...century. investigations have shed valuable fight on such matters as Knut Hamsun's enthusiasm for National Socialism and the German occupation of Norway. Other corners of the field, however, especially some of those populated by Norwegians of conservative bent, remain tenebrous. Among the many litterateurs whose responses to the political currents accompanying rapid social change after 1900 have received little scholarly attention was Gabriel Scott (1874-1958), the prominent novelist, poet, dramatist, and author of children's books who enjoyed his greatest popularity in Norway during the second, third, and fourth decades of the century and many of whose works were translated into German and numerous other languages. Within the annals of Norwegian literature, his novella Kilden eller Brevet om fiskeren Markus [The Source or the Letter about Mark the Fisherman] is widely regarded as a classic, and two of his social reform novels from the late 1920s and the 1930s, namely Fant [Tramp] and De vergelose [The Defenseless], provided the basis for well-received feature films. The recrudescence of interest in Scott during the 1990s illuminated certain dimensions of his thought without, however, explaining his critical responses to Norwegian and foreign political currents.

That Scott's political views sometimes came to the fore in his literary production has been recognized since at least the 1920s. During the peak years of his popularity in Norway reviewers occasionally commented on the implicit socio-political dimensions of his works including how those elements intersected with the religious milieu from which Scott--whose father S. Hoist Jensen was a pastor in the Church of Norway--had been raised but from which he became alienated as a young adult. In a critique of his 1927 novel, Hyrden [The Shepherd], for example, in which a Lutheran pastor named Julius describes at great length tensions between himself and his parishioners, Harald Ophuus Devoid, himself a theologically

liberal clergyman in the state church, thought that "bokens egentlige tendens indvikles og forvirres ved at den samtidig er en socialt farvet, milioskildring, slegts-og traditionsbundet embedsmandsliv i konflikt med vort middelklasse--og bygdedemokrati" [the book's actual purpose is complicated and confused in that it is simultaneously a socially colored portrayal of a milieu, an ancestral and tradition-bound district governor's life in conflict with our middle class and rural democracy]. Extrapolating his remarks about Julius's local conflict to the broader scene of disputatious Norwegian Lutheranism generally, Devoid generalized that "dette overhode gjaelder hele vor kirkestrid" [this principally concerns our entire church's struggle] and that the latter was thus more than a matter of conflicting doctrinal views. Instead, "deter en teologisk utdannet prestestand i konflikt med vort demokratis laegmandsskjon og regjeringsvilje" [it is a theologically educated clergy in conflict with our democracy's secular opinion and the government's will]. This, he thought, was a valuable if overlooked lesson to be learned from a reading of Hyrden, and he encouraged his colleagues to heed it. "Det var meget at onske at yore prester ret skjonner den ring, og blir klar over sine arbeidsvilkaar og opgave uten at la sig forvirre, kujonere eller demagogisk forfore av disse forhold," [It was highly desirable that our clergy correctly understand the matter and realize the terms and responsibilities of their work without becoming confused, brow-beaten, or demagogically led astray by this relationship] he concluded. He acknowledged that the rapidly evolving social climate in which Christian ministry had to be done in Norway posed serious challenges but was convinced that they made the task all the more rewarding. Devoid adduced liturgical language to inspire them: "Sursum corda, fratres!" (Devold 584-5) [Lift up your hearts, brothers!] For the most part, however, scholarly commentary, both contemporary and retrospective, has either neglected or paid only scant attention to the political implications of Scott's literary production.

