Hamsun in Sámi

Norwegian author Knut Hamsun's Nazi views are well known and well documented. His racism towards the Sámi is not as well known, at least not in the southern part of Norway. This truth of the author hits extra hard in Hamarøy, where the author lived for much of his life, and which is the main home of the Lule Sámi. So what happened when translator Are Tjihkkom set about translating Hamsun's great classic Pan (1894) into Lule Sámi (Pán, 2024)? 

In the art project ‘Terra Nullius - Growth of the Soil 2.0’, Vivian Aira writes a new version of the novel Markens Grøde (Growth of the Soil) from 1917, turning the main character Isak Sellanrå into a Sámi reindeer boy. What happens to Hamsun's literature when it is confronted with the Sámi?

Tjihkkom and Aira meet literary researcher Beatrice Reed for a conversation.

In collaboration with the Norwegian Translators Association.

The conversation is in Norwegian.