Growth of the Soil (Norwegian Markens Grøde) is a novel by Knut Hamsun which won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920.
Growth of the Soil portrays the protagonist (Isak) and his family as awed by modernity, yet at times, they come into conflict with it.
The novel begins by following the story of Isak, a Norwegian man, who finally settled upon a patch of land which he deemed fit for farming.
Isak asked passing by Lapps, nomadic indigenous people, to tell women that he is in need of help on his farm.
Eventually, a “big, brown-eyed girl, full-built and coarse” with a harelip[a] named Inger, arrived at the house and settled in.
One day while Isak had left the farm to sell a bull in the village, Inger gave birth to a child and had killed it upon seeing that it had a harelip and would undergo the inevitable suffering in life she herself had experienced.
One October day, the Lensmand and a man showed up at their doorstep to investigate and find evidence pertaining to the crime.
According to her, she had been near the stream collecting juniper twigs for cleaning buckets when suddenly, she slipped into the river at the same time she was to give birth.
One day, Axel was going out to the forest to fell some trees when he sees Brede going up the hill, most likely on an errand to fix something relating to the telegraph line.
Geissler anticipated that this would happen and so he offered the land at an exorbitant price showing that he had nothing to lose if they did not want to buy it.
Amazingly, the Lensmand's wife, Mrs. Heyerdahl, had stepped up for Barbro by giving a great, eloquent speech that moved everyone.
When Eleseus returned home, he talked privately with Sivert telling him his big plans - he was going to start a new life in America.
Isak, the protagonist of the novel, is described as a "strong, coarse fellow, with a red iron beard, and little scars on face and hands".
The character of Isak conforms to Hamsun's ideal individual: hard working, with a large family, and averted to modernity but rather finding roots with the agrarian lifestyle.
There are several moments when Hamsun reveals Isak's crude and violent side, such as when he slams his wife Inger to the floor when he finds out she has been stealing from him.
He has many sheds, fancy tools that come as gifts from Geissler and a mining operator, good land, an advanced irrigation system, and more, which are a significant cause of this admiration.
She is described as being "a big, brown-eyed girl, full built and coarse, with good, heavy hands, and rough hide brogues on her feet as if she had been a Lapp..." She also had a harelip.
However, her time in prison and resulting introduction to modernity cause her to lose her fervor for Isak's abilities and their simple country life.
He stayed for a while but, after realizing a general ineptitude for prospering off the land and being enticed by the grander things in life, set off to America, never to be seen again.
Geissler would often be doing big business with other people and travelling but, towards the end of the novel, he appears worn out and in ill health.
Aronsen was another very rich settler who set up a store in order to make profit from the many miners who would be in the area working on the mine near Sellanraa (Isak's farm).
Seeing that there was no more business as they were leaving due to a failure of yield, Aronsen sold his place to Eleseus, Isak's son.
His works set simple agrarian values against those of industrial society, showing a deep aversion to civilization proving that people's fulfillment lies with the soil.
He opposed naturalism and realism and wanted “modern literature to represent the complex intricacies of human mind”.
William Worster, in an afterword to his 1920 translation of Growth of the Soil, describes the novel as follows: It is the life story of a man in the wilds, the genesis and gradual development of a homestead, the unit of humanity, in the unfilled, uncleared tracts that still remain in the Norwegian Highlands.
This is Hamsun's speech at the Nobel Banquet at Grand Hôtel, Stockholm, December 10, 1920 (translated to English): What am I to do in the presence of such gracious, such overwhelming generosity?
I myself am what I am, but I have been swept off my feet by the tribute that has been paid to my country, by the strains of her national anthem which resounded in this hall a minute ago.
Personally, I bow my head under the weight of such great distinctions, but I am also proud that your Academy should have judged my shoulders strong enough to bear them.
Were I more conversant with literature and its great names, I could go on quoting them ad infinitum and acknowledge my debt for the merit you have been generous enough to find in my work.
No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry - to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave.