From myth to reality
We have to go back to the time when inscriptions were engraved in the stone, so deeply that we are lucky enough to be able to discern them even if their meaning escapes us in part. It was luck, again, that led to the discovery of the Eggja stone in 1917, during agricultural work on the farm, located in the municipality of Sogndal, which gave it its name. Dating back to the 8th century, the inscription on the stone - the longest known in Old Futhark, at almost 200 runes - is still open to many interpretations, but the curious will be able to compare it with other runic texts listed in the Rundata database created online in 1993 by the Swedish University of Uppsala. A century later, the man who is considered the first Norwegian writer did not only leave his mark on literary memory, he was also elevated to the rank of deity by inspiring, it is said, the figure of Bragi, son of Odin and god of poetry. In any case, Bragi Boddason is the oldest "scalde" (poet) whose texts have come down to us, the most famous being his poem Ragnarsdrápa dedicated to Ragnar Lodbrók, the Scandinavian king - mythical or historical - who came to power around 750. While court poets, such as Hornklofi in the 9th century or Eyvindr Skáldaspillir in the 10th century, wrote in praise of their sovereigns, others traced back the generations, mixing epics and mythological tales. The "royal sagas" include at least theYnglingatal (" The Counting of the Ynglingar ") and the Haustlöng (" Autumn Length ") of Thjódólf of Hvínir, theÁgrip af Nóregskonungasögum (12th century), the legendary Saga of St. Olaf (12th century, but based on an earlier text now lost) and, finally, the Fagrskinna (13th century). The Icelandic poet and intellectual Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241) collected some of these founding texts, those concerning the Kings of Norway were compiled in the so-called Heimskringla saga.
This Middle Ages proved to be decidedly abundant, as seems to be confirmed by the good reception of the Hirdskraa, a collection of laws governing the "hird", a sort of informal royal guard, which could nevertheless have seemed abstruse. It is especially the number of texts written by religious people which does not cease to progress, Christianity has indeed progressively conquered Norway from the end of the eleventh century, which moreover will gradually sound the death knell of the ancient beliefs. Nevertheless, theHistoria Norwegiæ by the priest-savant Sæmundr Sigfússon (1056-1133), who himself became a legendary figure later appearing in various tales, contains a rare description of a shamanic ceremony performed by the Sami, the indigenous people of the Far North. His chronology of Norwegian kings certainly inspired the Benedictine monk Theodoricus Monachus in his own work.
More spiritual, in a way at the crossroads between the old world and the new, the Draumkvæde describes the mystical visions of Olav Asteson during thirteen nights from Christmas to Epiphany. This reverie, which is estimated to have originated around 1200 in Telemark County, was not set down in writing until the 19th century by Rudolf Steiner (to be discovered in French by Editions Anthroposophiques Romandes under the title Messages de Noël), demonstrating the importance and durability of oral tradition. Finally, The Royal Mirror (circa 1250) is considered the founding text of Norwegian literature. This work, anonymous but sometimes attributed to Einar Gunnarsson, archbishop of Nidaros, is written in the form of a dialogue between a father and his son, it contains the fabulous sum of knowledge of the time, while giving a precious description of it. Esprit ouvert published a French translation in 1997. The effervescence, the national identity and even the language were, however, doomed to wither painfully for many centuries, as Norway fell under the domination of Denmark at the end of the 14th century.
The Renaissance
In the 16th century, a few rare texts evoke daily life, such as the Diary kept by pastor Absalon Perderssøn Beyer from 1552 to 1572, but the fact that he eventually abandoned Latin in favor of Danish is undoubtedly an admission of his abandonment in the face of the yoke weighing down Norway. This same melancholy can be found in the works of Peder Claussøn Friis (1545-1614), also a man of faith, who translated the Heimskringla into Danish and set about describing his country, as closely as possible to its geography and customs, in Norrigis Bescriffuelse. He may have been hoping for a national revival, but he did not seek to have his works published during his lifetime, contenting himself with distributing copies to a privileged few who, fortunately, were able to preserve them. While it is notable that, for the first time, a woman was able to make a living from her writing, and that Siælens Sang-Offer continued to be republished, it is interesting to note that Dorothe Engelbretsdotter (1634-1716) was criticized for her excessive use of the dialect of her native Bergen, a criticism also levelled at Absalon Perderssøn Beyer. Petter Dass (c.1647-1707) cleverly violated this prohibition by evoking in La Trompette de Nordland - his verse description of the northern region that was to become his most famous work - several hundred species, both animal and plant, for which Danish lacked the appropriate vocabulary, so rigor justified violating the required purity!
