Gale - A Study Guide for O. E. Rolvaags Giants in the Earth

Copyright Notice

Since this page cannot legibly accommodate all copyright notices, the acknowledgments constitute an extension of the copyright notice.

While every effort has been made to secure permission to reprint material and to ensure the reliability of the information presented in this publication, Gale Research neither guarantees the accuracy of the data contained herein nor assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions, or discrepancies. Gale accepts no payment for listing; and inclusion in the publication of any organization, agency, institution, publication, service, or individual does not imply endorsement of the editors or publisher. Errors brought to the attention of the publisher and verified to the satisfaction of the publisher will be corrected in future editions.

This publication is a creative work fully protected by all applicable copyright laws, as well as by misappropriation, trade secret, unfair competition, and other applicable laws. The authors and editors of this work have added value to the underlying factual material herein through one or more of the following: unique and original selection, coordination, expression, arrangement, and classification of the information. All rights to this publication will be vigorously defended.

Copyright 1999
Gale Research
27500 Drake Rd.
Farmington Hills, MI 48331-3535

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

ISBN 0-7876-2115-3
ISSN 1094-3552

Printed in the United States of America.
1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

O. E. Rlvaag

1927

Giants in the Earth was 0. E. Rlvaag'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.

O. E. Rlvaag was bom April 2, 1876, on Dnna 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, Rlvaag 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, Rlvaag 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 Rlvaag 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, Rlvaag 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 Rlvaag recognized his desire to become a writer. After graduating, Rlvaag 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 Rlvaag would be adamantly opposed to the idea of a melting pot his whole life.

Once back in America, Rlvaag 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. Rlvaag's first fictional work, titled Amerika-breve (Letters from America), was published in Norwegian in 1912 under the pseudonym Paal Mrck. It was an account in epistolary form, that is, told through a series of letters, of a young immigrant's dubious exchange of the perilous life of a fisherman in Norway for the servile life of a farmhand in America. He published two more novels, also in Norwegian, before taking a sabbatical from St. Olaf to work on a trilogy titled I de dage (In Those Days), the first volume of which was published in Norway in 1924, and in the United States in English in 1927 as Giants in the Earth.

Rlvaag's saga of the settling of South Dakota by a group of intrepid Norwegian immigrants was an immediate success and sold more than 80,000 copies by year's end. Critics praised the true-to-life thoughts and feelings of the characters and Rlvaag's powerful descriptions of nature. Over the next four years, despite a series of heart attacks, he completed the second and third volumes in the trilogy. Peder Victorious (1929) and Their Fathers' God (1931), however, lacked the universal import of Giants in the Earth, which stands as Rlvaag's singular contribution to American pioneer literature. Rlvaag died in 1931.

O. E. Rlvaag's Giants in the Earth narrates the story of a Norwegian immigrant family's struggles on the American plains from 1873 to 1881. The novel details the triumphs, hardships, and ultimate tragedies of South Dakota farmers as they try to wrest a livelihood from a land that, while fertile, often proves actively hostile to human habitation.

As the novel opens, Per Hansa leads his family with their meager possessions over the vast emptiness of the Dakotas' grassy plains. With him are his pregnant wife Beret, his sons Ole and Store-Hans, and his young daughter, And-Ongen. The family is searching for their traveling party, whom they had to leave when their rickety wagon was damaged. The family, especially Beret, fears that they are lost and may never locate their settlement, a predicament that could prove fatal. Unable to sleep, Per Hansa travels out at night and discovers evidence of a campsite, proof that they have the right trail.

At the settlement itself (called Spring Creek), Per Hansa's friends fear for him. They are soon reunited, however, and realize that Per Hansa had traveled too far west. Per Hansa and the other settlers, Hans Olsa and his wife Srine, Syvert Tnseten and his wife Kjertsi, and the Solum brothers, Henry and Sam, all gather and speak enthusiastically of their opportunities as the first farmers on this land. Only Beret feels a sense of foreboding.

Per Hansa goes to see his quarter-section of land and realizes that it contains an Indian burial mound. He does not fear the possible implications of building on such a sacred place. After registering his land in Sioux Falls, Per Hansa plows energetically and builds a mud house that contains the house and barn in one structure. A traveling Indian band appears, scaring everyone in the settlement. Per Hansa heals one Indian man's infected hand wound, however, and receives a pony in return.