Knut Hamsun and the Right-Wing Radicals

By being critical, radical, and provocative, literature has always challenged the status quo. But how do we respond when someone takes a novel such as Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil (1917) as a starting point for criticizing the culture of our time as decadent, flawed and feminised? How do we respond when attempts are made to appropriate our cultural heritage and turn it into political propaganda, in this case by actors from the far right?

What cultural preparedness is required of us in an age characterised by an increasingly clear tendency to normalise radical attitudes – often through a chaotic, transgressive and ambiguous meme culture frequently packaged as humour? Lawyer and former deputy head of the Norwegian Police Security Service Hedvig Moe and author and journalist Carline Tromp meet professor of Nordic literature Eirik Vassenden for a conversation.

In collaboration with the Selskapet til vitenskapenes fremme (The Bergen Society for the Advancement of Science)

The event will be held in Norwegian.