Der natur og historie møtes

Om stedet i norsk topografisk lyrikk

Abstract

Where Nature and History Meet: On Place in Norwegian Topographical Poetry

This paper examines Norwegian topographical poetry, focusing on the underlying concepts of nature and history, and their function in the literary description of places. It considers literature’s capacity to establish places by attaching individual as well as collective stories to specific sites. To this end, the article provides a glimpse of national romantic poetry by Henrik Ibsen and Andreas Munch. These works naturalise both history and nation while recounting the story of a place. Incontrast, Erlend O. Nødtvedt’s Harudes is interpreted  as a recent example of topographical poetry that presents place as a multifaceted palimpsest of literary, historical and cultural traditions only temporarily attached to a site.