editor rating 1 vote: 
Hard times and poverty in rural Norway, early 1800’s. Based loosely on some poor folks who had the misfortune to be my ancestors. One of them stole some potatoes and other food to feed her family of seven. For this she received 8 months in prison, where my great-grandfather was born. These are the facts. The rest, as they say, is fiction.
Tags: family · historical fiction · literary fiction · online novels · poverty
Listed: Mar 3, 2009
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“Anna Larsdattar: Hunger in the Dale” is the story of a farmer’s family in Norway at the beginning of the 19th century. Mari Nelsdattar is a skilled midwife but at 47 she’s having problems with her own, dangerously-late pregnancy. A recent widow with 3 small children, she’s at the mercy of the laws of the local constable, the prejudices of the priest, and the failure of the potato crop.
The writing is solid but sometimes becomes a bit scholarly for historical fiction. The story begins with two midwives discussing Mari’s difficult birth and continues to follow Mari and her children as they face each challenge. While the story is interesting, the flow is often interrupted by paragraphs of background information about Norway, the local laws, or a particular religious group. There are even footnotes explaining the Norwegian terms. The information is useful and adds to the overall picture of life in this time period, but the reader often loses the sense of being in the moment. The writing is at its best when the characters are speaking, as the dialog brings the reader back into their lives.
It’s a story of quiet desperation, small gestures, faith, and survival. Life is hard but people are willing to share what little they have and help each other. Everyone knows that a family’s fortune can change with a single bad crop, an illness, or by belonging to the wrong religious sect. For Mari, the death of her husband when her sons are too young to work the farm is a disaster. The two authority figures, the constable and the priest, are stern and unforgiving in comparison with the gentle farmers and their wives.
If you enjoy historical fiction and would like to learn about life in Norway in the 19th century, you should find this story interesting. The story is fairly slow, quiet and mostly sad, but the characters are worth knowing. Mari is a strong heroine meeting the challenges of her life with grace. You get a strong sense of what the lives of the people were like and what a difference small things made to them.
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