Norwegian literature

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Norwegian literature is literature composed in Norway or by Norwegian people. The history of Norwegian literature starts with the pagan Eddaic poems and skaldic verse of the 9th and 10th centuries with poets such as Bragi Boddason and Eyvindr Skáldaspillir. The arrival of Christianity around the year 1000 brought Norway into contact with European medieval learning, hagiography and history writing. Merged with native oral tradition and Icelandic influence, this was to flower into an active period of literature production in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Major works of that period include Historia Norwegie, Thidreks saga and Konungs skuggsjá.

The period from the 14th century to the 19th is considered a Dark Age in the nation's literature though Norwegian-born writers such as Peder Claussøn Friis, Dorothe Engelbretsdatter and Ludvig Holberg contributed to the common literature of Denmark–Norway. With the advent of nationalism and the struggle for independence in the early 19th century, a new period of national literature emerged. In a flood of nationalistic romanticism, the great four emerged: Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Alexander Kielland, and Jonas Lie. The dramatist Henrik Wergeland was the most-influential author of the period while the later works of Henrik Ibsen were to earn Norway a key place in Western European literature.

Modernist literature was introduced to Norway through the literature of Knut Hamsun and Sigbjørn Obstfelder in the 1890s. In the 1930s Emil Boyson, Gunnar Larsen, Haakon Bugge Mahrt, Rolf Stenersen and Edith Øberg were among the Norwegian authors who experimented with prose modernism. The literature in the first years after the Second World War was characterized by a long series of documentary reports from people who had been in German custody, or who had participated in the resistance efforts during the occupation. In the 20th century notable Norwegian writers include the two Nobel Prize-winning authors, Knut Hamsun and Sigrid Undset. The period after 1965 represented a sharp expansion of market for Norwegian fiction and the 1970s produced both politicization and empowerment of Norwegian authors. The 1980s has been labeled the "fantasy decade" in Norwegian literature.