but
came as a child to Bodoe in Lofoten, and worked with a shoemaker there
for some years, saving up money for the publication of his juvenile
efforts. He had little education to speak of, and after a period of
varying casual occupations, mostly of the humblest sort, he came to
Christiania with the object of studying there, but failed to make his
way. Twice he essayed his fortune in America, but without success. For
three years he worked as a fisherman on the Newfoundland Banks.

His Nordland origin is in itself significant; it means an environment
of month-long nights and concentrated summers, in which all feelings
are intensified, and love and dread and gratitude and longing are
nearer and deeper than in milder and more temperate regions, where
elemental opposites are, as it were, reciprocally diluted.

In 1890, at the age of thirty, Hamsun attracted attention by the
publication of _Sult_ (Hunger). _Sult_ is a record of weeks of
starvation in a city; the semi-delirious confession of a man whose
physical and mental faculties have slipped beyond control. He speaks
and acts irrationally, and knows it, watches himself at his mental
antics and takes himself to task for the same. And he asks himself: Is
it a sign of madness?

It might seem so. The extraordinary associations, the weird fancies
and bizarre impulses that are here laid bare give an air of convincing
verisimilitude to the supposed confessions of a starving journalist.
But, as a matter of fact, Hamsun has no need of extraneous influences
to invest his characters with originality. Starving or fed, they can
be equally erratic. This is seen in his next book, _Mysterier_.

Here we have actions and reactions as fantastic as in _Sult_,
though the hero has here no such excuse as in the former case. The
"mysteries," or mystifications, of Nagel, a stranger who comes, for no
particular reason apparent, to stay in a little Norwegian town, arise
entirely out of Nagel's own personality.

_Mysterier_ is one of the most exasperating books that a publisher's
reader, or a conscientious reviewer, could be given to deal with. An
analysis of the principal character is a most baffling task. One is
tempted to call him mad, and have done with it. But, as a matter of
fact, he is uncompromisingly, unrestrainedly human; he goes about
constantly saying and doing things that we, ordinary and respectable
people, are trained and accustomed to refrain from saying or doing at
all. He has