The People of Juvik by Olav Duun

• FIRST PUBLISHED: Juvikfolke, 1918-1923 (English translation, 1930-1935): Juvikingar, 1918 (The Trough of the Wave, 1930); I blinda, 1920 (The Blind Man, 1931); Storbrylloppe, 1920 (The Big Wedding, 1932); I eventyre, 1921 (Odin in Fairyland, 1932); I ungdommen, 1922 (Odin Grows Up, 1934); I stormen, 1923 (The Storm, 1935)
• TYPE OF WORK: Novel
• TYPE OF PLOT: Social chronicle
• TIME OF WORK: 1800-1918
• LOCALE: Namdal district, Norway

The Story:

The first Juviking was Per, a crofter from the south. After a fight with his landlord, he bought the Juvik farm along the fjord. Later, his landlord’s daughter went to live with him, but they never married.

Little was known about their sons. In the third generation, the owner of the farm was nicknamed Bear Anders because he had killed a great black beast with an ax. His son was Big Per, so strong that he once saved horse, sledge, and rider from sinking through the ice. After the rescue the man gave Per his daughter for a wife. One of the last of the old-time Juvikings was Greedy Per, a rich miser who stole other men’s nets. In his old age, he had a change of heart and gave back what he had taken. Everyone called him a hero, for it took more courage to return stolen goods in daylight than it did to take them after dark.

Two generations later, at the end of the eighteenth century, there was a single son, Per Anders Juvika. Taking a fancy to a girl he saw at a fair, he went to her father and frightened the man so badly that he gave Per his daughter and a handsome dowry. For his wife Ane, Per Anders built a two-story house with a plank floor in every room. They had two boys, Jens and Per, and three daughters, Ane, Aasel, and Beret. Ane and Aasel married and went off to other farms. Beret never married. Jens, wild and reckless like the old Juvikings, was also single but gentle Per had an industrious wife, Valborg, whom his father had picked out for him. Even though they were grown men, Jens and Per stayed home, ruled by old Per Anders, and worked the farm.

One night in December 1800, neighbors saw a strange light over Juvik, an omen of disaster. Per Anders laughed at the superstitions of his womenfolk. On Lucy Long Night, he decided to visit his married daughters. He found Ane living poorly on the great farm at Haaberg, for her husband was dead and she was childless. Aasel and her husband Mikkal lived on a tenant farm. Great workers, they had more abundance than Ane, even in the matter of children.

It was dark when Per Anders started to row home. Because of wind and high waves on the fjord, he was exhausted by the time he reached his own boat house. There, his sons, worried by his long absence, found him. Worn out by exposure and fatigue, he survived until after the Christmas season and then died peacefully. When the smoke of his burning bedstraw blew back into the house, signifying another death, both Ane and Beret believed that the mother would soon follow. Beret died after a short illness, to Ane’s relief. Her own respite was brief, however, for she died six weeks later.

The farm suffered the next year, for Jens and young Per could seldom agree. A thief began to rob the storehouse. One night, the brothers hunted the man into the sea, and he drowned. Jens made light of the affair, but Per, the thief’s death heavy on his conscience, grew more unhappy at Juvik. After Jens had been tricked into marrying a maidservant, Per took his share of the inheritance in money and bought Ane’s farm at Haaberg. Jens, going from bad to worse, finally deserted the farm and went to sea. Aasel and Mikkal went to live at Juvik.

Per worked hard on his land before he hurt himself while lifting stones. He grew fretful and superstitious during the last months of his life, and Valborg feared that the heroic blood was going from the Juvik veins. Young Anders, who would inherit Haaberg, nevertheless had cleverness and strength. At Per’s death, the fourteen-year-old boy assumed responsibility as head of the house. All the neighbors and servants saw that he would be a better man than his father.

