"Under the Autumn Star" 1906 by Hamsun

«See, now I am well away from the rush and crowd of the city, from people and newspapers; I have fled away from it all, because of the calling that came to me once more from the quiet, lonely tracts where I belong. “It will all come right this time,” I tell myself, and am full of hope. Alas, I have fled from the city like this before, and afterwards returned. And fled away again.»

«Where are you off to? I don’t know. East or west. We’re wanderers.»

«The water was as clear as a mirror yesterday and is as clear again today. This is an Indian summer and it’s warm on the island – oh how mild and warm it is! – but there’s no sun. It’s years now since I’ve known such peace, twenty or thirty maybe, perhaps in some earlier life. For  it seems to me I must have known such peace before, the way I walk along here humming, and in ecstasy, mindful of each stone and each blade of grass, and these seem mindful of me too. We know each other.»

Under the Autumn Star (1906) is the first volume in the so-called wanderer trilogy. The main character here has Hamsun’s own real name, Knut Pedersen.

Pedersen is a middle-aged writer in flight from the city and the modern age. He wanders around, picking up work where he can, wandering on again. On the Øvrebø farm he is an observer of the unhappy marriage between Captain Falkenberg and his wife Lovise. When he begins to find himself attracted to the lady he moves on. Not until long afterwards does he find that his feelings were reciprocated.

The novel’s muted and melancholic style is suffused with the sense of longing and sadness for lost youth. There are also intense and lyrical descriptions of nature and a number of acute psychological portraits. Source: HamsunSenteret 

You can read the book following this ebook link

Hellevik's sociological classifications. Towards egalitarianism, or is it at all possible?

As most four-fold tables in sociology, these categories are ideal types, pedagogical caricatures. But Hellevik shows from his rich data material that a surprisingly large part of the Norwegian population fits into one of the four categories without too much friction. I am not a strong believer in data, as we don’t know who exactly was questioned and how answers fit with reality, but there is some sense in this. Don’t you recognize some of your friends/acquaintances that could fit into one or another category?

On the basis of several answers in the surveys, undertaken by the sociologist Ottar Hellevik, he divides the Norwegian population into four categories, which in the 1980s were roughly of the same size. We have the modern materialists. They are oriented towards short-time consumption, they are enthusiastic about new technology (always first with the new cell phone), they have little sense of tradition, and they put their own welfare and interests first. Secondly, we have the modern idealists, representing equality between the sexes, anti-authoritarianism, caring, tolerance and individual self-realization. Then there are the traditional materialists, focusing upon material security and economic growth, but much more culturally conventional and traditional than the modern materialists. Hellevik’s last category is the traditional idealists, committed to patriotism and traditional values, often including respect for the Christian heritage. 

Can we learn anything from educational system in Norway?

The Norwegian curriculum that was published in 1993 was blamed for its poetic approach, and was changed in 2006 to more instrumentalistic.

The curriculum had an ambitious general part. For the first time, a common platform for primary, lower secondary, upper secondary and adult education was presented. The basic values of the core curriculum were expressed through six idealistic portraits:

-       The spiritual human being

-       The creative human being

-       The working human being

-       The liberally-educated human being

-       The social human being

-       The environmentally aware human being

-       And as the result of them all: The integrated human being.

The curriculum ends:

The ultimate aim of education is to inspire individuals to realize their potentials in ways that serve the common good; to nurture humaneness in a society in development.

Sounds all good, but can it work in practice? Norwegian new government in 2006 did not think so and made major amendments to it. But we can at least apply these principles and utilize them in a way that can still change education to the better in other countries.

On Edvard Grieg (Norwegian composer)

Grieg’s collaboration with poets brought him into contact with some of the most romantic of all Norwegian literature, the sagas, folk tales and legends. However, Grieg also had a deep love of nature, he liked nothing better than hiking in the mountains around Bergen and up from Sogn through Jotunheimen. There, in the domain of the trolls, he found challenging peaks, which afforded him splendid vistas, shimmering, iridescent glaciers and tranquil plateaus, where he became acquainted with the Norwegian folk culture.