Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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69 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Homesteader's Guide to Mysteries of the Universe, March 13, 2000
Rolvaag's classic is a treasure. I feel cheated that I didn't discover until I was 48 years old. On the other hand, a half a century of life's experience only enhances one's enjoyment of the book. Rolvaag's characters are unbelievably rich and psychologically deep: Beret, the troubled homesteader's wife, Pers Hansa, her resourceful and cunning husband, their solid neighbor Han Olsa and his able and gentle wife Sorrine, the ebullient and politically crafty Syvert, and his wife Kjersti, who longs for a child she will never have but adopts her little community instead. These core characters and many others give lessons in the mysteries of the Universe, not the least of which are the fine line between piety and insanity, the contradictory emotions that form the bond between a mother and child, and man's lust for a place of his own. Ole Rolvaag was quiet professor at St. Olaf's college with a typical emigrant's bio, but in that mind of his, wonderful and horrible tales raged that invested the flat prairies of the Dakota Territory with fearful storms, mischievous trolls, plagues of Biblical proportion and daily struggles of a man and a woman in conflict in a land that shows no mercy. I understand that this book is sometimes assigned as mandatory reading for high schoolers. In a way that's a shame; this is a book for grownups who know where the characters have been and are going.
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52 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An immigrant classic, March 18, 2002
O.E. Rolvaag's epic GIANTS IN THE EARTH is truly an American classic, especially for those of Norwegian or Scandinavian descent or those who've lived in the Great Plains. It seems to be a true description of the life the early settlers lived, the desperation of opressive freedom, and the claustrophobic effect of too much open space. Per Hansa, the protagonist of our story, moves his family from a fishing village in Norway to the plains of the Dakota Territory in the last part of the 19th century. They are homesteaders, the people who settled the untamed prairie and bound themselves to it, sometimes at great personal cost. Rolvaag brilliantly describes both the psychological effect of early prairie life and the Norwegian immigrant culture of the time. Being a new land, there were new challenges, new ideas, and new opportunities. In Per Hansa, Rolvaag invents a character that displays the passion and drive of the early settlers. His wife, Beret, like so many wives of the time, follows him with little idea of the hardships and, unfortunately, none of the psychological tools to deal with them. Their neighbors are wonderfully crafted: Tonesten, the whiner; Kjersti, his strong, capable, disrespectful wife; Hans Ola, the solid, dependable Scandinavian whose success is not so much from following his dreams as it is making no mistakes. One comes to love the settlers even as they deal with squatters, locusts, sod houses, and the endless winter of the northern Plains. Midwestern Americans of Scandinavian descent will know that this is our story - our great-grandparents and great-great grandparents were contemporaries of Per Hansa and Beret. Rolvaag should know this story - he himself was an immigrant and lived in Northfield, Minnesota for many years. The book was originally written in Norwegian and published in Norway, so in translation some idioms and cultural forms are hard to understand, but the translators and editors of the current text do a fine job with footnotes and introductory material.
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35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THEY CAME...THEY SAW...THEY CONQUERED..., January 24, 2004
This is the first in a trilogy of books about the Norwegian settlement of the Dakota Territory. The second book is titled, " Peder Victorious", and the third and last book is titled, "Their Fathers' God." The author, a Norwegian who emigrated to the United States in 1896 and eventually became a professor at St. Olaf's College, wrote it in Norwegian, but it is every bit as American as apple pie.This is a beautifully written, lyrical book about the experiences of the early Norwegians who settled in the vast prairie of the Dakota Territory during the latter half of the nineteenth century. It speaks of their isolation and desolation, as well as of the hardships inherent in pioneering so far West with so little resources at hand with which to do so. Dependent solely upon their inner resources, hard work, ingenuity, and whatever goods they had managed to haul with them, these peasant, would-be-farmers from Norway would be the stuff of which this country was made. Their resilience in the face of relentless hardship, adversity, and deprivation is stunning, as is their belief in a better life. The story focuses on a small group of Norwegians who traveled together from the same small fishing hamlet in Norway and formed a settlement. Pioneers, they paved the way for those who were yet to come. The author details their trials and tribulations, with the focal figure of this group being an individual by the name of Per Hansa, who arrived in the vast prairie of the Dakota territory with his wife, Beret, and their three children. Yet, despite these central characters, all that happens revolves around the land and the elements that sustain it and drain it from season to season. It is Per Hansa, however, who, perhaps, best epitomizes the enterprising spirit of the first settlers to the Dakota Territory, while his wife, Beret, represents those whose coping mechanisms were less able to make a smooth transition to their new environs. Per Hansa, bursting with energy and enthusiasm, is a man who thinks out of the box and refuses to let the elements get the best of him. He is a natural leader upon whom the others rely, a symbol of the pioneering spirit that revolutionized this country and made it great. Beret, on the other hand, symbolizes those who see a relentless uphill fight to try to make something out of seemingly nothing. She fails to see the beauty around her, seeing only the stillness, the isolation, and what she perceives as the interminable loneliness. Therein lies the heart of the dichotomy in their relationship, as Per Hansa sees his cup as half full, while Beret sees hers as half empty. Yet, despite Per Hansa's joy in the land, there is an underlying bittersweet moroseness that permeates the book that serves to underscore the great sacrifice that these early pioneers had to make in order for their settlement of the Great Plains of the Dakota Territory to work. It is grounded in an understanding by the author of the Norwegian immigrant culture and experience. It is a book that is brimming with feeling and written by an author who had the soul of a poet. Those who have read and enjoyed the quartet of books written by Swedish author, Vilhelm Moberg, about the early Swedish settlers of Minnesota, will likewise enjoy this book, as will all those who love lyrically written historical fiction. I very much look forward to reading the remaining two books in this trilogy.
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