Anders was in his early twenties when Valborg died, leaving him in charge of Haaberg and Petter, his younger brother. Petter was a sly one, always in trouble; people said he was like his uncle Jens. Anders’ reckless Juviking blood showed only in his courtship of Massi Liness. With Ola Engdal, his rival, he risked his life in many foolhardy deeds; they agreed that if either perished, the survivor was to have Massi. When Massi settled matters by accepting Ola, Anders defiantly married Solvi, a girl of Lapp blood, and took her to live in the fine new house he had built. Before long, there were many misfortunes in the district. The Engdal children died. Ola injured his leg, and it became infected. Wolves killed whole herds of sheep. Because Haaberg alone continued to prosper, the neighbors began to call Solvi a witch and blamed their troubles on Lapp sorcery. At last, Anders yielded to their superstitious beliefs and told Solvi to go back to her father. While she was rowing up the fjord, Petter started a rock slide, which fell from a cliff upon her boat, killing her and her child. Having wished Solvi dead, Anders brooded much after her death, and his hair turned gray.

Left widowed and childless, Massi went to Anders and asked him to marry her. Their children were Per, Gjartru, Aasel, Jens, Beret, and Ola. Meanwhile, Petter had grown more dissipated and spiteful. Anders finally bought him a little place at Ronningan, where he settled with Kjersti, Massi’s foster daughter. Later, Anders tried to help his brother by hiring him to paint the parish church and lead the spire. Petter used cheap materials and did poor work. When Anders threatened to expose him, the rascal burned the church.

Young Per married Marja Leinland and brought his bride to Haaberg. Gjartru was in love with Hall Gronset, who was lost at sea. There was gossip in the neighborhood when Petter Liness, Per’s friend, drowned. Petter’s family suspected Per of having in his possession a wallet containing Petter’s savings. Petter had entrusted the money to Per but had asked him to give it secretly to Kjersti Ronningan. Anders, grieved and angered by Per’s stubborn silence, feared that his son would be forced also to foster Kyersti’s child by Petter.

Anders had hoped to make Per sheriff of the district, but that plan fell through. Then Massi became sick and died. Jens tried to set himself up as a trader but failed in his undertaking. Aasel had gone to live with old Ane, her great-aunt, at Paalsness.

Anders’ eyesight began to fail. One day, he tried to treat himself with hot tar and went completely blind. Ane died, leaving Aasel without the inheritance she had promised the girl. Jens became ill with typhus but recovered. Per, who had nursed his brother, caught the disease and died. Aasel married Kristen Folden, who bought Haaberg when Anders needed money to pay Jens’s debts, and Jens went off to seek his fortune in America. Young Ola, not much good for anything else, planned to become a clerk. Gjartru finally married Johan Arnesen; they kept a store at Segelsund. Blind and old, Anders thought a great deal about his younger days and the sorrows of his life. Believing that families ran their courses like waves, he hoped that the children of Aasel or Gjartru would redeem the fortunes of the Juvikings.

Aasel at Haaberg and Gjartru at Segelsund, both strong-willed, ambitious women, became rivals. Gjartru hoped to see her husband grow rich in trade and always urged him into schemes for making money. Aasel put her faith in the land; under Folden’s management, Haaberg became prosperous once more. Blind Anders, over seventy years old, approved of all that his daughter and son-in-law had done on the farm, and he thought of his grandson Peder as one of the true Juviking line.

Peder was courting Andrea Ween, daughter of the veterinarian. Ola Haaberg, the parish clerk, was also courting her, but in a spiritless way. Mina Arnesen, Peder’s cousin, was engaged to Arthur Ween, Andrea’s brother. Peder had previously been in love with Kjerstina, one of his distant cousins at Juvik; the girl was pregnant with his child. Ambitious for her son’s future, Aasel went to the girl and told a tale which caused Kjerstina to give up her claim on Peder. A short time later, Andrea threw over Ola and accepted Peder.

The double wedding was celebrated at Haaberg, where for three days and nights, the guests danced and feasted. An unexpected guest at the wedding was Jens Haaberg, who had made money in America. Petter, old Anders’ worthless brother, was still up to his foolish pranks. When he dressed up as a ghost to frighten some of the guests, blind Anders rushed out to confront the spirit, stumbled, and fell dead. The celebration would have ended anyway, for Arnesen had received word that his speculations had failed and he was ruined.

