiki is an excellent read; Fatu-Hiva is merely good. For a better account of roughing it in the Marquesas, read Herman Melville’s Typee.

Given Heyerdahl’s background in zoology, I was disappointed that he didn’t write more about the wildlife of Fatu-Hiva. He focuses more attention on the human inhabitants of the island. Despite being far off the beaten path, Fatu-Hiva was not entirely uncivilized nor untouched by European influence. In fact, the greatest danger faced by the Heyerdahls is unexpected: Catholic islanders who persecute the couple for being Protestants. Heyerdahl readily admits that his experiment in getting “back to nature” was only partially successful because the negative aspects of human nature and modern civilization were to some degree inescapable. Nevertheless, his attempt at a tropical idyll is admirable and makes for an interesting read.

The Nordic Translation Series

Modern lit from Northern Europe
From 1965 to 1970, the University of Wisconsin Press published its Nordic Translation Series. This collection of books presented works of literature from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden in English translation, thereby introducing English-language readers to the modern authors of those nations. The books in this series include novels, short stories, drama, and memoir. Each book typically has an introduction by a university professor that provides a brief biography of the author and some explanation of the historical context behind the work. 

I believe 16 books were published in the series. Eleven of those books are now available for free download. The University of Wisconsin Press has released these translations as open access books. They can be found at the UW Libraries website. Old Books by Dead Guys has previously reviewed all eleven of those books, and presents an overview of the series below. Though not every book in the series is a masterpiece, each volume presents a welcome glimpse into a corner of the world often neglected by English-language readers. Scandinavian literature (a subset of Nordic) has enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years, mostly due to mystery novels and thrillers. The books listed below, however, represent some of the highbrow literary luminaries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who are revered in their native lands. Click on the titles below to read the full reviews.

Denmark 🇩🇰

We Murderers: A Play in Three Acts (1920) by Guðmundur Kamban (1.5 stars)
Kamban was born in Iceland. He moved to Denmark for college and remained in Copenhagen for most of his life, although he lived briefly in New York, London, and Berlin. His play We Murderers is set in New York. As a result, it doesn’t in any way come across as particularly Nordic or Scandinavian, which begs the question, why would anyone translate it for this series? Isn’t the purpose of this series to educate Americans about Nordic culture? Instead, this is a pedestrian marital melodrama involving a jealous husband and a wife with a straying eye. There is a touch of Eugene O’Neill in this, but it would be early-career O’Neill, as seen in such forgettable plays as Welded, Diff’rent, and The First Man. A century after it was first staged, this drama reads as rather pretentious and overly melodramatic.

Finland 🇫🇮

People in the Summer Night (1934) by Frans Eemil Sillanpää (4 stars)
Sillanpää won the 1939 Nobel Prize in Literature, the only Finnish author so far to have done so. This novel paints a vivid portrait of a rural community in Finland. Comprised of 48 short chapters, the structure of the novel is more of a montage than a linear narrative. The story takes place almost entirely over the course of one summer night, when Finland is lit by the strange midnight twilight of Northern latitudes. A large ensemble cast of characters act out the intimate dramas that contribute to the collective history of this fictional rural community. Sillanpää’s style strikes a delicate and satisfying balance between pastoral romanticism and naturalist realism.

The Woodcarver and Death (1940) by Hagar Olsson (2.5 stars)
Olsson was a member of a minority Swedish population in Finland that produced its own body of literature in the Swedish language, of which this novel is an example. A quiet young woodcarver decides to leave his widowed mother’s home and make a pilgrimage to his birthplace. Obsessed with thoughts of death, the pointlessness of life, and the futility of religion, he hopes the journey might help him to discover some meaning to life. This book calls to mind some of the soul-searching wanderer novels of German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse, such as Siddhartha or Narcissus and Goldmund, but drearier and less interesting. This novel is a bit too contemplative and navel-gazing for my taste.

My Childhood by Toivo Pekkanen (4.5 stars)
Unlike most of the works in this series, which have a decidedly modernist style, this partial autobiography by Pekkanen is a straight-up work of old-school naturalism. For most of this narrative, Finland was under the rule of the Russian Empire, and Pekkanen was born in a coastal town near the Russian border. After his father dies of a stroke, Pekkanen and his mother struggle with poverty and hunger that only worsen with the coming of World War I and the Russian Revolution. This powerful and poignant memoir explores timeless and universal themes of coming-of-age through a story that is specific to its time an place. One learns quite a bit about Finnish history and Finnish life in the process. While there are harsh and brutal aspects to this story, it is also suffused with familial love and a resilient hope for the future.

