Danish Author Research Articles

Når den fortalte historie går op i limningen

Jonas Holst: “When the Historical Told Tale Falls Apart – On Peter Seeberg’s Literary Documentarism”
 The article offers a study of the ways in which the Danish author Peter Seeberg employs historical material and genres in his literary texts. Seeberg makes use of a variety of genres and anachronisms to create splits in historical time so that other forms of temporality come to the fore, especially humans’ own existentially experienced time as finite beings and eternal time on a cosmological scale.

Public-private collaboration and scientific impact: An analysis based on Danish publication data for 1995–2013

Abstract In the past few decades, there has been increasing interest in public-private collaboration, which has motivated lengthy discussion of the implications of collaboration in general, and co-authorship in particular, for the scientific impact of research. However, despite this strong interest in the topic, there is little systematic knowledge on the relation between public-private collaboration and citation impact. This paper examines the citation impact of papers involving public-private collaboration in comparison with academic research papers. We examine the role of a variety of factors, such as international collaboration, the number of co-authors, academic disciplines, and whether the research is mainly basic or applied. We first examine citation impact for a comprehensive dataset covering all Web of Science journal articles with at least one Danish author in the period 1995–2013. Thereafter, we examine whether citation impact for individual researchers differs when collaborating with industry compared to work only involving academic researchers, by looking at a fixed group of researchers that have both engaged in public-private collaborations and university-only publications. For national collaboration papers, we find no significant difference in citation impact for public-only and public-private collaborations. For international collaboration, we observe much higher citation impact for papers involving public-private collaboration.

Danske forfatterarkiver og dialogen mellem lokalitet, samling, registrering og forskning

Lotte Thyrring Andersen: Danish Author Archives and the Dialogue between Location, Collection, Cataloguing and Research
 This article concerns Danish author archives and the dialogue between location, collection, cataloguing and research. The starting point of the article is my longstanding work with author archives that have not been submitted to the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen: The Thøger Larsen Collection at Lemvig Museum, Peter Seeberg’s archive at Hald Hovedgaard and Jens Kruuse’s archive at the Royal Danish Library in Aarhus. The focus of the presentation is aspects of my research and collection experience, and some of the research in which I have been engaged. The article examines the significance of the location of an author archive and the understanding of a body of work, based on the Thøger Larsen Collection at Lemvig Museum. It also examines the relationship between collection, cataloguing and research on the basis of Peter Seeberg’s archive, where the experience gathered concerning the cataloguing of a specific author archive is examined in order to shed light on the practical nature of the work and the research opportunities that cataloguing can present. Finally, the article examines the literary history perspectives that can be derived from the use of author archives, and the potential significance of researcher networks and focus areas for the use of archives. On the basis of Jens Kruuse’s archive at the Royal Danish Library in Aarhus, the article shows that letters can be included as specific voices that contradict, expand on, sharpen and refine the generally accepted and adopted ideas about certain authors and their role in society. New lines of connection emerge, and the view of the period changes and is enriched. Research thus stimulates interest in an author’s archive by utilising the collection’s knowledge and acknowledgements in new representations and perceptions of the author. At the same time, the author archive contributes materials that promote research and the publications within an area. This presupposes that the archive is well-organised and catalogued, to ensure simple and easy access for the user.

