Ole Edvart Rolvaag
Selected Bibliography
Giants in the Earth (1927)
Peder Victorious: A Tale of the Pioneers Twenty Years Later (1929)
Pure Gold (1930)
Their Fathers’ God (1931)
The Third Life of Per Smevik (1971)
When the Wind is in the South and Other Stories (1984)
The Boat of Longing (1985)
Ole Edvart Rolvaag (April 22, 1876-November 5, 1931) immigrated to the United States in 1896 after working as a fisherman in Norway. He earned a B.A. and M.A. from St. Olaf College and was a professor of Norwegian language and literature there from 1906-31. Rolvaag worked to preserve and enrich Norwegian cultural heritage and helped found the Society for Norwegian Language and Culture and the Norwegian-American Historical Association. In 1926, the king of Norway knighted Ole Rolvaag, and St. Olaf College created a literary award named after him.
Rolvaag authored Norwegian language textbooks and novels, essays, and poems about the Norwegian-American immigrant experience. His novels, Giants in the Earth and Peder Victorious, originally written in Norwegian, were published in English translation. They received international acclaim as accounts of immigrant pioneer life on the Dakota prairies in the 1870s. He is also the author of The Boat of Longing.
More information on Ole Edvart Rolvaag from the Minnesota Historical Society.