Iceland 🇮🇸

Fire and Ice: Three Icelandic Plays (1915–1955) by Jóhann Sigurjónsson, Davið Stefánsson, and Agnar Þórðarson (3.5 stars)
This trio of Icelandic dramas highlights three important figures in the history of Icelandic theatre, and their works included here depict three distinct periods in Iceland’s history and literature. Sigurjónsson’s The Wish is a Faustian tale of a driven young man who dabbles in black magic. Stefánsson’s Golden Gate is a humorous Christian folktale about an old woman striving to get her recently deceased husband’s soul through the pearly gates of Heaven. Þórðarson’s Atoms and Madams is a modern political satire involving imperialism and resource extraction. Because of its tripartite structure and the editor’s informative introductions, Fire and Ice is one of the more successful books in the Nordic Translation Series at educating the reader about the history and literature of the nation in question.

Norway 🇳🇴

The Fourth Night Watch (1923) by Johan Falkberget (4 stars)
Falkberget, a very prolific author of historical novels, is highly respected in his home country. As a representative of the regionalist movement in Norwegian literature, his writing exhibits similar characteristics to authors such as Honoré de Balzac, Anthony Trollope or Emile Zola. This novel is set in the mining region where Falkberget was born, and the story takes place around 1807, about the time Norway won its independence from Denmark and entered a war against Sweden. The plot involves a realistic depiction of forbidden love, as well as contrasting characters of different social classes. Although this is not a religious novel, it portrays the significant role that Christianity played in Norwegian society during this time period. The reader learns much about Norwegian history from reading this book.

The Great Cycle (1934) by Tarjei Vesaas (5 stars)
While literary critics often classify Vesaas as one of Norway’s groundbreaking modernists, The Great Cycle is pretty traditional stylistically and reads like a naturalistic depiction of Norwegian rural life in a bygone era. This is a coming-of-age story about a boy born and raised on an isolated farm in the rural countryside. As he grows into adolescence, he chafes at the idea of being forced to take over the family farm. While the Norwegian setting is made intimately real for the reader, the life events and the feelings they engender are universally human. Though understated and modest on the surface, this excellent novel delivers a deep and powerful reading experience. It reads like a kinder, gentler variation on Knut Hamsun’s masterpiece Growth of the Soil. I consider this the best book in the Nordic Translation Series.

Werewolf (1958) by Aksel Sandemose (3 stars)
Sandemose was born in Denmark and moved to Norway as an adult. The “werewolf” of the title is only a metaphor, similar to the wolf of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf. The story involves a successful but alcoholic writer who periodically comes into contact with a love from his younger days, whom he seduced when she was half his age. There are also some references to the Nazi occupation during World War II, but most of the novel is really about the characters’ love lives and sex lives. This is a work of modernist literature that goes overboard with its modernism, obscuring the narrative with self-indulgent and ostentatious artiness. Sandemose doesn’t present the story in chronological order, and the lives of these characters are a puzzle that the reader has to piece together. This might have been a more compelling story if it weren’t so deliberately difficult and pretentious.

Sweden 🇸🇪

Kallocain (1940) by Karin Boye (4.5 stars)
Though best known as a poet, Boye also wrote five novels, including this science fiction story set in a dystopian future. The narrator, a scientist, describes a highly militaristic society subject to a draconian bureaucracy called the Worldstate. The citizens of this land live underground under heavy surveillance. Written during the rise of the Nazis and Stalin’s reign over the Soviet Union, this novel is a warning cry against totalitarian dictatorships and the military-industrial complex. Boye, however, emphasizes the personal over the political by investigating issues of human nature: the need for love, the fear of intimacy, the allure of conformity, the poison of jealousy, the paranoia of betrayal, and the reluctance to acknowledge or reveal one’s true self.

Bread of Love (1945) by Peder Sjögren (3 stars)
This novel takes place during the Finnish Continuation War of 1941 to 1944, a conflict that formed part of the Eastern Front of World War II. It is based on some of Sjögren’s own wartime experiences. The narrator is one of a troop of 20 soldiers holed up in underground burrows beneath the ice and snow, surrounded by mine fields. This novel would have been better had it been a relentlessly realistic novel of war, but instead Sjögren softens the blow with overly poetical prose, a fairy-tale romance, and suggestions of supernatural forces toying with the destinies of man, all of which diverts the narrative from reality into the realm of fable.