Revolution Sunday by Wendy Guerra

A Blade of Grass: New Palestinian Poetry Ed. Naomi Foyle Smokestack Books Published in mirrored English and Arabic, this new collection brings together voices as diverse as the experiences of the Palestinians who created them. Whether the poetry comes from the pen of those who are currently imprisoned for their artistic resistance or those who have found themselves far from their roots through the Palestinian diaspora, the starting point of identity serves to launch each individual author in a unique direction in terms of both form and content. Inger Christensen The Condition of Secrecy Trans. Susanna Nied New Directions From Danish author and poet (as well as winner of the Nordic Author’s Prize) Inger Christensen comes this collection of essays spanning topics from the autobiographical to the universal. Fans of Christensen’s formalist style will be intrigued by her explanations of her creative process and inspirations, but even those who have never heard of her will find much to glean from her stories of schooling under Nazism and coming of age with the Cold War. seems to belong to the author. Ranging from three lines to two pages in length, these chapters loosely connect without ever forming a coherent plot. “And Then My Dog Will Come Back to Me” is the collection’s longest, second earliest, and clearly most impressive piece of prose. It recounts a man in rural Norway who murders (or not) his neighbor for having killed (or not) his dog. As his stream of consciousness progresses, we begin to notice inconsistences in the narrator's thoughts, and with the clarity of his mind slipping, the reality of recounted events becomes increasingly blurry. The buildup of tension and its slow dissolution in the fog of the narrator’s mind is carried out masterfully. Regrettably, on the opposite end of the spectrum, one must list the 2013 story “Dreamt in Stone.” Thankfully much shorter than the collection’s better pieces of fiction , it might be best to let it speak for itself: “And then you say. And then there was someone who said something to me and I tried to get up but I couldn’t, and then there was someone who helped me get up. And then I stood there. And then I opened a door. And then I went in the door and shut it behind me. And then, you say. And I say that I don’t remember anything and then I remember that I woke up and I was lying inside on the floor. I got up. I was standing. I walked.” Simplicity of language carries much of Fosse’s stories in this collection, but he has tragically taken simplicity of style too far in some of his writing. Despite their varying quality, we do find glimpses of skill and innovation in all of Scenes from a Childhood’s stories. Still, from this collection alone, it remains difficult to comprehend why people are pushing Fosse as a contender for the Nobel Prize. Felix Haas Zurich, Switzerland Wendy Guerra Revolution Sunday Trans. Achy Obejas. Brooklyn. Melville House. 2018. 208 pages. Betrayal, at all levels, is the essence of Revolution Sunday by Wendy Guerra. Cloe, a novelist and poet, is betrayed at all levels, from all directions. Betrayed by the people she loves: her mother, her housekeeper, Márgara, and her lovers. Betrayed by her neighbors who spy on her and report her movements and activities to the authorities. Finally, in an ironic twist, she is betrayed by Cuba, her home, her raison d’être, her heart: “without Cuba I don’t exist. I am my island.” Cleo, the narrator of Revolution Sunday , lives in her family home in a disintegrating Havana, the capital of an equally disintegrating Cuba. She is a passive victim of constant surveillance, control, and dictator-approved abuse. She is surrounded by people who protect themselves from the authorities by spying on her (and everyone else) and reporting their discoveries to the police, who visit her home on a regular basis, taking with them, when they leave, her work, her photographs, her computers, and anything else that they might use to prove that she is a dissident. Yet she stays in the...

Illness and heroics: On counter-narrative and counter‑metaphor in the discourse on cancer

AbstractThis article explores the nexus between narrative and metaphor by examining a specific and widespread metaphor in the discourse on cancer, namely “the war against cancer”, and paying attention to the function it has in the narratives we tell about cancer – personally as well as culturally and politically. Of special interest is how this dominant metaphor has a negative consequence in relation to the seriously and incurably ill, who are necessarily positioned as ‘losers’. The concepts of master and counter-narrative are applied to describe this and show how the war metaphor can be generatively turned against itself and function as the basis for counter-narratives of being ill. In the final part of the article, attention is paid to Danish author Maria Gerhardt’s autofictional novelTransfervindue. Fortællinger om de raskes fejl(2017) [Transfer Window: Narratives about the flaws of the healthy] as an example of a productive extension of the war metaphor. The general aim is to argue that the ‘war against cancer’ metaphor is complex and simultaneously plays a positive and negative role in health discourse. On the one hand, it structures the general effort for treatment of and research on cancer. On the other hand, it positions the incurable as losers. It is, however, argued that we cannot eradicate this metaphor from language, and that we should instead find examples of extensions of the metaphor where e. g. ‘protection’, ‘peace-keeping’ and ‘exile’ are active.

