Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie

Fortælling om norske nykommere i Amerika #1 & 2

by O.E. Rølvaag, Allan C. Carlson (other)

Giants in the Earth (Norwegian: Verdens Grøde) is a novel by Norwegian-American author Ole Edvart Rølvaag. First published in Norway as two books in 1924 and 1925, the author collaborated with Minnesotan Lincoln Colcord on the English translation.

The novel follows a Norwegian family's struggles as they try to make a new life as pioneers in the Dakota territory. Rølvaag is interested in psychology and the human cost of empire building, at a time when other writers focused on the glamor and romance of the West. The book reflects his personal experiences as a settler as well as the immigrant homesteader experience of his wife’s family. Both the grim realities of pioneering and the gloomy fatalism of the Norse mind are captured in depictions of snow storms, locusts, poverty, hunger, loneliness, homesickness, the difficulty of fitting into a new culture, and the estrangement of immigrant children who grow up in a new land. It is a novel at once palpably European and distinctly American.

Giants in the Earth was turned into an opera by Douglas Moore and Arnold Sundgaard; it won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1951.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics, Book Club, Literature, Historical, Novels

456 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1925

About the author

Ole Edvart Rølvaag was born in the family's cottage in a small fishing village on the island of Dønna, in the far southern district of Nordland county, Norway. Dønna, one of the largest islands on the northern coast of Norway, is situated about five miles from the Arctic Circle. He was born with the name Ole Edvart Pedersen, one of seven children of Peder Benjamin Jakobsen and Ellerine Pedersdatter Vaag. The settlement where he was born had no official name, but was referred to as Rølvaag, the name of a narrow bay on the northwestern point of the island where the fishermen kept their boats. At 14 years of age Rølvaag joined his father and brothers in the Lofoten fishing grounds. Rølvaag lived there until he was 20 years of age, and the impressions he received during the days of his childhood and his young manhood endured with him throughout his life.[2]

An uncle who had emigrated to America sent him a ticket in the summer of 1896, and he traveled to Union County, South Dakota to work as a farmhand. He settled in Elk Point, South Dakota, working as a farmhand until 1898. With the help of his pastor, Rølvaag enrolled in Augustana Academy in Canton, South Dakota where he graduated in 1901. He earned a bachelor's degree from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota in 1905, and a master's degree from the same institution in 1910. He also had studied for some time at the University of Oslo.

Reviews

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread

Published in English in 1927, this is my favorite novel about the lives of the pioneers who struggled to survive life on the frontier. I have read it at least four times, but had never reviewed it because I knew it wouldn't be easy. Finally, I have, and I was right; it wasn't easy. There is so much more that I wanted to say about the book, but I decided to lay out the conflict between Beret and Per Hansa and leave it to the reader to learn how it all turns out.

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“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bear children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” – Genesis vi:4

“The frontier is hard on women and cattle.” – Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail

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In his story of four Norwegian families who migrated to southeastern Dakota Territory in the 1870’s, O.E. Rolvaag was not interested in how the American West was conquered as a result of manifest destiny. His interest lay in the role that psychology played in the lives of settlers living in such a remote, and some would say, desolate, grasslands region. In other words, his main concern was the human cost of the conquest.

The reactions of his two main protagonists to settling down in an area so unlike their native Norway could not have been more different.

Per Hansa, the husband, was an intelligent man blessed with a strong will, who was imbued with an attitude of buoyant optimism and a burning ambition. He, who had been a fisherman in Norway, was a natural pioneer. He could not believe that he could be so fortunate as to be able to homestead 160 acres of rich, fertile land and that after paying a small filing fee and “proving up” his claim, the farm would be his. And since there were no other settlers nearby other than the three families who had made the migration with him, Per Hansa dreamed of a future in which he would be able to add to his acreage.

He felt as if his strength were inexhaustible. And so he commenced his labours with a fourteen-hour day; but soon, as the plans grew clearer, he began to realize how little could be accomplished in that short span of time, with so much work always ahead of him; he accordingly lengthened his day to sixteen hours, and threw in another hour for good measure; at last he found himself wondering if a man couldn’t get along with only five hours of rest, in this fine summer weather.

Beret, the wife, a person of a much more sensitive and pious nature, was fearful for what she felt the future held for her family. She inwardly balked at the idea of raising her two sons and her daughter in such an uncivilized environment. Not only that, she was expecting a fourth child. She longed for her homeland and the family she had left behind and she found it extremely difficult to repress the negative, grim thoughts that plagued her daily existence.

From the outset she had misgivings about their future home. She had a hard time imagining why anyone would be willing to settle in such a remote, uncivilized country, one so unlike her homeland that it didn’t even have trees, and especially since their little isolated company was the first to settle there. If it was such a great place to live why hadn’t others settled there before them?

Was this the place? … Here! … Could it be possible? … She stole a glance at the others … then turned to look more closely at the group standing around her; and suddenly it struck her that here something was about to go wrong …. For several days she had sensed this same feeling; she could not seem to tear herself loose from the grip of it …. Surely, surely, she mustn’t give way to her tears now, in the midst of all this joy …. Could no living thing exist out here, in the empty, desolate, endless wastes of green and blue? ... How could existence go on, she thought, desperately? If life is to thrive and endure, it must at least have something to hide behind!

Per Hansa and Beret come to epitomize a pattern played out year after year in the lives of pioneers struggling to improve their lot in life on the frontier. The pattern could be summarized as man’s endurance and woman’s suffering. In such an environment a man could break; and a woman could go mad. Sometimes both tragedies occurred in the same family. Pioneer life was hard on all concerned, but Theodore Roosevelt was right in believing that it was especially hard on women.

In 1929, the notable historian Samuel Eliot Morrison wrote to Rolvaag:

“Beret is a great figure because she typified the woman emigrant of every race.”

The history of the conquest of the North American continent is a great epic that has been celebrated in books and on the movie screen, but for many it was also a great tragedy.

It is the tragedy that held the most interest for Rolvaag.

[Mike · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this book. It felt like counting sand. Or corn. Or whatever the hell they were growing. