Location: Cremated, Ashes buried at his home, Nørholm, Grimstad, Aust-Agder, Norway
Photo taken by: Friman
Buy books by Knut Hamsun
Norwegian author. Awarded the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature for his monumental work, Growth of the Soil.
Hamsun’s childhood was one of poverty. Aged seventeen he became apprentice to a rope maker, this is also when he first started writing. In 1909 he married Marie Anderson and the couple brought Nørholm, a run down house, where Hamsun could write undisturbed.
Hamsum’s work first became popular in 1890 when Hunger was published. It is semi-autobiographical and tells the story of how a writer nearly goes mad because of hunger and poverty.
During the First and Second World Wars he was a supporter of Germany. He met both Goebbels and Hitler, and even sent Goebbels his Nobel Prize medal as a gift. At the end of the Second World War he spent some time in a psychiatric hospital where he was found to have impaired mental abilities. Because of this charges of treason were dropped and he was cleared of direct Nazi association; this still remains a much debated issue in Norway.
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