The truth is, little by little, writers are becoming less and less conciliatory. Although this was not quite the case with Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754), who was born in Bergen but lived in Copenhagen for most of his life, he did display a certain irony when he portrayed the society in which he lived, in the pure tradition of Molière. It can be read in French at Éditions théâtrales and Belles lettres(Trois comédies: Jeppe du Mont, L'Homme affairé, L'Heureux naufrage). Joseph Herman Wessel (1742-1785) followed more or less the same geographical and intellectual path, with one difference: in Copenhagen, he assiduously frequented the Norwegian Society founded there in 1772. This private circle, in which a few nationalist ideas were certainly fermenting, closed in 1813, at the dawn of a major change: in 1814, Norway was ceded to Sweden, which granted it relative autonomy until 1905, when it finally regained its independence.
No one embodied the awakening of Norwegian literature more than Henrik Wergeland (1808-1845), whose ardor heralded the patriotic romanticism that would prevail for three decades after his death. His temperament didn't win him many friends during his short life, but nobody can deny his influence, especially on the language, which, after being suffocated by Danish, had to reinvent itself, which it did in two forms: Bokmål, derived from Riksmål (Dano-Norwegian), and Nynorsk, derived from Landsmål (a rural dialect). The latter would not have been possible without Ivar Aasen, a wandering linguist who published a Grammar of the Norwegian Folk Language in 1848. Today, although Bokmål has a majority of 85%, both languages have official status.
The "Big Four
Whether by chance or by sign, in the space of 20 years, four major writers were born, including a Nobel Prize winner. The first, and most famous in our latitudes, Henrik Ibsen, was born in Skien in 1828. His career was fraught with setbacks, rejection and disappointment, and he came close to alcoholism and dismissal from the theater he directed. It was his departure for Italy in 1864 that finally proved to be his salvation, undoubtedly providing him with the distance he needed to finally practice social criticism, a focus he would never abandon, and one that earned him his reputation. Many of his plays are still performed on French stages - Une maison de poupée, Peer Gynt, Le Canard sauvage and Hedda Gabler - to name only the most famous. The second, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, born in 1832, is more complicated to discover in our language, although the Belles Lettres catalog offers Au-delà des forces: I & II, two oppressive plays that denounce the excesses of mysticism and economic violence, and are fairly representative of the "National Poet", who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1903, and who was strongly involved in political issues. The rare translated texts by Jonas Lie (1833-1908) are now out of print(Trolls, La Famille de Gilje), yet they had the dual interest of evoking rural life and preserving the memory of traditional tales. Finally, still in the (fiercely) realist vein, Alexander Kielland's novels(Les Aventures des Worse: Garman et Worse, Le Capitaine Worde, éditions des Belles Lettres) offered an acerbic critique of the political and religious pillars on which the town of Stavanger, where he was born in 1849, rested.
This family portrait would not be complete without Knut Hamsun (1859-1952), for even if his style moves away from the naturalist movement towards modernism and even post-romanticism, his novel La Faim (Le Livre de poche) is quite simply a masterpiece, and in part won him the Nobel Prize in 1920. This semi-autobiographical text, which portrays a man on the brink of a precipice, is in fact a precursor of the "stream of consciousness" later explored by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Awarded the prestigious Swedish prize in 1928, Sigrid Undset moved to the opposite end of the spectrum, abandoning the individualistic approach in favor of a commitment, first and foremost to her family, but also to politics, as a symbol of her own resistance during the Second World War. In 2022, Editions Cambourakis published Jenny, giving an overview of her eclectic oeuvre. Among her contemporaries, we should mention Cora Sandel, who is undoubtedly a little more feminist(Alberte & la liberté, Presses universitaires de Caen), novelist and short-story writer Arthur Omre, who pioneered the roman noir genre by evoking his own experience as a bootlegger in the days of alcohol prohibition, and poet Claes Gill(Les Imperfections de la vie, éditions de La Différence), the libertarian Jens Bjørneboe (L'Instant de la liberté, Plein chant éditeur), and above all Tarjei Vesaas (1897-1970), who explored all literary trends and whose work has been revived in France thanks in particular to three independent publishers: Cambourakis(Les Oiseaux, Nuit de printemps), L'Œil d'or(L'Incendie) and La Barque(Ultimatum, Vie auprès du courant).
Norwegian literature continues to be prolific and innovative at an astonishing rate. For example, Gunnar Staalesen has added a historical touch to the detective story in his six-volume, uncompromising social epic, Le Roman de Bergen (The Novel of Bergen), which takes his hometown as its setting and the 20th century as its backdrop. Literature also allows itself a quasi-sociological, even autobiographical approach, if we consider the tidal wave caused by Mon Combat (also in six volumes) by the unclassifiable Karl Ove Knausgård, born in 1968 in Oslo. Well-represented in France, the works of Dag Solstad(T. Singer, published by Noir sur Blanc), Per Petterson (Gallimard), Jostein Gaarder (including his philosophical bestseller Le Monde de Sophie) and Herbjørg Wassmo and his unmissable Livre de Dina (published by 10-18) are also easy to pick up. In 2023, the Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded to Norwegian playwright and novelist Jon Fosse, published in France by l'Arche and Bourgois.