Áhrif Royaumont-málþingsins 1959 á íslenskt námsefni í stærðfræði fyrir börn

Málþing var haldið árið 1959 í Royaumont, Frakklandi, um nýja hugsun um skólastærðfræði. Royaumont-málþingið olli nokkrum straumhvörfum í hugsun um skólastærðfræði og rannsóknum á því sviði. Nýjar hugmyndir um skólastærðfræði, sem ræddar voru þar, voru nefndar nýja stærðfræðin, New Math, og tengdust hreyfingu, kenndri við Bourbaki, um endurskoðun á framsetningu stærðfræði með nútímalegum hætti, mathematique moderne. Í kjölfar málþingsins var tekið upp norrænt samstarf um greiningu á stöðu stærðfræðimenntunar á Norðurlöndum, námskrárgerð og samningu kennslubóka í tilraunaskyni. Stofnuð var nefnd, Nordiska kommittén för modernisering av matematikundervisningen, NKMM, sem stóð fyrir vinnu að verkinu á árunum 1960–1967. Megináhersla norrænu nefndarinnar var á námsefni fyrir 7 –12. bekk og ætlunin var að efnið yrði hægt að þýða og staðfæra í hverju landi fyrir sig. Einnig voru ráðnir sérfræðingar um námsefni 1.–6. bekkjar. Danskur höfundur, Agnete Bundgaard, og finnsk samstarfskona hennar, Eeva Kyttä, voru ráðnar til að rita kennslubókaflokk fyrir tvö fyrstu árin frá sjö ára aldri og Agnete Bundgaard ritaði ein kennslubækur fyrir næstu fjögur aldursstig. Flokkurinn var þýddur á íslensku frá og með 1966.Kennslubókaflokkur þessi, sem oft er nefndur Bundgaard-námsefnið, er greindur með tilliti til tillagna, sem settar voru fram á Royaumont-málþinginu um námsefni í stærðfræði fyrir barnaskóla, og borinn saman við eldra og yngra námsefni.Niðurstöður sýna að áhrif tillagna, sem kynntar voru á málþinginu, um að leggja áherslu á formgerð talnakerfisins og setja efnið fram með hjálp mengjafræðilegra hugtaka, voru mikil en dvínuðu smám saman í síðari kennslubókum. Framsetning á tölum og talnakerfi byggðum á frumtölum og deilanleika gekk í endurnýjun lífdaga í íslenskri skólastærðfræði, ásamt nálgun (e. approximation) og mati (e. estimation). Enn fremur komu síðar fram nýir efnisþættir sem ræddir voru í Royaumont, til dæmis tölfræði og líkindareikningur.

Hjelmslev, la sémiotique et l’École de Paris

Abstract An initial appraisal of the contribution of Hjelmslevian theory to the structuring of French semiotics was made during an interview with A-J. Greimas in 1986. Thirty years later, this article draws a more complete picture of Louis Hjelmslev’s contribution to the semiotics of the School of Paris. Starting with a lexical mapping of Hjelmslev’s legacy, we focus on the definition of semiotics. According to the Prolégomènes of Hjelmslev, the first volume of the Dictionary of Greimas and Courtés gives the definition of semiotics as a “hierarchy of relationships.” A historical investigation reveals, however, a lack of certainty about which exact place should be given to participative oppositions. Considering both the early writings of the Danish author as well as the developments in tensive theory, an alternative definition seems essential. In the hierarchy of relationships (particular and qualitative), this definition incorporates other modes of meaning, specifically the participative network of relationships. According to Hjelmslev’s categorization of cases, such integration reconciles logical and pre-logical orientations. Ultimately, this definition is the closest to the logic of hypertexual writing, to language and being.