Arnesen and Gjartru asked Jens to lend them money. He refused but offered to pay their passage back to America with him. They went, leaving Segelsund to Mina and her husband. Peder, taken ill during the wedding celebration, died soon afterward of galloping consumption. Ineffectual Ola Haaberg reflected bitterly that the great man of the Juvikings was still to come.

Even in boyhood Odin Setran gave promise of being that man. The son of Elen Haaberg and Otte Setran, a joiner who had worked on the farm where Elen went as housekeeper after her brother’s death, he was born out of wedlock, for by that time Otte had gone to America. When Elen married Iver Vennestad, they sent Odin to live with Bendek Kjelvik and his wife Gurianna. Kjelvik was a wonderful place to young Odin, with the happenings of every day almost like the fairy tales Bendek told at night. Bendek was a poacher as well as a herdsman, a secret he tried to conceal from the boy. One day, urged on by some playmates, Odin took his foster father’s gun and accidentally killed an old ram. When he repeated what the other boys had said about Bendek and his gun, the old man thought Odin was mocking him, and he drove the boy out of his house on Christmas night. Odin went sadly back to Vennestad.

In the meantime, Otte Setran returned from America. He asked for Odin, but the boy looked on his father as a stranger. Then Bendek, sick and sorry for his hasty deed, begged Odin to return to Kjelvik. He stayed with the old couple until Bendek died. There, he also met Lauris, a boy of the Kjelvik kin, who was to become his best friend and worst enemy. After he started to school he met for the first time his cousin Astri, daughter of Peder and Andrea, and old Aasel, his grandmother.

Odin disliked his stepfather and was unhappy at Vennestad; but after a time, he was able to hold his own against Iver’s bullying, so that the man began to respect him. Becoming involved in several escapades with Lauris, Odin greatly distressed his ailing mother, and it was decided that he should go to live with his father. First, however, he wanted to attend a fair across the fjord. When he went to Segelsund to borrow a boat, Fru Mina asked him to take a young girl named Ingri Arnesen as his passenger. A storm came up, and the children were almost drowned, but at last, they reached shore safely. That was Odin’s first meeting with his future wife.

Odin became friendly with his Haaberg kin. After his mother died of the same disease which had killed her brother and her sister Marjane, widowed Aasel asked him to live on the farm. He and Astri fell in love, but when Otte Setran began to court Astri’s mother, the young people realized that their love would be a sin if their parents were to marry. Odin engaged in coastwise trading with Lauris for a time. Astri married Arne Finne, a childhood sweetheart dying of tuberculosis. Otte and Andrea married and moved to town. After her husband’s death, Astri married Lauris. By that time, Odin knew that his friend was unscrupulous and ambitious, but he held his tongue.

Old Aasel died hoping that Haaberg would be sold and the house converted into a home for the poor, but Astri and her husband, as well as the rest of the parish, were opposed. Only Iver Vennestad backed Odin when he presented the plan at his grandmother’s funeral ale. At the funeral, he met Ingri again.

Odin, married to Ingri, did become the leading man of the parish. Through his efforts, the poorhouse had been established at Vennestad and a community herring factory built. Jealous of Odin’s success, Lauris took advantage of a labor dispute at the factory to make himself chairman of the board. Odin, not greatly concerned, continued to work for the good of the community, but he resolved to fight back when Lauris and Engelbert Olsen, a leader of the workmen, tried to discredit him through gossip about Ingri’s father, who had served a sentence for forgery. Like his ancestor, he hunted Olsen into the sea and forced the man to leave the district.

Ola Haaberg committed suicide, leaving proof that Lauris had cheated Aasel of a large sum of money. At last, Odin decided that for the good of the community Lauris should die. Using Astri’s illness during the great influenza epidemic as an excuse, he forced his enemy to cross the fjord with him during a storm; but when the boat capsized and Odin had the chance to do away with Lauris, he failed to do so. Instead, he attempted to keep afloat on the oars while Lauris clung to the more stable keel. A fishing boat rescued Lauris. Odin’s body was washed ashore days later. The guests at the funeral ale thought that they saw his great generosity and courage reflected in his young sons, Anders and Per.

