Scan Magazine | Mini Theme | Experience Bodø
Tranøy Lighthouse is one of the beautiful places you can visit in Hamarøy. The lighthouse offers accommodation and has a nice restaurant that is open in the summertime.
The Hamsun Centre – a beacon of literature Explore the landscape that inspired the early modernist Knut Hamsun to write the Nobel Prize-winning novel, Growth of the Soil. By Line Elise Svanevik | Photos: Ernst Furuhatt
Situated in Hamsun’s hometown of Hamarøy in the northern Norwegian county of Nordland, the Knut Hamsun Centre (Hamsunsenteret) rises as a beacon of literature and literature interpretation. Designed by renowned architect Steven Holl, the centre was completed in 2009 and offers year-round adventures and cultural experiences for visitors of all ages and interests.
books, including Growth of the Soil, are as painstakingly relevant today as ever.
Knut Hamsun is best known for his ground-breaking modernist novels and controversial political views, and many of the themes Hamsun explored in his
Hamsun left Nordland when he was 20 years old but returned to Hamarøy as an established author, living at Skogheim farm from 1911 to 1917 with his wife Marie
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Born in 1859 as Knud Pedersen in the Gudbrandsdalen district of Norway, Hamsun and his family moved to Hamarøy in 1862. Hamarøy became Hamsun’s childhood realm, where he grew up and the feeling of home took root; patriotism on a small scale, as he called it.
and their children. It was in this period he wrote the famous novel Growth of the Soil, published 100 years ago.
The building as a body Drawing inspiration from Hamsun’s childhood home, the grand landscape of Hamarøy and especially one of Hamsun’s most famous novels, Hunger, Holl designed the centre as an architectonic interpretation of the author’s life and novels. “The building was created to resemble a body – a battleground of invisible forces,” says director of the Hamsun Centre, Bodil Børset. “Holl wanted the Hamsun Centre to be like a Hamsun character in architectonic terms – the dark wood being its skin and the staircase its skeleton. He also carefully constructed the windows with the idea of using the light to cast in-