A Study Guide for O. E. Rolvaag's "Giants in the Earth"
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A Study Guide for O. E. Rolvaag's "Giants in the Earth" - Gale
3
Giants in the Earth
O. E. Rölvaag
1927
Introduction
Giants in the Earth was 0. E. Rölvaag's most influential novel. 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 isolation and monotony of prairie life; primitive housing; long, frigid winters; and crop-destroying infestations in summer. 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.
Author Biography
O. E. Rölvaag was bom April 2, 1876, on Dønna Island off the coast of Norway, where he lived until he was twenty. Despite an early and voracious appetite for literature, both Norwegian classics and writers such as Charles Dickens and James Fenimore Cooper, Rölvaag seemed destined to be a fisherman. A violent storm at sea in which several of his friends lost their lives was a defining experience for him. Unwilling to face the prospect of the hazards and desolation of life on the North Atlantic, Rölvaag opted instead to emigrate to America, asking his uncle in Elk Point, Minnesota, to lend him money for the passage.
His first two years in America he worked as a farmhand. But farming was scarcely more appealing to Rölvaag than fishing, and he decided to further his education. He studied first at Augustana Academy in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, then at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he graduated in 1905. At St. Olaf, Rölvaag studied the works of Norwegian novelists and discovered Norwegian folklore. The work of Henrik Ibsen was a powerful influence on him, and it was while at St. Olaf that Rölvaag recognized his desire to become a writer. After graduating, Rölvaag returned to Norway for advanced study at the University of Kristiana in Oslo. This sojourn in his own country drove home to him the importance of preserving one's cultural identity in an alien land, and in fact Rölvaag would be adamantly opposed to the idea of a melting pot his whole life.
Once back in America, Rölvaag took up a position at St. Olaf teaching Norwegian language and literature. He introduced Norwegian immigrant history as a subject at the college and helped to found several organizations for the preservation of Norwegian culture. Rölvaag's first fictional work, titled Amerika-breve (Letters from America), was published in