Johan Petter Falkberget

Johan Petter Falkberget (born September 30, 1879, near Røros, Norway—died April 5, 1967, Tyvol, near Røros) was a regional novelist of life in the east-central mountains of Norway.

The self-educated son of a miner, Falkberget himself worked in the copper mines from age 8 until he was 27, learning to write fiction at the same time. His novels about the mountain peasants, miners, and railway workers deal realistically with their hard lives, marginal culture, and antagonism to the more comfortable and prosperous valley settlers. One of his early works is Lisbet paa Jarnfjeld (1915; Lisbeth of Jarnfjeld), the psychological study of a mountain woman whose hard life leads to mental illness. His major works are set in the past. Den fjerde nattevakt (1923; The Fourth Night Watch) deals with life in Røros between 1807 and 1825. Christianus Sextus (1927–35), a trilogy set in the 18th century, dramatizes the history of a mine by that name. The novel’s action takes place after the Great Northern War (in which Russia, Denmark-Norway, and Saxony-Poland challenged Sweden’s supremacy), a postwar setting that forms a parallel to the post-World War I period in which the trilogy was written. According to one critic, the novel’s depiction of heroism and courage by the miners is matched by “the most moving portrait of a child in Norwegian literature.”

In 1940 Falkberget escaped the German occupation of Norway by walking to Sweden, carrying with him the manuscript that was to become his second trilogy, Nattens brød (1940–59; “Bread of the Night”). The title is a reference to the ore for which local farmers give up their independence when they begin to transport it for the Danish rulers of Norway. This clash between local tradition and foreign capital informs the work’s realism but also its romanticism in the author’s depiction of heroic Norwegian values. It has been called “a novel with the power of a myth.”

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