Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie by O. E. Rolvaag, translated from the Norwegian by Lincoln Colcord and the author
This is a book published in 1927. This is a book I should have read sooner. Was I asleep in literature class? Was this book ever assigned? Am I the only graduate who holds two degrees from a university founded by Norwegian Lutheran immigrants in 1890, who has never read this book? Am I the only grand daughter of Norwegian immigrants who has not read this book. This is a profound book, and I feel fortunate that I finally read it.
Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie begins near sunset on the North Dakota prairie, under, “Bright, clear sky over a plain so wide that the rim of the heavens cut down on it around the entire horizon …Bright, clear sky, today, tomorrow, and for all time to come.”
We meet the straggling, struggling caravan of Per Hansa with his family and all of their meager, earthly possessions moving west from Minnesota to Dakota Territory. They are traveling, slowly with difficulty “to build a home, to do something remarkable out there, which would become known far and wide.” “No lack of opportunity in that country,” Per had been told.
Joining him are Beret, his wife, the son Ole or Olemand, a very young child, Anna Marie and the son Hans Christian, whose everyday name was Store-Hans (meaning Big Hans). Their cow, Rose trailed behind.
The book is an unbelievable saga of human hardship, in a land that turns out to be as harsh as it is bountiful. It is a saga of life lived for decades in sod homes, always hoping that crops would produce enough money to build more. It is a saga of communities built on endless prairies, neighbors who steadfastly help each other, and neighbors who don’t. It is a saga of religious piety for some, and not for others. It is a story of men, who would sacrifice everything, even the well being of their wives and children, to make a new life in America. It is an immigrant story of Norwegians, those who chose the Midwest for their futures.
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” -Genesis vi:4
Judith Barker Kvinsland 