Ole Rølvaag

Biography

Ole Rølvaag was born in Dønna in northern Norway in 1876. At fourteen years of age he joined his father and brothers in the Lofoten fishing grounds, where he worked until he immigrated to the United States in 1896 and became a naturalized citizen in 1908. He settled in Union County, South Dakota, and worked as a farmhand until 1898. With the help of his pastor, Rølvaag then enrolled in school.

In 1901 Rølvaag graduated from Augustana Academy in Canton, South Dakota, a school that later became Augustana College. The wooden cabin where Rølvaag wrote Giants in the Earth sits on the campus of his alma mater. He later earned a bachelor's degree from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, in 1905, and a master's degree there in 1910. He studied for some time at the University of Oslo, and was a professor at St. Olaf College from 1906 until his death in 1931.

Giants in the Earth

Rølvaag's authorship and scholarship focused primarily on the pioneer experience on the Dakota plains in the 1870s, particularly among Norwegian immigrants. His most famous book is Giants in the Earth, which is part of a trilogy based upon his experiences as a settler. It chronicles the story of a group of Norwegian pioneers who make the long trek from a fishing village in Norway through Canada to Spring Creek, in Dakota Territory. Although the westward migration means opportunity, the settlers must contend with the trials of loneliness, separation from family and longing for the old country as well as difficulty fitting into a new culture and estrangement from children who grew up in the new land. These conditions are hard enough for people of robust nature, eager for a new life, but for people of delicate sensibility, like Per Hansa's wife Beret, life on the prairie becomes unbearable. Giants in the Earth deals with timeless themes of immigration, fear and loneliness, myth, and religion. The novel does not end happily but it is, nonetheless, an exuberant sprawling work that has won consistent praise for its unsparing account of the spiritual as well as the physical experience of its characters.

Other Books by Ole Rølvaag

The Boat of Longing. rep., Greenwood Press , 1974.

Peder Victorious: A Tale of the Pioneers Twenty Years Later, 1929; rep., University of Nebraska Press, 1982.

Pure Gold. rep., Greenwood Press, 1973.

Their Fathers' God, 1931; rep., University of Nebraska Press, 1983.

The Third Life of Per Smevik. Harper Collins, 1987.

When the Wind Is in the South and Other Stories. Center for Western Studies, 1984.

Website Links:

Minnesota Author Biographies Project by Minnesota Historical Society

Wikipedia article on Rølvaag