Growth of the Soil (1917)

by Knut Hamsun

Has the cure for anxiety been under our heels this whole time? Knut Hamsun lays a convincing case for it in Growth of the Soil, reprinted in 2022 under the title Cottagecore Manifesto.

This story of creation loosely tracks Genesis up until things go awry with the apple. With determination, the protagonist Isak carves prosperity out of the wilderness and willfully eschews knowledge of good and evil. Connection with the earth and its products is a stabilizing force shielding him and his from the vanity and senselessness that grip cityfolk.

Ever-present is the reminder of how tenuous is such an Eden built upon the will of one man. His wife, once content with their life, has doubt implanted in her mind by a stint in the city, by prolonged exposure to an environment where one is sustained by appearances and not sustenance. His boys are given his example and still one falls prey to modernity and becomes affected by it.

In Hamsun’s Norway, the primary form taken by the knowledge of good and evil, the corrupting force, is not an apple but money.

“He’s not so much as touched that land of his,” says he, “and hasn’t even feed for his beasts, but must go and buy it. Asked me if I’d any hay to sell. No, I’d no hay to sell. ‘Ho, d’you mean you don’t want to make money?’ said Aronsen. Thinks money’s everything in the world, seems like. Puts down a hundred-Krone note on the counter, and says ‘Money!’” (bk. 2 pg. 118)

The State wants it for the land Isak cultivates. Foreigners cart dynamite up the hills in pursuit of it. Only farmers, settlers, people with their feet underneath them see money as a tool to be leveraged and not as an end itself.

“My son, ay, he’s the modern type, a man of our time; he believes honestly enough all the age has taught him, all the Jew and the Yankee have taught him; I shake my head at it all.” (bk. 2, pg. 245)

Past all of this talk about its ideas, Growth of the Soil is an exceptionally comfortable read. Hamsun’s Norwegian is translated cleanly by W.W. Worster into frank, legible, artful English. The protagonist, his family, his neighbors, and his village are depicted with color and detail.

Is its message idealistic? Perhaps. The biblical, fast-paced method of storytelling has a way of keeping focus on the fruits and glossing over the toil it took to produce them. Altogether, however, Growth of the Soil contains a depth and a simple elegance that provide a strong reminder of the power of the novel. It’s no mistake that it won Hamsun the Nobel in an era when that meant something.