Motivet der blev væk for litteraturteorien

The article argues that classical concepts in literary theory such as “motif” and “theme” have been undertheorized in recent decades. They have been taken for granted as “ordinary language”-vocabulary in no need of conceptual clarification. But the dimension of content in a literary text cannot be sufficiently theorized without precise definitions of “motif” and “theme”. The article claims that the theme is always an abstract concept, an idea, extrapolated from the text by its interpreter, whereas the motif presents itself in the text as an observable constellation between mimetic elements from the human life world that can be traced with variations through multiple texts or other fictional modes. The motif can be more or less specified and will always be located somewhere on a continuum between the abstract theme and the individual text. The article then tries to enrich this understanding of the motif by confronting it with the textual theories of Paul Ricoeur and James Phelan. It is furthermore discussed whether the critique of ideology in the Marxist years played a role in the marginalization of the motif. The relevance of the reconstructed concept is finally demonstrated in an outline of an analytical approach to three novels (The “Hvium”-trilogy) by the Danish author Ida Jessen and it is concluded that this type of approach enables observations that would have been less obvious entering the textual universes on higher or lower levels than the motif being always in between the theme and the text.

The Northern Front Imagined: Defending Denmark in Emil Bønnelycke's Spartanerne (1919)

In late October 1919 the Danish author Emil Bønnelycke published a highly ambitious war novel, Spartanerne (The Spartans), in which he merged the war experiences of a Spartan soldier of the Antique world, a soldier fighting in the trenches of the First World War, and that of a young Danish recruit being trained for war. The three different war experiences mirror each other in this modernist novel that makes use of chronological jump cutting à la D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) and imagines Denmark being drawn into the world war that had ended scarcely a year before the time of the novel's publication.

Beundring og opposisjon. Forholdet mellom Knut Hamsun og Johannes V. Jensen

AbstractIn this article, I will discuss Knut Hamsun’s connection to the Danish capital Copenhagen, and his lifelong acquaintance with the famous Danish author, Johannes V. Jensen. By the end of the 19th century, Copenhagen was the cultural capital of the Nordic countries. Together with many other eminent Nordic artists, Knut Hamsun spent considerable time in Copenhagen and experienced personal and professional growth during his stays there. Johannes V. Jensen and Hamsun knew each other for years and held each other in high esteem, yet their acquaintance was marked by both fascination and critique. Johannes V. Jensen, in particular, had mixed feelings and opinions about Hamsun. This article focusses on the similarities and differences between Knut Hamsun and Johannes V. Jensen, and discusses how an initially shared value system could lead them in two opposite political directions.

