The 900 year old man.

I finally finished Knut Hamsun's epic work Markens Grode or The Growth of The Soil, as is its translated title. I received this book from my grandmother for Christmas after multiple quite obvious hints that this book was at the top of my wishlist. Why it then would take me until now to read it is just life, more importantly I could not be more happy that I finally sat down, devoted the time, and experienced these pages.

The book does exactly what it is most famous for, namely celebrate nature and the man of nature. Hamsun's stripped style of writing and strong voice does this so effectively that even I was mourning the loss of a simpler time were materialism and capitalism did not disrupt our everyday life of reaping and harvesting. Most fetching though, is the crude quietness of this book that creates an atmosphere where emotions are not spoken, but only felt; and moreover, petty issues and our current lives' more common emotions such as jealousy or insecurity are completely circumcised from the characters lives. This is a book about survival in its simplest form, it is about kindness, duty, gratitude, hard work and love. And not the mushy Hollywood love either, but the love you learn to recognize for people that are there for you when you need them and that simply "aren't that bad". It is the perfect reminder of how we may be most happy doing the best we can and making the most out of what we have, without wasting time looking for the next, best and newest. Best of all, Hamsun's famous work manages to be humorous, mythical and historical at the same time.

It is refreshing to read these pages that are so undeniably a portrayal of human nature without the fuzz, diamonds or fancy emotional outbursts. I especially appreciated the main character of the book: Isak. While the world around him evolves and people are furiously building a world where the farmer is out-of-date, Isak doesn't allow this to change his way of life. And has he not discovered the secret of survival, does he not have anything he would ever need right there in the woods of Norway? It becomes abundantly clear that he does, and if I ever doubted that fact, he most certainly did not.