Olav Duun

Ole Julius Duun was born on November 21, 1876, on the island of Jøa in Namdalen. He worked as a fisherman and farmer before graduating from teacher's college in Levanger, subsequently teaching school in Holmestrand for nearly thirty years while writing prolifically.

Duun wrote in the Namdal dialect of Nynorsk, combining the terse dramatic restraint of the Icelandic sagas with modern psychological insight. His monumental six-volume cycle Juvikfolke (The People of Juvika, 1918–1923) follows four generations of a coastal farming dynasty as ancient blood-feud instincts give way to moral introspection and sacrifice. He was widely considered Norway's strongest candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature throughout the 1920s and 1930s.