Images of 19th century Sweden and Norway in the works Gösta Berling’s Saga by Selma Lagerlöf and Children of the Age by Knut Hamsun

Abstract

The present paper tries to depict how Sweden and Norway were represented in the novels Gösta Berling’s Saga (1891) and Children of the Age (1913) written by the two Scandinavian Nobel Prize laureates, Selma Lagerlöf and Knut Hamsun, respectively. We will especially focus on the regions Värmland (in west central Sweden) and Nordland (in northern Norway). These two counties represent in fact the areas where Lagerlöf and Hamsun grew up and which they knew very well. Lagerlöf’s story renders an area of mansion houses and ironworks from 1820, while Hamsun’s novel dealing with the Segelfoss estate at a moment around 1870 depicts a society in change from old practices to modern times. Despite some supernatural elements in Gösta Berling’s Saga, the two novels contribute to a geographical, social and economic identification with the regions under consideration. We thus find ourselves in front of two concentrated areas which resemble the real ones although the writing style of the authors is quite different, namely a neo-romantic way of writing with Lagerlöf versus Norwegian new realism with Hamsun.