Abstract
This chapter offers a critical and ground-breaking approach to Norwegian Nobel-Prize laureate Knut Hamsun, with a special focus on his 1917 novel Markens grøde (Growth of the Soil). Grounded in indigenous methodologies, including an indigenist Sámi approach to place and narrative, the authors discuss not only how Hamsun’s novel reinforces the rhetoric of colonial discourse, but also how the multicultural, multilingual context of Hábmer (Hamarøy), where the author grew up, informs his narrative and linguistic style. As the relationship of text to place and the Sámi to Hamsun is discussed, the authors develop a collaborative, place-based methodology grounded in Sámi knowledge practices and explore new ways of conducting research in an indigenized academy. They also conclude that Hamsun’s alleged modernistic style was partially, and more substantially than has been acknowledged, due to the Sámi presence in his home region.
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Jernsletten, K., Storfjell, T. (2017). Re-reading Knut Hamsun in Collaboration with Place in Lule Sámi Nordlándda. In: Körber, LA., MacKenzie, S., Westerståhl Stenport, A. (eds) Arctic Environmental Modernities. Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39116-8_6
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