Rose of Jericho and Other Stories (1946–1949) by Tage Aurell (2.5 stars)
Aurell grew up in Värmland, a rather rustic area of Sweden. Much like America’s William Faulkner, however, he writes about rural and small-town life in an experimental, modernist style that would appeal more to
big-city and university intellectuals than to the simple country folk he depicts in his stories. In general, Aurell’s writing is too abstract for my taste. These stories are often frustrating in their deliberate obscurity, but about a third of the nine stories assembled here deliver a moving story with characters that the reader really grows to care about. Overall, however, the book didn’t teach me much about Swedish country life.

Additional Books in the Series
The following books were also published in the Nordic Translation Series, but they are not currently available in open access editions (probably due to copyright and permissions issues). Old Books by Dead Guys has not reviewed them.

Two Minutes of Silence by H. C. Branner (Denmark)
This collection of short stories appears to be out of print. Only used copies available.

World Light by Halldór Laxness (Iceland)
An English translation of this novel is currently available from the publisher Vintage.

The Black Cliffs by Gunnar Gunnarsson (Iceland)
Out of print (in English, at least). Look for used copies.

Havoc by Tom Kristensen (Denmark)
An English translation of this novel is currently available from New York Review of Books Classics.

Jørgen Stein by Jacob Paludan (Denmark)
Out of print (in English, at least). Look for used copies.

My Struggle, Volume 1 by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Real life so real it’s boring

My Struggle is a six-volume autobiographical work by Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard. Volume 1 of the series was published in 2009. Although Knausgaard himself is the protagonist of My Struggle, and his real-life family figures largely in these books, it is unclear how much of the text is fact and how much fiction, which may explain why the books in this series are generally considered novels. When Volume 1 was released, it made a major splash in the literary world. As the edition I read states, “My Struggle has won countless international literary awards.” After reading Volume 1, however, it is difficult to see what the big deal is. Knausgaard is very skilled at documenting life with detailed verisimilitude. Such talent, however, doesn’t preclude his highly descriptive prose from meandering pointlessness.

Knausgaard and I are the same age, and his tales of adolescence read very similarly to my own. He drinks and smokes with his friends, avoids his parents, tries unsuccessfully to find sex and love, wastes his time romancing a girl who really isn’t interested, dreams of being a rock musician, and builds his identity around selected bands that he likes. A third of the book is this long, convoluted story about an underaged Knausgaard expending a great deal of effort to sneak beer to a New Year’s Eve party, a party which ends up being lame anyway. If Knausgaard’s intention is to elevate regular, mundane life to the realm of literature, then at least he got the mundane part right. It turns out that growing up in Norway in the 1980s wasn’t that much different from growing up in Wisconsin. I don’t need to read about this life; I lived it.

More interesting are Knausgaard’s philosophical thoughts on matters like marriage, fatherhood, and death. He and I share some common ground in our views on such subjects. Sometimes when you find an author who sees things the way you do, it can be a revelation. “There are other people in this world like me!” In this case, however, the familiarity is just boring. For instance, roughly half the book is devoted to the death of Knausgaard’s father, dealing with his grief, getting through the funeral, and so on. That is something that most middle-aged readers can identify with, having lived through such events with their own parents. Leading up to the funeral, however, did I really need to read Knausgaard’s quotidian impressions of an airport, what he ate for breakfast at his brother’s house, or a review of the bands they listened to on the car stereo? I guess all this accumulation of prosaic observations is supposed to create an atmosphere of real life, as if to emphasize the common humanity shared by “normal people” who put their pants on one leg at a time like everybody else, but it all just feels like a colossal waste of time. Not until half way through the book does anything happen that’s beyond ordinary, and even after that, I spent about three hours of my life reading about Knausgaard cleaning a house.

This is the second book I’ve read by Knausgaard, the first being his 2020 novel The Morning Star. On the basis of these two books, I surmise that Knausgaard’s strategy is to lull readers into a sleepy security by inundating them in the bland minutiae of everyday life, thereby magnifying the intensity of a few startling occurrences with which he intends to shock them toward the end of the book. The Morning Star ended in a vague, inconclusive termination. Likewise, at the very end of My Struggle, Volume 1, Knausgaard hints at some unusual aspects of his father’s death but then never delivers the secrets, thus pressuring the reader to purchase the next volume. Whether a marketing ploy or simply artsy pretention, such deliberately half-assed endings just feel like a cheat. I have already purchased Volume 2 of My Struggle, because it was on sale for a low price, but now I’m not so sure I want to spend my time on it.

