Alexander Kielland

Alexander Lange Kielland (Stavanger, 1849 - Bergen, 1906) was one of the most prominent Norwegian writers of the nineteenth century. He wrote in Norwegian at a time when the country's literature was searching for a voice of its own after long decades of cultural dependence on Denmark. He is counted among the so-called "Four Greats" of Norwegian letters, alongside Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Jonas Lie, which secures his place in the history of the nation's literature.

He was born in Stavanger, a port city in southwestern Norway, into a family of prosperous merchants. Despite his comfortable background, he showed an early sympathy for the less fortunate, a attitude that appears in his writing and in the way he treated workers when he later ran a factory. That critical eye made him a sharp observer of his society, especially of the hypocrisies of bourgeois life and the clergy.

His output includes novels, short stories, plays and essays. Among his best-known novels are Garman & Worse, Skipper Worse and Gift. In Gift he mocks the way Norwegian teachers insisted on Latin, portraying a boy who recites grammar on his deathbed. Together with Fortuna and St. Hans Fest it forms a trilogy in which he exposes the double standards of part of the clergy. His satirical comedies, such as Tre par and Professoren, were also well received.

He almost stopped writing fiction in 1891, and critics have debated why. Some argue that his realism left him ill-equipped for the neo-romantic currents that gained ground at the end of the century; the more probable explanation is that he turned his energy to politics. That same year he became mayor of Stavanger, and in 1902 he was appointed governor of the Møre og Romsdal county.

His health was troubled by obesity, which his biographer Tor Obrestad links to his death. He suffered several heart attacks without managing to curb his appetite. He died in Bergen in 1906.

His legacy lies mainly in the social conscience of late nineteenth-century Norwegian literature and in his role in widening the realist repertoire of the language.