Before I went to Hamarøy I looked it up on wikipedia.There was reference to a Norwegian writer – Knut Hamsun who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1920.
I had never heard of him unlike the famous Norwegian playwright Ibsen and his great work “The Doll's House”
What brought me and my colleague, Themba Lonzi to Hamarøy was aninvitation from the mayor, Rolf Steffensen, himself a Lutheran pastor. We were invited for the opening of an International centre.The core business of the centre is caring for unaccompanied minors who have received asylum in Norway. They have fled war, poverty and oppression seeking a safe haven in Hamarøy – and this tiny community of less than 1800 people situated within the arctic circle.has embraced them.. We met young people from Aghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sri Lanka
Rolf has visited Cape Town a couple of times. It was in his encounters with coloured communities in Atlantis outside cape town and with Themba's youth development program that he learnt the stories of the Khoi and San peoples. This learning confronted him with his own relationship with the Sami people – the indigenous people of his country with their own experience of racism and discrimination. Our visit toHamarøy began with a visit to The Arran Lule Sami Centre which provides a focus for educating and demythologising the Sami and passing on their endangered language.
The first night we were treated to a passionate presentation with searing images from places of war but most especially from the recent Israeli invasion of Gaza. by Dr Mads Gilbert..with a clarion call for solidarity with the Palestinians and a boycott against Israel, not even shying away from the complicity of the Norwegian arms industry.
The second night was one of celebration with food from the different countries from which the young people originated.During the cultural performances Themba was invited to make music with the Sami leader Lars Magne Andreassen.
We participated in the 3 day celebration for the opening of theInternational Centre. For the last 10 years before ths centre openedthe town has been in loco parentis to children from countries characterised by war, poverty and oppression.
On the final day of our visit we had the opportunity to offer an introductory healing of the memories workshop to a combination of the staff of the centre and a number of the young asylum seekers who had already spent a year or two in Hamarøy
The sharing of feelings and memories between the young people from war ravaged countries and older Norwegians gave an experience of a commo humaniry. It was the sharing of pain which united us. At the end of the workshop, when it was time to say farewell, Themba felt overcome by all the pain and began to cry. Oneof thr Norwegians commented that in Norway it is unusual for men to express their emotions.I commented that I have long wanted to make a poster which says, "Real men cry".
On the last morning just before the workshop began Rolf took us to visit the recently built Hamsun centre.What for me is extraordinary about the centre is that it lauds his literary work for which he won the Nobel prize for literature in 1920,exposes his racist views about the Sami and talks about he was tried for betraying his country.
Hamsun hated the British but had unquestioning support for Hitler's desire to rule the world.
How do you celebrate your national hero who just happens to be a Nazias well as a racist?
However for me the most telling was how the museum depicted and how Rolf described Hamsun's childhood:Knut Hamsun was born in 1859. His family - parents, two grandparents, borthers and sisters arrived in Hamarøy in 1862 from one of the great valleys of the south. The family had then lost all their property and belongings because of his uncles gambling or perhaps just bad judgement. Another uncle who had already left the south in favour of the north, was at the time a lot better of. He welcomed the family to Hamarøy.
The early years of Knut Hamsun was greatly affected by this loss of family pride and dignity. His mother has been described as mentally ill. At one point Hamsun himself remembered his mother as a person sometimes walking along the roads screaming, but always without words. There is a remaining letter from this period written by his father to the local school board asking for permission to keep the older kids home from school because they are needed at home because of the illness of the mother. The family was of course extremely poor.
At one point the mother and father decided to leave two of their children to stay with the one uncle who was already in Hamarøy when the family arrived. These two kids were Sofie and Knut! At that time Knut was nine years old. Knut Hamsun has described these next few years as the most painful years of his life. He was even tortured by his uncle! Once he ran away from his brutal uncle in the middle of the winter, with little clothes and no shoes on. As he finally reached his mothers and fathers house, 6-7 km away, he was once again abandoned. Actually he was sent back to his uncle immediately... Actually, I think I can see traces of this sad and brutal childhood through his whole life. And one interesting observation from his books, there are hardly any mothers in his books. And the mothers you find, and women in general, are often very complex...often, someone not trustworthy.
Three centres in one small town - The literary hero who is a racist and a traitor, the centre for the Sami and the International centre.
Could the Hamsun centre become an important place of pilgrimage in the future for the growing far right neo-Nazis across Europe? Or is it just a reminder to all of us that a creative genius can be blind and even a collaborator with evil. We like to say in our Institute that all human beings are capable of being both perpetrators and victims - even at the sametime.
Rolf's response to my musing's is instructive:
“I`m wondering, isn`t all this, the human capasity of being a perpetrator and a victim at the same time, also about knowledge and acknowledgment? Yes, Knut Hamsun was definitely both. He was also a litterary hero to our nation. It is contradictory, but all of it is true, and none of it can be denied. I believe that the Hamsun centre, as well as the Sami centre and the International centre, is unique and that it adds value to our healing work.
To me personally, as for many others, the history of Hamsun has been a very painful one. Perhaps we would have been better of if we just left him behind somewhere in our history, as someone to blame and to turn our backs to. To me, at some point, that was not an option.
It all changed when I discovered and realized that he was not a demon after all, but a victimized human being. When I realized this I understood I had to stand up against injustice, violation and abuse, especially against vulnerable children. Children should not be victimized, but be respected, cared for and loved”Can the International Centre do for the children of war and poverty what was never done for Knut Hamsun?
I could not imagine a museum like the Hamsun one being built in South Africa. Could you?
We are dreaming and planning for a collaboration between Hamarøy andthe Institute in Cape Town.
We have gifts for one another
ALL PICS BY Øyvind Olsen