The Fourth Night Watch by Johan Falkberget

Norwegian regional realism in a northern mining town

Norwegian author Johan Falkberget’s novel The Fourth Night Watch was originally published in 1923. The University of Wisconsin Press published an English translation in 1968 as part of its Nordic Translation Series. This admirable series introduced English-language audiences to many lesser-known Scandinavian authors. Several of the books in this series, including The Fourth Night Watch, are now available for free download at the University of Wisconsin Libraries website. Falkberget (1879-1967) was a very prolific author of historical novels and highly respected in his home country, but as far as I can tell, this may be the only one of his works that’s ever been translated into English.

This is one of the better books in the Nordic Translation Series. Many of the authors featured in that series are early modernist authors whose prose is somewhat experimental in nature. Falkberget, on the other hand, comes across as a pre-modern realist whose writing exhibits similar characteristics to authors such as Honoré de Balzac, Anthony Trollope or Emile Zola. The introduction to The Fourth Night Watch states that Falkberget was part of a regionalist movement in Norwegian literature, in which writers outside of the urban capital wrote realist novels of their home districts (similar to the regional realist movement in America during the early 20th century). The Fourth Night Watch is set in the mining region of Røros, where Falkberget was born. The story begins in 1807, about the time Norway won its independence from Denmark and entered a war against Sweden.

Benjamin Sigismund has been appointed pastor in the town of Bergstaden, in the Røros mining district. He relocates his family from Christiania (later renamed Oslo), and they take up lodging in rather shabby rented rooms. At first, Sigismund and his wife are appalled by the drab rustic atmosphere of the town and its uncouth, working class inhabitants. Sigismund takes his calling as a man of the cloth seriously, however, and diligently sets out to save the souls of these northerners by reforming their godless ways. At first, the pastor plies his trade with a fair amount of vanity, pride, and self-righteousness, but the more time he spends in Røros the more he begins to see the country laborers as equals rather than inferiors. His position and his marriage are threatened, however, when he falls in love with Gunhild, a beautiful young married woman.

The forbidden love between Sigismund and Gunhild may sound like a familiar melodramatic trope, but here Falkberget handles the relationship realistically. The reader can identify with the feelings of unsatisfied longing, guilt, and loss that this romance engenders. Another important thread running throughout the book is Sigismund’s developing friendship with his sacristan, a blacksmith named Ole Korneliusen, or Ol-Kanalesa in the local dialect. These two characters, of differing upbringings and social classes, start out with an adversarial relationship but gradually begin to find common ground and develop a mutual admiration. Although this is not a religious novel, due to Sigismund’s profession, religion plays a major part in the story, similar to some of Balzac, Trollope, and Zola’s novels with clergyman protagonists. One of the reasons this novel is one of the more interesting entries in the Nordic Translation Series is that you really do learn a lot about Norwegian life, at least during this time period, unlike some of the more modern works in the series that are less specific in time and place. Those with an interest in Scandinavian literature and history will find The Fourth Night Watch a compelling read. Thanks to the University of Wisconsin Press for making such works available to English-language readers.  

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Victoria by Knut Hamsun

Love stinks in semi-feudal Norway

Norwegian author Knut Hamsun (1859-1952) won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was a pioneering modernist whose style has been extremely influential in world literature. Norway basically disowned him when he became a Nazi sympathizer during World War II, but after a few decades it again became acceptable to appreciate his work. Hamsun’s novel Victoria was published in 1898. Though not one of his better-known works, Victoria has been adapted into film a half dozen times, more than any other of his novels.

Johannes is the son of a miller in a rural town on the coast of Norway. Nearby stands the Castle, where dwell the Master and his family. The Miller and his family are essentially servants to the Master. They not only mill the grain produced on the Master’s lands but also perform odd jobs when asked, such as rowing boating parties on an afternoon outing. As a youth, Johannes becomes playmates with the Master’s daughter Victoria, who is a few years his junior. Playing outdoors amid the idyllic landscape, Johannes and Victoria develop an innocent love for one another. When they grow into young adulthood, the two admit their love for one another. Victoria makes it clear, however, that she and Johannes are not of the same social class, and her father would never approve of a union between them.

As the years go by, the two go on with their lives while their love steadfastly simmers below the surface. This is not, however, simply a melodramatic tale of two saintly lovers pining away for one another. Victoria entertains other suitors and encourages Johannes to woo another woman. The unsatisfied longing between the two sometimes poisons their interactions, resulting in outbursts of resentment and hurtful exchanges. Victoria repeatedly makes it clear to Johannes that he is beneath her station, yet she unfairly resists letting him go completely and sometimes plays a cruel coquette. Though the novel begins as a very idyllic romance, it soon turns into an unconventional love story with a rather pessimistic view of love and fate.

