Hans Aanrud

[3] Aanrud gained fame by his realistic and folksy descriptions of the rural life of his home valley before the industrial age.

The way of thinking of the ordinary peasants is presented in partly dialect dialogues and in their simple and friendly mode of expression.

The content of both stories concerns the difficult conditions of the work of the country children who had to eke out a poor existence far away from their parents.

Two translations of shorter stories by Aanrud also achieved great fame in Germany: the tale collections Kroppzeug (1907) and Jungen (1910).

In the comedy Storken (= stork, 1895), that is playing in Kristiania (the former name of Oslo) at the end of the 19th century, a naïve clerk tries to establish contacts to the high society but he is often deceived by a royal authorized representative, who takes advantage of his ignorance.