Scenes: Two Lines Press

Scenes:Two Lines Press CJ Evans Could you briefly describe your press's history? We started Two Lines Press in 2013, although the press grew out of the journal Two Lines: World Writing in Translation, which has been publishing continually since 1994. Both the press and the journal are programs of the Center for the Art of Translation, and our main focus is to publish the best international literature in the best translations. The founder of the journal, Olivia Sears, wanted to use the journal to highlight the artistry of translation, something that, at the time, was even more invisible than it is today. In the nineties very few books even listed the translator's name on the copyright page, let alone the cover. It continues to be a challenge that when reading a great book from abroad it's easy to acknowledge the author, and the translation only gets noted when it's really bad. We want to recognize the translator's role in making those books great in English as we, at the same time, celebrate the original work. And I do think we're making progress, though slowly, toward diminishing that invisibility. Click for larger view View full resolution How would you characterize the work you publish? We're most interested in the language of the books, in inventive sentence structure, imagery, and thinking, which is one of the reasons I place so much importance on the translation. Beyond that, we very specifically rule nothing out. We've done everything from Marie NDiaye's Self-Portrait in Green (2014), a hundred-page memoir in which the memoirist lives in a world that she can't make sense of and who might not be a reliable narrator of her own life, to Lidija Dimkovska's A Spare Life (2016), a five hundred page family novel about conjoined twins in Macedonia who are also an extended metaphor for the breakup of Yugoslavia. We're just looking for things that are unique, but that we can imagine an American audience for. Once I've decided I like a book, I usually ask myself if there's an audience for an American author who might also like that book. For example, I think the readers of Lorrie Moore would really like the Danish author Naja Marie Aidt—even though they are very different authors, the examinations of internal conflict feel similar. Beyond that it's really just what grabs us—what we want to spend an entire year editing, producing, and marketing. Click for larger view View full resolution Who is your audience, and in what ways are you trying to reach them? This is something we talk about a lot. We have a 'primary' audience we've built, which are mostly people who are invested readers of international literature in translation, have been readers of our journal for many years, or are subscribers to the press. We love those readers, and they are the core audience for what we do. For each book, though, we also try to identify the audience for that specific book that's bigger. We send galleys of books to all the major review outlets, but we also try to find reviewers we think would respond to a specific book based on the books they've liked in the past. We do a lot of direct outreach online, and if we have an author or translator in the US we do book tours. Since we're a smaller publisher our best friends are independent bookstores, and we try to reach out to the booksellers as much as we can, since the very best people to find readers for our books are the people standing behind the counter of the local bookstore recommending it to their customers. I don't think you can go into publishing hoping one of your books is going to break big. Publishing requires working hard on every single book to find the audience for that book, but also just making sure you're out there, finding new readers year after year. We don't have any illusions that our books are going to be picked for Oprah's book club, but there...

“Plant ikke Upas-Træet om vor Bolig”: Colonial Haunting, Race, and Interracial Marriage in Hans Christian Andersen’s Mulatten (1840)

In Hans Christian Andersen's (1805-1875) play Mulatten (The Mulatto) from 1840, Eleonore, the Euro-Caribbean wife of a wealthy sugar planter on Martinique named La Rebelliere, begs her husband not to buy any more slaves because, as she says, they hate him: Du er forhadt! den Sortes Aftensbon Er den: at Du maa doe! Hans Drum er skjon, Naar Du fortvivlet bider i din Laebe! Hans Morgenbon er, Dig at kunne draebe! Plant ikke Upas-Traeet om vor Bolig, Det er hver Slave, og ved Dig! ved Dig! Vaer mere mild!--(fatter sig.) For Dig er jeg urolig. (Andersen 1878, 379) (You are hated! The black's evening prayer is this: that you might die! His dream is beautiful, when you bite your lip in despair! His morning prayer is to be able to kill you! Do not plant the upas tree by our home, it is every slave, and by you! By you! Be more gentle--[composes herself]. I am worried for you.) Eleonore's equation of buying and owning slaves to planting a upastr& (upas tree, Antitaris toxicaria) speaks to the disturbing and haunting effects that slavery and colonialism had on those who benefitted from them. For the upas tree is not just any tree. Not only does the word upas in Danish relate to upasselig or utilpas and upassende, meaning unwell or indisposed and inappropriate, but in 1840 as today, the upas tree also metaphorically signified a poisonous or harmful influence or institution. (3) The tree could, as the Danish author Adolph Meyer (Mei'r Aron Goldschmidt) wrote in his bitter first novel En Jode (1845; A Jew), poison and kill all hospitality (Goldschmidt 1896, 53). (4) But it could apparendy also, as in the quote above, signify waves of haunting hatred caused by slavery. Slavery planted a upas tree by the home of Eleonore's husband, a colonial planter on Martinique, but the poison from the tree could not be contained in the plantation colonies. Quite to the contrary, as historians and literary scholars of colonialism and empire have argued, European colonialism and imperialism did not only happen elsewhere, externally to European culture, identity, or literature (McClintock 1995,5). Colonial slavery impacted Europe and Europeans in a myriad of direct and indirect ways. Paleme, the mixed race leader of a group of runaway slaves, hv see also Ipsen 2015, 90-2). In 1840, the question of slavery was vigorously debated in the Danish capital. Slavery had been abolished in the British West Indies in 1833, and the Danish abolition movement, established in 1839, was provoking debate about the moral implications of racialized slavery (Bugge 2003, 57). …

