Marie Hamsun
Encyclopedia
Marie Hamsun (19 November 1881 - 4 August 1969) was a Norwegian actress and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

.

Marie Andersen was born in Elverum
Elverum
is a town and municipality in Hedmark county, Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Østerdalen. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Elverum...

, Hedmark
Hedmark
is a county in Norway, bordering Sør-Trøndelag, Oppland and Akershus. The county administration is in Hamar.Hedmark makes up the northeastern part of Østlandet, the southeastern part of the country. It includes a long part of the borderline with Sweden, Dalarna County and Värmland County. The...

, Norway. She was the eldest child in an affluent family. In 1897 the family moved to Christiania
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

, where his father was involved in the property trade for twenty years until he bought the farm in Åneby
Åneby
Åneby is a village in the municipality of Nittedal, Norway. Its population is 1356 ....

 in Nittedal
Nittedal
Nittedal is a municipality in Akershus county, Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Romerike. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Rotnes....

. She attended Ragna Nielsen's private school, where in 1901 she took final exams. Then she worked for three years as a governess and teacher. The Norwegian actor Society headed by Dore Lavik took her in as an actress. In the following years she toured around in Norway, until she was hired as a student at the National Theatre in 1907. In 1909, she became the second wife of the noted author, Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun was a Norwegian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was praised by King Haakon VII of Norway as Norway's soul....

, with whom she had four children, sons Tore and Arild and daughters Elinor and Cecilia.

She wrote two collections of poems and several children's books. Hamsun's work has been translated to several other languages, including Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, Latvian
Latvian language
Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...

 and Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

. She also published two biographies about her life with Knut Hamsun: Regnbuen (The Rainbow) (1953) and Under gullregnen (1959).

Marie Hamsun shared her husband's political views, and her support for the Third Reich and the German occupation forces during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 exceeded that of her husband. She was a member of Vidkun Quisling
Vidkun Quisling
Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling was a Norwegian politician. On 9 April 1940, with the German invasion of Norway in progress, he seized power in a Nazi-backed coup d'etat that garnered him international infamy. From 1942 to 1945 he served as Minister-President, working with the occupying...

's Nazi party Nasjonal Samling, and she frequently toured German cities reciting the works of Knut Hamsun during the early years of the war. In 1947, she was sentenced to three years of hard labor for treason, but due to a general amnesty she was jailed for only 9 months.
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