Critical Evaluation:

Six novels in all make up the complete story of THE PEOPLE OF JUVIK: THE TROUGH OF THE WAVE, THE BLIND MAN, THE BIG WEDDING, ODIN IN FAIRYLAND, ODIN GROWS UP, and THE STORM. Each novel may be read separately, but together, they provide a rich and moving chronicle of Norwegian life through more than six generations. Although the novel proper stretches back over several hundred years, the main story tells of the people who lived at Juvik and Haaberg from 1800 until 1918. The scene is the district of Namdal, north of Trondheim, where Olav Duun was born and where he grew up. A family saga of the region, comparable to the old Icelandic family histories such as the STURLUNGA SAGA, the novel follows the old Norse tales in tone and narrative technique. Duun’s methods were matter of fact, lighted by a great deal of local color, superstitions, customs, crafts, set against a realistic background. The characters who people the novel also resemble the heroic figures of the old epics, for they trace their line of descent from ancestors who figured in tales of heroic and even superhuman deeds. The language used by Duun was the Landsmål, the language of the common people of Norway, as opposed to the riksmaal, the more commonly used literary language of Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun, and others.

Duun’s THE PEOPLE OF JUVIK, though a work of the twentieth century, has been compared in style and prose to the sagas of the Middle Ages. Because of Duun’s simple, straightforward prose, again reminiscent of the sagas, his epic was rather difficult to translate from the original Norwegian and was not rendered into foreign languages until it was well known in its own country as a work of monumental proportions. Duun was particularly suited to write an epic novel such as this since his background was that of a simple peasant, similar to the type of people portrayed in the Six Novelettes who lived in the twentieth century just as their ancestors had done one thousand years before.

The author claimed to have no particular literary or philosophical influence in his writings but preferred to consider himself as a product of his entire environment and education. Unlike many modern authors who can be placed in one or another “school,” Duun stands as a unique entity. Critically, THE PEOPLE OF JUVIK, as well as the rest of Duun’s work, has been almost totally ignored. The author’s works, like the man himself, do not lend themselves to discussion but instead tend to be highly unique and individualistic pieces. Though Duun is astute in his observations on his subjects, he does not try to force the reader to accept his point of view but rather allows the narrative to reveal its meaning naturally.

Principal Characters:

• Per Anders Juvikaa prosperous Norwegian landowner
• Anehis wife
• Jenstheir ne’er-do-well son
• Pertheir hardworking but weak son
• AneAaseland Berettheir daughters
• Valborgthe wife of young Per
• Anders Haabergthe older son of Per and Valborg
• Petterthe younger son
• SolviAnders’ first wife
• Massihis second wife
• PerGjartruAaselJensBeretOlathe children of Anders and Massi
• Johan Arnesenthe husband of Gjartru
• Minathe daughter of Gjartru and Johan
• Arthur WeenMina’s husband
• Kristen Foldenthe husband of Aasel
• PederElenand Marjanethe children of Aasel and Kristen
• Andrea Weenthe wife of Peder
• Astrithe daughter of Peder and Andrea
• Laurisher husband
• Otte Setrana joiner
• Odinthe son of Elen and Otte Setran
• Iver VennestadElen’s husband
• Bendek KjelvikOdin’s foster father
• GuriannaBendek’s wife
• Ingri ArnesenOdin’s wife
• Andersthe older son of Odin and Ingri
• Perthe younger son
• Engelbert Olsena leader of the workmen

Bibliography

Magill, Frank N., and Dayton Kohler. Masterplots: 2010 Plot Stories & Essay Reviews from the World’s Fine Literature. Revised ed., Salem Press, 1976.

Marsh, Fred T. "Mr. Duun's Chronicle of Peasant Norway; ODIN GROWS UP. By Olav Duun. 266 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50." New York Times, 16 Sept. 1934, www.nytimes.com/1934/09/16/archives/mr-duuns-chronicle-of-peasant-norway-odin-grows-up-by-olav-duun-266.html. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

"Nomination Archive." Nobel Prize, 1939, www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show.php?id=2870. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

Thresher, Tanya. Twentieth-Century Norwegian Writers. Gale, 2004.