In her useful but very brief introduction to the subject, Writers and Politics in Modern Scandinavia, Janet Mawby touched on the Second World War and how some of the artists in question, such as Nordahl Grieg, Sigurd Hoel, and Kai Munk, reacted to National Socialism. On Gabriel Scott's political views, however, she shed no light (see Mawby). That Mawby neglected Scott is not surprising. The published scholarship pertaining to the man and his works is not at all commensurate with the popularity and quality of many of his works. Arne Beisland's Gabriel Scott: En Sorlandsdikter [A Poet of the Southland], which Gyldendal Norsk Forlag published in 1949 to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of his birth and, presumably, to stimulate sales of his selected works, is, by his prefatorial admission, not a scholarly work. Truls Erik Dahl's biography of Scott, privately published in 1998, is quite unreliable and makes few pretences to the higher flights of literary or historical analysis (see Hale "Truls Etik Dahl"). Since its establishment in 1997, the Gabriel Scott Selskap has advanced popular awareness of his literary corpus without, to date, shedding significant light on his political views. Indicative of the state of Scott scholarship in this regard is Dahl's assertion that "ikke bare Scott, men de aller fleste norske kunstnere var sterkt knyttet til 'Germania' ... og for mange tok det lang tid a forsta hva som virkelig var i ferd med a skje i Tyskland" [not only Scott, but the vast majority of Norwegian artists were strongly tied to "Germania" ... and it took a long time for many to understand what was really about to happen in Germany]. This generalization is unempirical and ignores the staunch opposition of many Norwegian litterateurs, especially those of Marxist bent, to the unfolding of National Socialism in Germany and its echo in Quisling's Nasjonal Samling, founded in 1933.

In one of the few scholarly efforts to analyze Scott's political views, a brief article published in 1985, Knud G. Knudsen asked, "Var Gabriel Scott reaksjonaer?" [Was Gabriel Scott a reactionary?]. However, in this three-page essay he failed to establish an adequate conceptual framework for his investigation by defining that pivotal term, and he failed to consider most of Scott's fictional and nonfictional publications or his correspondence in which political views are clearly expressed. Instead, Knudsen merely quoted Waldemar Brogger's entry about Scott in the Norsk biografisk leksikon concerning the alleged influence of the First World War on Scott's social ethical thinking and Arne Beisland's unreliable biography of 1949 in which the ideational continuity of the pre- and post-war phases of his literary output is stressed. Knudsen himself thought that in the publications after 1914 one could find "en dreining mot reaksjon pa tids-og samfunns utviklinga" [a turn toward the reactionary in the period and society's developments]. What that implied, however, and how it deserved to be called reactionary are not apparent from the sparse evidence adduced. Knudsen mentioned, for example, the novel of 1938, De vergelose [The Defenseless], in which Scott called attention to problems in the administration of children's homes, but that work is essentially conventional social criticism that could have been written by an observer with virtually any political views. Knudsen also asserted in broad terms that in response to the ideational crisis caused by the horrors inflicted on Europe by the 1914-1918 war Scott espoused "nestekjaerlighet, menneskelighet og inderlighet som det som kan vaere med pa a redde verden" [neighborly love, humaneness, and sincerity as that which can contribute to saving the world] and that "flere av Scotts personer finer erstatning for de verdier det moderne samfunn har tapt, for verdiforfallet, i filosofi og mystikk" (Knudsen 12-3, 48) [several of Scott's characters find compensation for the values that modern society has lost because of moral decline in philosophy and mysticism].

Furthermore Scott's relationship to the Third Reich has been noted but never explored. In Nazismen og norsk litteratur, Bjarte Birkeland observed that numerous Norwegians of Scott's generation expressed varying degrees of admiration for Germany during the 1930s while others, chiefly on the political Left, found the Hitlerite regime abhorrent from the outset. "Ei anna sak er at fleire forfattarar--som Barbara Ring, Gabriel Scott og den unge Waldemar Brogger--kunne skrive bokmeldingar, debattinnlegg og reisebrev, som lesne i ettertid syner ein naiv godvilje andsynes utviklinga i Hitler-Tyskland" [43] (Another matter is that several authors, such as Barbara Ring, Gabriel Scott, and the young Waldemar Brogger, could write book reviews, debate pieces, and travelogues, which in retrospect reveal a naive goodwill towards developments in Hitler's Germany.) Birkeland did not indicate where Scott had written about the...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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