Giants in the Earth by O. E. Rölvaag

First published:I de dage: Fortaēlling om Norske Nykommere i Amerika, 1924; I de dage: Riket grundlœgges, 1925 (English translation, 1927)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Regional

Time of plot: Late nineteenth century

Locale: The Dakotas

Principal characters

• Per Hansa, a Norwegian settler
• Beret, his wife
• Ole, ,
• Anna Marie, ,
• Hans Kristian, and
• Peder Victorious, their children

The Story:

Per Hansa moves all his family and his possessions from Minnesota into the Dakota Territory. His family consists of his wife, Beret, and three children, Ole, Anna Marie, and Hans Kristian. Beret is fearful and sad, for she has been uprooted too often and the prairie country through which they travel seems bleak, lonely, and savage.

Per Hansa stakes out his claim near the family of Hans Olsa at Spring Creek. Then Beret announces that she is carrying another child. Money is scarce. Per Hansa faces overwhelming odds, and thoughts of the great risks he is taking keep him awake long after Beret and the children sleep. Being something of a poet, Per Hansa thinks at times that the land speaks to him, and he often watches and listens and forgets to keep to his work as he clears his land and builds his house. He labors from before dawn until after dark during those long, northern summer days.

When Indians come and drive away the settlers’ cows, only Per Hansa has the courage to follow them. Only he has the sense to doctor a sick Indian. Beret mistrusts his wisdom and there are harsh words between them. The grateful Indian gives Per Hansa a pony. Then Per Hansa goes on a buying expedition and returns with many needed supplies and, what is more, news of coming settlers.

The next summer, Per Hansa discovers claim stakes that bear Irish names. The stakes are on his neighbor’s land; the homesteaders have settled where others have already filed a claim. Secretly he removes the stakes and burns them, but not before Beret realizes what he is doing. She begins to worry over her husband’s deed. Per Hansa sells some potatoes to people traveling through and awakens the slumbering jealousy of his neighbors.

In midsummer, more people arrive, the settlers who had set out the stakes that Per Hansa burned. They call the Norwegians claim jumpers, but after a fight, they take up other land nearby. Per Hansa manages to sell some of his goods to them. That fall, more Norwegians come. The little community is thriving. Beret, however, depressed by the open spaces and her fear that her husband has done a bad thing, brews a dark remorse within herself. Day by day, she broods over her lonely life, and she covers her window at night because of her nameless fears. At least Per Hansa, on his infrequent trips around to different settlements, meets other people.

When winter comes, Per Hansa rests. He can sleep long hours while the winds blow outside, but his wife worries and frets. He begins to quarrel with her. Soon, however, he notices that his neighbors are suffering hardship and privation. The unmarried young men who settled near the Hansas are planning to desert the settlement. It requires all his ability to convince them to stay and to face the desolate, bitter winter to its end. The settlers begin to talk of a school that will move from house to house so that the parents might learn English along with the children.

During the winter, Per Hansa becomes lost in a blizzard, and only his tremendous strength and courage sees him and his oxen safely through the storm to the Tronders’ settlement. The following day, forgetting how Beret must be worrying about him, he stays on and cuts a load of wood to take back home with him. His next expedition is to bargain with the Indians for furs. He suffers greatly from exposure and loses two toes through frostbite.

When spring comes, Per Hansa cannot wait to get into his fields to plant his wheat. His friends think he is planting too early, and so it seems, for snow falls the next day and freezing weather sets in. Determined not to lose heart, Per Hansa decides to plant potatoes in place of the wheat. Beret takes to her Bible, convinced that evil is working its way into their lives. Then, unexpectedly, their wheat comes up.

Another couple arrives. They are exhausted with travel, the wife saddened by the death of her son on the prairie. Per Hansa and Beret take them in. When they move on, greater despondency seizes Beret. She feels some doom is working its way closer and closer to her life.

That summer, grasshoppers destroy much of the grain. Most of Per Hansa’s crop is saved, but Beret takes his good fortune only as a sign that the underground trolls, or evil spirits, are planning greater ruin for her and her husband.

