



Produced by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, Josephine Paolucci and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.





GROWTH

OF THE

SOIL



Translated from the Norwegian of

KNUT HAMSUN

by W.W. WORSTER


[ORIGINAL TITLE "MARKENS GRODE"]


1917




Chapter I


The long, long road over the moors and up into the forest--who trod it
into being first of all? Man, a human being, the first that came here.
There was no path before he came. Afterward, some beast or other,
following the faint tracks over marsh and moorland, wearing them
deeper; after these again some Lapp gained scent of the path, and took
that way from field to field, looking to his reindeer. Thus was made
the road through the great Almenning--the common tracts without an
owner; no-man's-land.

The man comes, walking toward the north. He bears a sack, the first
sack, carrying food and some few implements. A strong, coarse fellow,
with a red iron beard, and little scars on face and hands; sites of
old wounds--were they gained in toil or fight? Maybe the man has been
in prison, and is looking for a place to hide; or a philosopher,
maybe, in search of peace. This or that, he comes; the figure of a man
in this great solitude. He trudges on; bird and beast are silent all
about him; now and again he utters a word or two; speaking to himself.
"Eyah--well, well...."--so he speaks to himself. Here and there, where
the moors give place to a kindlier spot, an open space in the midst of
the forest, he lays down the sack and goes exploring; after a while
he returns, heaves the sack to his shoulder again, and trudges on. So
through the day, noting time by the sun; night falls, and he throws
himself down on the heather, resting on one arm.

A few hours' rest, and he is on the move again: "Eyah,
well...."--moving northward again, noting time by the sun; a meal of
barley cakes and goats' milk cheese, a drink of water from the stream,
and on again. This day too he journeys, for there are many kindly
spots in the woods to be explored. What is he seeking? A place, a
patch of ground? An emigrant, maybe, from the homestead tracts; he
keeps his eyes alert, looking out; now and again he climbs to the top
of a hill, looking out. The sun goes down once more.

He moves along the western side of a valley; wooded ground, with leafy
trees among the spruce and pine, and grass beneath. Hours of this, and
twilight is falling, but his ear catches the faint purl of running
water, and it heartens him like the voice of a living thing. He climbs
the <DW72>, and sees the valley half in darkness below; beyond, the sky
to the south. He lies down to rest.

The morning shows him a range of pasture and woodland. He moves down,
and there is a green hillside; far below, a glimpse of the stream,
and a hare bounding across. The man nods his head, as it were
approvingly--the stream is not so broad but that a hare may cross it
at a bound. A white grouse sitting close upon its nest starts up at
his feet with an angry hiss, and he nods again: feathered game and
fur--a good spot this. Heather, bilberry, and cloudberry cover the
ground; there are tiny ferns, and the seven-pointed star flowers of
the winter-green. Here and there he stops to dig with an iron tool,
and finds good mould, or peaty soil, manured with the rotted wood and
fallen leaves of a thousand years. He nods, to say that he has found
himself a place to stay and live: ay, he will stay here and live. Two
days he goes exploring the country round, returning each evening to
the hillside. He sleeps at night on a bed of stacked pine; already he
feels at home here, with a bed of pine beneath an overhanging rock.

The worst of his task had been to find the place; this no-man's place,
but his. Now, there was work to fill his days. He started at once,
stripping birch bark in the woods farther off, while the sap was still
in the trees. The bark he pressed and dried, and when he had gathered
a heavy load, carried it all the miles back to the village, to be sold
for building. Then back to the hillside, with new sacks of food and
implements; flour and pork, a cooking-pot, a spade--out and back along
the way he had come, carrying loads all the time. A born carrier of
loads, a lumbering barge of a man in the forest--oh, as if he loved
his calling, tramping long roads and carrying heavy burdens; as if
life without a load upon one's shoulders were a miserable thing, no
life for him.

One day he came up with more than the load he bore; came leading three
goats in a leash. He was proud of his goats as if they had been horned
cattle, and tended them kindly. Then came the first stranger passing,
a nomad Lapp; at sight of the goats, he knew that this was a man who
had come to stay, and spoke to him.

"You going to live here for good?"

"Ay," said the man.

"What's your name?"

"Isak. You don't know of a woman body anywhere'd come and help?"

"No. But I'll say a word of it to all I meet."

"Ay, do that. Say I've creatures here, and none to look to them."

The Lapp went on his way. Isak--ay, he would say a word of that. The
man on the hillside was no runaway; he had told his name. A runaway?
He would have been found. Only a worker, and a hardy one. He set about
cutting winter fodder for his goats, clearing the ground, digging a
field, shifting stones, making a wall of stones. By the autumn he had
built a house for himself, a hut of turf, sound and strong and warm;
storms could not shake it, and nothing could burn it down. Here was
a home; he could go inside and shut the door, and stay there; could
stand outside on the door-slab, the owner of that house, if any should
pass by. There were two rooms in the hut; for himself at the one end,
and for his beasts at the other. Farthest in, against the wall of
rock, was the hayloft. Everything was there.

Two more Lapps come by, father and son. They stand resting with both
hands on their long staves, taking stock of the hut and the clearing,
noting the sound of the goat-bells up on the hillside.

"_Goddag_" say the Lapps. "And here's fine folk come to live." Lapps
talk that way, with flattering words.

"You don't know of any woman hereabouts to help?" says Isak, thinking
always of but one thing.

"Woman to help? No. But we'll say a word of it."

"Ay, if you'd be so good. That I've a house and a bit of ground here,
and goats, but no woman to help. Say that."

Oh, he had sought about for a woman to help each time he had been down
to the village with his loads of bark, but there was none to be found.
They would look at him, a widow or an old unmarried one or so, but all
afraid to offer, whatever might be in their minds. Isak couldn't tell
why. Couldn't tell why? Who would go as help to live with a man in the
wilds, ever so many miles away--a whole day's journey to the nearest
neighbour? And the man himself was no way charming or pleasant by his
looks, far from it; and when he spoke it was no tenor with eyes to
heaven, but a coarse voice, something like a beast's.

Well, he would have to manage alone.

In winter, he made great wooden troughs, and sold them in the village,
carrying sacks of food and tools back through the snow; hard days when
he was tied to a load. There were the goats, and none to look to them;
he could not be away for long. And what did he do? Need made him wise;
his brain was strong and little used; he trained it up to ever more
and more. His first way was to let the goats loose before starting off
himself, so that they could get a full feed among the undergrowth
in the woods. But he found another plan. He took a bucket, a great
vessel, and hung it up by the river so that a single drop fell in at a
time, taking fourteen hours to fill it. When it was