Ole Rolvaag is most cited for Giants in the Earth, his award-winning, epic novel of Norwegian immigrant homesteaders in Dakota Territory.

[1] Rølvåg was born in the family's cottage in a small fishing village on the island of Dønna, in Nordland county, Norway.

He was born with the name Ole Edvart Pedersen, one of seven children of Peder Benjamin Jakobsen and Ellerine Pedersdatter Vaag.

Rølvaag lived there until he was 20 years of age, and the impressions he received during the days of his childhood and his young manhood endured with him throughout his life.

[2][3] An uncle who had emigrated to America sent him a ticket in the summer of 1896, and he traveled to Union County, South Dakota to work as a farmhand.

In particular, he was influenced by Hans Andersen Foss and Peer Stromme, both of whom had written novels that described realistic aspects of the homesteader's experience.

Beret hungers for the ways of her homeland, and in her heart, loneliness gathers and penetrates the deeper reality of life lived on the American frontier.

Giants in the Earth served as the basis for an opera by Douglas Moore and Arnold Sundgaard that won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1951.