Hamsun was a neo-Romanticist who rebelled against the trends of realism and naturalism that prevailed in world literature in the late-nineteenth century. He felt that modernism should aspire to more than just the relation of reality. Literature should delve into the psyche and soul as Romanticists had done before, but through the lens of modern philosophy and psychology. Here Hamsun accomplishes that through the use of stream of consciousness and interior monologue, literary techniques of which he was one of the world’s pioneers.

With its Castle and the Miller and so on, this novel has a very fairy-tale atmosphere to it, but I suspect it depicts the reality of Norway at a time when some vestiges of feudalism still existed in land ownership and social strata, particularly in rural areas. The psychological drama between the characters is anything but a fairy tale. Their behavior bears the authenticity of real relationships, which is what makes this story timelessly compelling more than a century later. Hamsun may have shunned realism, but I think there is still a naturalistic aspect to this novel in the way that the characters are shaped and restricted by their social environment and the class system of their time. All lit-crit terminology aside, I liked Hamsun’s delicate balance between romance and realism here, and more importantly he made me truly care about these characters and feel what they felt.  

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Werewolf by Aksel Sandemose

The private lives of postwar Norwegians

Aksel Sandemose was born in Denmark, where he began his writing career. At about the age of 30, he moved to Norway and continued his literary career there. He published books in both languages. His novel Werewolf (Varulven), published in 1958, is a distinctly Norwegian narrative. The English translation of this book was published in 1966 by the University of Wisconsin Press as part of their Nordic Translation Series. These books are available for free download at the website of the University of Wisconsin Libraries.

Erling Vik is a Norwegian writer and an alcoholic. The love of his life is Felicia, whom he first met in 1934. He took her virginity when she was 17, and he 34. This created a lifelong bond between them, though they often went their separate ways in life. He married another woman, was involved with many others, and had an illegitimate daughter with a prostitute. Felicia, likewise, had relationships with other men before marrying Jan and settling down at his farm named Venhaug. Now Felicia is in her early forties, and Erling in his late fifties. He is a frequent visitor to Venhaug, where he and Felicia carry on their sporadic love affair, with the approval of Jan. In addition, Felicia has essentially adopted Erling’s daughter Julie, who also resides at Venhaug. When the Nazis invaded Norway, Erling, Felicia, and Jan all had roles in the resistance movement. They all took a part in the “liquidation” (assassination) of Nazi collaborators and spent time in exile in Sweden. Now, years after the war, Felicia (with Jan’s blessing) encourages Erling to move to Venhaug. Erling, however, doesn’t know if he’s ready to settle down to such a permanent arrangement and give up his personal freedom.

It takes an awfully long time to figure all of that out. Sandemose doesn’t present the narrative in chronological order. Thus, the lives of these characters are a puzzle that the reader has to piece together. I see no good reason for this strategy, other than it’s the kind of thing that literary critics like and expect from modernist writers. It certainly doesn’t do the reader any favors, and seems a pretentious gimmick that actually hampers one’s understanding of the characters.

As one can tell from the synopsis above, this book is not about a werewolf. The werewolf here is metaphorical, much like the wolf of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf. The way Sandemose haphazardly throws around the word “werewolf” in this novel results in a very ambiguous metaphor indeed. He seems to use the word as a euphemism for the personal demons that people face (particularly males), such as alcohol, insanity, a death wish, or a violent streak. At one point he seems to be using the word to describe the Nazis or those who sympathize with them.

At first I was drawn into the lives of these characters, but I really found myself losing interest at about the halfway point. Unlike the other books in the Nordic Translation Series, which are rather short, this novel is a long haul. One wishes there were more about the Nazi occupation and the characters’ resistance activities. Most of the book is concerned with the characters’ sex lives, but not in a graphic way, which might have been more interesting. Sandemose goes off into unnecessary digressions involving minor characters and treads water with dream sequences, strange pointless anecdotes, and quotations of poetry that don’t contribute much to the plot. The last ten percent of the book is actually very good, but one wishes the reader didn’t have to wade through so much needless excess to get there. Despite being published in 1958, Werewolf reads as if it might have been written within the past few years. One the one hand, it feels very contemporary in its open-minded liberalism, but on the other hand, it displays a propensity for self-indulgence common to many of today’s literary figures.

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