Lars Hansen (writer)

Lars Hansen, ca.1905

Lars Georg Hansen (born January 8, 1869 in Molde , † July 20, 1944 in Oslo ) was a Norwegian writer .

Life

As a small child, at the age of two, Lars Hansen moved to Tromsø in northern Norway with his parents, a master plumber and the daughter of an Arctic fisherman . After graduating from school, he also completed an apprenticeship as a sheet metal worker and opened his own workshop. When the Arctic Ocean shipping boomed around 1905 , he decided to try his hand at shipping . He became a shareholder in several boats. After the First World War , however, the prices for fur and other products fell considerably, and Hansen also lost some of his boats to shipwreck or fire . Around 1920 he was therefore forced to give up his small shipping company and workshop.

In 1922 he emigrated - like many of his compatriots in previous decades - to the United States. On the west coast he took various odd jobs and worked as a fisherman, whaler, farmer and transieder . During this time, when he was well over 50 years old, the first stories and travel letters were written. When he returned to his homeland in Norway in 1925, he offered some of his stories to the prestigious publishing house Gyldendal Norsk Forlag for publication. A year later, in 1926, his first book, I Spitsbergens vold (title of the German translation: The white hell ; literally: In the power of Spitzbergens), was published, which contained two of these texts. The stories became a bestseller and encouraged their author to make writing a profession.

In the next few years - up to his death in 1944 - another 17 books were published in quick succession. Seven of them revolve around the motifs of whaling and seal hunting , which Hansen was the first author to introduce into Norwegian literature. Among them are the novels "Hvalrossen" av Tromsø ( Fight for Life ), De fem ishavsgaster ( The polar wind and the authorities ) and Beitsaren ( The biter ), each of which has been translated into German. In a rough, realistic style they tell of the physical strength of tough men who defy difficult weather conditions and the forces of nature. Together with his colleague Karl Holter , who first made a name for himself as an actor, he wrote the play Ishavsfolk ( Arctic Sea People or Bears ) in 1932, which was staged with great success at theaters in Oslo, Bergen and Tromsø. The play was also accepted by the public in National Socialist Germany, when a German version in the translation by cabaret artist and screenwriter Per Schwenzen reached many stages.

The other books by Hansen often deal with the coastal fishermen in Northern Norway in the years before 1900, i. H. at a time when the motor ships had not yet displaced the small wooden boats. You will receive descriptions of the hard life on board, portray originals in the port areas, but occasionally tend to romantic exaggeration. In the 1933 novel Kongen på Råsa ( The King of Raasa ), the protagonist, a local merchant, attaches great importance to being able to trace his family back to the Viking Age . Hansen's ideal is the self-sufficient society in pact with nature, which is led and protected by a strong patriarch , often an entrepreneur with business acumen in many fields. These anti-modern desires are mixed up in some books, such as B. in Bjørnar Bålk og hans slekt ( ... up to the third and fourth link ; 1932) blatantly racist undertones.

Hansen's last publications no longer had the freshness and originality of the first publications, but were lost in repetitions and clichés . In his memoirs , which appeared in 1937 and 1940, he wrote, among other things, about his years of wandering in the USA, but also expressed his disappointment that the literary critics had turned away from him.

Politically, he developed from a member of the liberal Venstre party to a supporter of the fascist Nasjonal Samling . Two of his most popular books ( The White Hell and In the Snow and Northern Lights ) appeared in German in a "front book trade edition" for the Wehrmacht . In 1941 he took part in the " European Poets' Meeting " organized by the Nazi German cultural propaganda in Weimar . His death before the end of World War II saved him from being expelled from the Norwegian Writers' Association. Today he is largely forgotten in his home country.

literature

Primary literature

• I Spitsbergens vold (1926)
• Jens Sørskar (1927)
• En havets søn (1928)
• “Hvalrossen” av Tromsø (1929)
• Forbannelsen (1930)
• Håkjerringkjeften (1931)
• Bjørnar Bålk and Hans Slekt (1932)
• Ishavsfolk (1932, with Karl Holter)
• Kongen på Råsa (1933)
• De fem ishavsgaster (1934)
• Keizerless (1935)
• I Sne og Nordlys (1936)
• På vivanke (1937)
• Storfossen (1938)
• Beitsaren (1939)
• Pegasus på flukt (1940)
• Skarvereiret (1942)
• Odin cleared it up (1944)

Translations

• The white hell [I Spitsbergens vold]. 2 stories. Translated from the Norwegian by Ernst Züchner. S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin 1928.
• Trömsöer monkfish [En havets søn]. Novel. Legitimate translation from Norwegian by Niels Hoyer. Schaffstein, Cologne on the Rhine 1929.
• Fight for life ["Hvalrossen" av Tromsø]. Novel. Legitimate translation from Norwegian by Niels Hoyer. Schaffstein, Cologne on the Rhine 1930.
• Bears (Arctic Ocean) [Ishavsfolk]. Play in three acts. Translated from Norwegian by Per Schwenzen. S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin 1933.
• In snow and northern lights [I Sne og Nordlys]. Nordic tales. Transferred from Åge Eskil Avenstrup. Rütten & Loening, Potsdam 1938.
• The King of Raasa [Kongen på Råsa]. Novel. Legitimate translation from Norwegian by Åge Eskil Avenstrup. Rütten & Loening, Potsdam 1940.
• The polar wind and the authorities [De fem ishavsgaster]. Novel. Only authorized transfer from Bernhard Schulze. Schünemann, Bremen 1939.
• The walker [Beitsaren]. An arctic sea novel. Authorized translation from Norwegian by Bernhard Schulze. Rütten & Loening, Potsdam 1941.
• ... to the third and fourth link [Bjørnar Bålk og hans slekt]. Translated from the Norwegian by Bernhard Schulze. Schünemann, Bremen 1943.
• The shark's mouth [Håkjerringkjeften]. Authorized translation from Norwegian by Bernhard Schulze. Dulk, Hamburg 1947.

Secondary literature

• Kaare Skagen: Lars Hansen and Nazisms. - In: Syn og Segn , H. 5, 1977.
• Nils Magne Knutsen, Lars Hansen . - In: Norsk Biografisk Leksikon .

Web links

• Article about Lars Hansen in Norsk krigsleksikon