In the following years, the scourge of the grasshoppers returns. Many of the settlers are ruined. Some starve; some go mad. One summer, a traveling Norwegian minister takes up residence with them to plan a religious service for the whole community. His coming works a change in Per Hansa’s household. Per Hansa takes courage from it and consolation, but the reveries in Beret’s mind grow deeper and stranger. Because it is the largest house in the district, the minister holds a communion service in Per Hansa’s cabin. Disconnected parts of the service float all that week in Beret’s head. Her mind is filled with strange fancies. She begins to think of Peder Victorious, her youngest child, who was born on the prairie, as a savior who will work their salvation. As autumn approaches, the great plains seem hungry for the blood and strength of those who have come to conquer them.

That winter, Hans Olsa freezes his legs and one hand. In spite of all that Per Hansa and the others do for their neighbor, Hans Olsa grows weaker. Beret stands beside him, predicting that he has not long to live. She puts into the sick man’s mind the idea to send for the minister. Per Hansa thinks that Hans Olsa is weak in calling for a minister and that the way to throw off illness is to get out of bed and go to work. He has never spared himself nor has he spared his sons. He is the man able to go for the minister, but this time, he is unwilling to set out on a long winter journey. Hans Olsa is a good man; he does not need a minister to help him die. The weather itself is threatening. However, Per Hansa reconsiders. His sons are digging a tunnel through snow to the pigsty. Inside, his wife is preparing a meal for him. They watch as he takes down his skis and prepares to make the journey for the sake of his dying friend. He does not look back at his house or speak farewell to Beret as he starts out. So Per Hansa, on his errand of mercy, walks into the snowstorm. There death overtakes him.

Bibliography

Eddy, Sara. “’Wheat and Potatoes’: Reconstructing Whiteness in O. E. Rölvaag’s Immigrant Trilogy.” MELUS 26, no. 1 (Spring, 2001): 129. Focuses on the complex relationship between Norwegian and Irish characters in Giants in the Earth and Peder Victorious.

Gross, David S. No Place to Hide: Gothic Naturalism in O. E. Rölvaag. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1993. Relates traditional gothic tradition to Rölvaag’s use of the frontier as a gothic setting of terror and wonder, which is especially a problem for Beret. Includes treatment of frontier and immigrant life.

Haugtvedt, Erica. “Abandoned in America: Identity Dissonance and Ethnic Preservationism in Giants in the Earth.” MELUS 33, no. 3 (Fall, 2008): 147-168. Explains how Rölvaag is known for his advocacy of a culturally pluralistic America in which all ethnic groups would coexist. Examines how this philosophy applies to the depiction of ethnic identity in Giants in the Earth and the other novel in the immigrant trilogy.

Reiff, Raychel Haugrud. “Fighting the Trolls on the Dakota Plains: The Ecstasy and the Agony of Norwegian Immigrants’ Lives in O. E. Rölvaag’s Giants in the Earth.” In The Immigrant Experience in North American Literature: Carving out a Niche, edited by Katherine B. Payant and Toby Rose. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. Describes how Rölvaag depicts the lives of immigrants who seek to reconcile their Norwegian heritage with their new American lives.

Reigstad, Paul. Rölvaag: His Life and Art. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972. Examines Rölvaag’s novels in a biographical context, revealing the forces and influences that shaped his work. Relates the treatment of folklore, myth, and Norwegian religious beliefs and values to Rölvaag’s early life and experiences in Norway, and the plot incidents to his father-in-law’s stories of Dakota frontier life. Analyzes where in the plot reminiscences are superseded by imagination.

Schultz, April. “To Lose the Unspeakable: Folklore and Landscape in O. E. Rölvaag’s Giants in the Earth.” In Mapping American Culture, edited by Wayne Franklin and Michael Steiner. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992. Examines how Rölvaag’s use of landscape and its relationship to folk myths of the Norwegian immigrant community shape his plot.

Simonson, Harold P. Prairies Within: The Tragic Trilogy of Ole Rölvaag. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987. A good look at Beret, the central character, especially how her religious values and her fearful attitude toward frontier space affect all three novels.

Sledge, Martha. “Truth and Fact: The Rhetoric of Fiction and History in Immigrant Literature.” South Dakota Review 29, no. 2 (Summer, 1991): 159-169. Compares Rölvaag’s treatment of immigrant life to that of other Scandinavian writers.