Background

Herbjorg Wassmo was born on December 6, 1942, in Myre i Vesteralen, Norway.

Education

Herbjorg Wassmo studied literature at the University of Tromso.

Career

Herbjorg Wassmo is considered “the most popular serious writer in Norway today. She has established herself as a commercially successful novelist in Scandinavia as well as throughout much of Europe. Her first two books were volumes of poetry, Vingeslag (“Wingbeat,” 1976) and Flotid (“Flood Tide,” 1977).

After a hiatus of some years, Wassmo returned to poetry with the 1991 publication of Lite gront bilde i stor bla ramme, a book that had been a long time in the creation. It originated with a group of poems the author had written for a television nature program; added to them were song lyrics and photographs. The book describes, verbally and visually, the childhood of a young girl growing up by the sea, as she examines nature and wonders about her own selfhood and related large issues.

Wassmo successfully turned to prose fiction in 1981. Her first novel, Huset med den blinde glassveranda, was a critical and popular hit in Norway and was translated into English as The House with the Blind Glass Windows in 1987; it has been translated into at least eight languages. The first volume of a trilogy, the novel tells the story of Tora, a Norwegian girl growing up in the postwar years in bitter circumstances: her father was a German soldier with whom her mother, a withdrawn individual, had a brief liaison. Tormented by fellow islanders because of her origin, and sexually abused by her stepfather, a crippled ex-soldier, Tora slowly learns to trust herself and the world with the aid of a new family on her northern island, the family’s deaf-mute son, and a kindly Jewish merchant.

The sequel to The House with the Blind Glass Windows, Del stumme rommet (“The Mute Room") was published in Norway in 1983 and consolidated its author’s success. This volume takes Tora into adolescence and early womanhood: helped by an aunt and uncle, she leaves her native village and obtains an education in a larger town, while gradually learning to overcome her sexual inhibitions.

The third volume of Wassmo’s trilogy, Hudlos himmel (“Naked Sky”), was published in 1988. A grimmer work, it describes Tora's mental breakdown and eventual suicide after the loss of a stillborn child who was conceived as the result of rape by her alcoholic stepfather.

Wassmo began a second series of novels with Dina's Book (1991). This five hundred-page saga, set in nineteenth-century Norway, relates the story of Dina, a young woman who, at the age of five, accidentally caused her mother’s death, with warping psychological consequences to herself. She grows up beautiful, strong-willed, wild, but also ruthless, unforgiving, and overcontrolling. Marrying a rich man, she takes over his estates upon his mysterious death and exerts a dominant influence on those around her, until she becomes obsessed with her love for a Russian whose powerful will matches hers. After being translated into English in 1994, the novel won applause in the United States as well.

A sequel, Lykkens sonn (“Son of Happiness”), was published in Norwegian in 1993. The protagonist is Benjamin, Dina’s son. As a child, he sees his mother shoot her lover to death; he is left with a guilty conscience by proxy, and he is physically separated from his mother when she sends him away to school and, herself, flees to Berlin. Benjamin, for much of the rest of the novel, searches for his mother both literally and, in the guise of his romantic interests, metaphorically, until his girlfriend dies in childbirth and his mother. Dina returns to visit him.

Critics felt there were indications that Wassmo intended to follow Lykkens sonn with at least one more novel in the same series; her next book-length fiction publication, however, was a set of novellas titled Reiser: fire fortellinger (“Journeys”).

In addition to fiction, Wassmo has also written nonfiction. In 1984 she authored a well-regarded documentary book. Veien a ga (“The Road to Take”). This is the story of a Norwegian family who, threatened by the father’s involvement with the Resistance as a radio dispatcher, fled from Norway to neutral Sweden in 1944, traveling through a harsh, wintry landscape with little food or clothing, no prior experience of the wilderness, and constant fear of Nazi patrols.

Achievements

• Herbjorg Wassmo is a recipient of a number of awards and honors, including Havmannprisen 2006 and Hedersprisen under Brageprisen 2010. She was made a Commander of the Order of St. Olav in 2007, and a Knight of the French Order of Arts And Letters in 2011. Wassmo's 1989 novel, Dinas bok (Dina's Book), was made into a film titled I Am Dina in 2002, starring Maria Bonnevie and Gérard Depardieu.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Dina's Book

    (Set in Norway in the mid-nineteenth century, Dina’s Book ...)

    1989
  • The House With the Blind Glass Windows

    (Tora, a young Norwegian girl, faces increasing danger fro...)

    1981

Connections

Wassmo lives in Harstad and has two children.

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 164
  1998