The Little Match Girl in a Doll’s World! Hans Christian Andersen and Jean Renoir

Remediation into film of the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen’s many fairytales often accentuate his quaint or sentimental tendencies. In a silent film adaptation of “The Little Match Girl” the French filmmaker Jean Renoir transports us into an avant-garde world of consumerism and commodification that seems at odds with Andersen’s original vision. Yet Renoir’s film is remarkably resonant with Andersen’s own pre-cinematic imagination even as it produces a different inflection of the uncanny. The match girl is turned into a femme enfant fatale and her illuminated visions are redirected away from the comforts of home to a world of artifice and melodrama.

Fantastic Tales and Poetic Square Stories: Important Features in the Danish Author Louis Jensen’s Literature for Children

Fantastic Tales and Poetic Square Stories: Important Features in the Danish Author Louis Jensen’s Literature for Children

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Precious Play in Morten Søndergaard’s Ordapotek

After touching upon some theoretical aspects of play/game – text analogy, the article focuses on the manifestations of play in the project Wordpharmacy by the Danish author Morten Søndergaard, including its not problem-free relation to the image of the curious child at play.

Digitaliseret digtlæsning. Om nogle muligheder i internetbaseret litteraturformidling med Gustaf Munch-Petersens forfatterskab som eksempel

The article discusses the considerations behind the content and design of a test website dealing with the Danish author and artist Gustaf Munch-Petersen (1912-1938). The website, which can be visited at address http://www.kb.dk/proto/gmp/, is the result of a research and development project at the Royal Library, Copenhagen, the purpose of which is to examine various ideas for presenting Danish literature over the Internet which exploit that medium’s special characteristics. The medium bears within itself a number of opportunities, both for summarising an author’s production and for assisting the reader’s understanding of individual texts. The website tests certain of these opportunities on the basis of a specific author taking as target group the teachers and students of Danish in Danish upper secondary schools. Inspiration for the content and design of the website derives in part from an initial exploratory interview survey of this target group which aimed at uncovering their needs and desires relating to Danish literature on the Internet. The website is based on two main ideas, each of which in its own way seeks to facilitate the reader’s understanding and interpretation of the literature, namely thematisation and contextualisation. With regard to the former, eight theme lines have been drawn through Gustaf Munch-Petersen’s collected works. These are: “Emancipation and the clash of generations,” “Women and love,” “Bourgeoisie and the working class,” “Revolution,” “To be an artist,” “The primitive,” “Dreams and the unconscious” and “The mystical experience.” These theme lines give a general impression of important topics in the author’s work, and enable readers to concentrate their reading on one or more of them while offering certain hints for interpretation. With regard to the latter idea, the texts have been provided with various types of context: explanatory or perspectivecreating material in words or images. These cover explanations of words, a time line showing critical events in the author’s life, cultural life and contemporary society, Gustaf Munch-Petersen’s paintings and drawings, his letters and manuscripts, relevant quotations from other texts, and finally reviews and other press articles on the author. It is shown how thematisation and contextualisation on the website can contribute to what the reader can draw from Gustaf Munch-Petersen’s texts. This is done both by examining the course of one of the eight theme lines, “Women and love”, and by showing how the contexts can give rise to different interpretations in certain of the poems, taking “til en” and “det underste land” as the main examples. Finally future applications and ideas for future development of the website are discussed.

