Sigurd Hoel

Sigurd Hoel (born December 14, 1890, Nord-Odal, Norway—died October 14, 1960, Oslo) was a novelist who is considered most representative of the interwar generation of fiction writers in Norway. He was the first Norwegian writer of fiction to be directly influenced by psychoanalysis.

Hoel discontinued his training as a mathematics teacher when he won a Scandinavian prize for a short story. His first great success was a satirical novel, Syndere i sommersol (1927; Sinners in Summertime), in which he ridiculed the popular use of psychoanalytic terms. The direct influence of Freudian theory on Hoel’s works is apparent in such novels as En dag i oktober (1931; One Day in October), in which the inhabitants of an Oslo apartment building are deeply affected by the tragic life and death of a fellow lodger. In this novel Hoel made extended use of interior monologues. Hoel was a close friend of the Austrian psychologist Wilhelm Reich during Reich’s residency in Norway in 1934–39.

In Møte ved milepelen (1947; Meeting at the Milestone), Hoel attempted to attribute the compulsive tyranny of Nazism to the restrictions of childhood. Veien til verdens ende (1933; “Road to the World’s End”), a novel of childhood, proved the best-loved of his works in Norway.

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One of Hoel’s most important works is the late novel Trollringen (1958; The Troll Circle), about a rural community’s scapegoat who is wrongly convicted of his wife’s death partly as a result of his trying to introduce new agricultural methods. Trollringen, as one critic remarked, combines a “masterly use of image and symbol” with caustic social analysis and fine psychological portraits.

Hoel was also an editor for one of Norway’s leading publishers, where he brought to fruition an excellent series of contemporary foreign fiction in translation. For four decades he was the country’s preeminent literary and cultural critic, and his essays were published in several volumes, including Mellom barken og veden (1952; “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”) and Tanker om norsk diktning (1955; “Thoughts About Norwegian Literature.”)