O. E. Rølvaag: The Norwegian Novelist Norway Read in the Wrong Order

In the autumn of 1924, the critic Kristian Elster reviewed a new Norwegian novel in Aftenposten, praised its epic force, and then admitted he knew nothing of the author's earlier work. That author, Ole Edvart Rølvaag, was forty-eight years old and had already published five books. Not one of them had appeared in Norway.

Rølvaag (1876–1931) was born on the island of Dønna in Helgeland and fished in Lofoten from the age of fourteen. In 1896 an uncle sent him a ticket to America. He worked as a farmhand in South Dakota, studied at Augustana Academy and St. Olaf College, and ended up as professor of Norwegian at St. Olaf in Northfield, Minnesota, where he stayed until his death on 5 November 1931. He wrote in Norwegian, for Norwegian Americans, and his early books, among them Amerika-breve (1912), Paa glemte veie (1914), To tullinger (1920) and Længselens baat (1921), were all published by Augsburg Publishing House in Minneapolis.

Norway finally met him through the prairie novels: I de dage (1924), Riket grundlægges (1925) and Peder Seier (1928). English readers know the first two as one book, Giants in the Earth (1927). That difference matters more than it sounds. Norwegians got the story of Per Hansa and Beret in two instalments a year apart, and the first instalment ends at Christmas, with a baptism at the kitchen table and Per Hansa in high spirits. Read alone, it is a novel of victory. Per Hansa's death in the snowstorm, staring west, only came the following year, and some critics went on reading the tragedy through the cheerful first book.

The opening line is one of the most memorable in Norwegian-American writing: the grass on the Dakota prairie whispering "Tisj-ah, tisj-ah," as it always had and always would. Where Per Hansa sees a kingdom to build, his wife Beret sees a land with nothing to hide behind. That split between the man who goes forward and the woman who looks back is what keeps the books alive.

Why call him forgotten? Because in Norway he has been known for one trilogy, cut loose from the Minneapolis novels that came before it. In Længselens baat a Nordland fisherman, Jo, rows out towards the western sky looking for the son who left for Minneapolis, and never comes back. Read beside the prairie novels, it shows that Rølvaag's real subject was always loss: the West that takes the children and then the fathers.

Ravn has now published six of Rølvaag's novels in editions based on the originals, so the Minneapolis books can be read alongside the trilogy for the first time. The full essay, with the 1920s reviews, is here: O. E. Rølvaag: The Fathers Who Gazed Westward. A good place to start is The Boat of Longing, followed by In Those Days.