Ink: designing for performative literary interactions

In this article, we present the interactive literary installation Ink, an experimental installation displayed at the Roskilde library, and the Roskilde Festival, which is designed to prompt public reflection on the nature and role of digital literature. By manipulating three books embedded with sensors, and watching text visualized on a 55" screen, members of the public select from a range of predefined sentences, previously created by a Danish author, and stored in a database. Squeezing the books alters each poetic line by degrees. The final poems print onto a library receipt for their producers and upload to a blog for public viewing. We present (1) design challenges to an installation meant to persuade people to engage affectively with the ergodic nature of digital literature and (2) an in-depth analysis of the empirical findings from the installation studies at the Roskilde Festival. In particular, we highlight the broad, rich range of performative interactions facilitated by the interactive setup. This analysis examines the performative writing and reading achieved by the public through interaction with Ink and also with the resultant poems. From this exploration, we discuss general tendencies when designing affectively engaging literary interactions at the edge of art and design.

How to bring your daughter up to be a feminist killjoy: Shame, accountability and the necessity of paranoid reading in Lene Kaaberbøl’s The Shamer Chronicles

This article takes The Shamer Chronicles, the teenage fantasy series by the Danish author Lene Kaaberbøl, as an example of a queer feminist affect theoretical thought experiment. It shows how Kaaberbøl’s tetralogy allows us to link shame and paranoid/reparative reading with the figure of the feminist killjoy. The Chronicles can be read as a meditation on shame as a form of accountability and the shaming killjoy as a heroic figure who insists on paranoid vision as the precondition for reparative imagination. The article elaborates postcolonial criticisms of shame theories, showing how racialisation makes a difference in which forms of shame are marked as (un)acceptable. Rather than dismiss shame theories altogether, the article explores how such criticisms can be integrated into, and thus further qualify, a critical shame reading of The Chronicles.

Knut Hamsun as a Literary and Film Character

This article uses as a case study the historical-biographical drama film Hamsun (1996) in order to discuss the complications that arise when considering biographical films as adaptations of biographical and/or autobiographical works of literature. Hamsun by the Swedish director Jan Troell is an adaptation of the Danish author Thorkild Hansen’s documentary novel Processen mod Hamsun (The Trial of Hamsun, 1978), which in turn draws most extensively on the Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun’s own writings, primarily his autobiographical novel Paa gjengrodde Stier (On Overgrown Paths, 1949). Hansen, in telling the story of Hamsun’s life, concentrates on the events surrounding the Second World War and its aftermath in Norway. The focus is set on the court trial of 1945–1948 when Hamsun was accused of being a quisling and his mental state was seriously questioned not only by the court, but also the general public. Hansen in his novel interprets his extensive source material with a very clear intention of rehabilitating Hamsun as a great writer with a brilliant mind instead of considering him a traitor. It is Hamsun’s own perspective in Paa gjengrodde Stier that clearly lays the groundwork for Hansen’s portrait of the writer. However, Hamsun’s account of events is most selective: his often sharp and ironic descriptions of the present are combined with lyrical and philosophical reminiscences of the past, hardly providing the reader with any answers or explanations. The character Hamsun in Paa gjengrodde Stier seems to be a rather carefully constructed figure whose primary intent is to evoke the reader’s sympathy and to remind us of his status as a writer, an artist. The director Troell has said in several interviews that it was very important for him to use Hansen’s book as source material, but that he and his screenwriter Per Olov Enquist have included many other sources, among them Hamsun’s own Paa gjengrodde Stier. Viewing the film as an adaptation of Hansen’s book, one easily recognizes the connections to Hamsun’s own writings. An interesting question is whether or how the main character differs in each above-mentioned text. Naturally, the longer the period of time that separates the source material from the film adaptation, the more significant a role the changes that have occurred over time in social, political and ethical values play in our interpretation of depicted events. Hansen’s portrayal of Hamsun was very original and controversial in its time. However, the release of the film Hamsun to an international audience in 1996 reopened the debate of “Hamsun’s guilt”. Troell chose to focus on the drama of Hamsun’s personal life through the war and its after-effects. The image of an artist instead of a collaborator – similar to what Hamsun created of himself on the pages of Paa gjengrodde Stier – prevails in both the novel and its film adaptation.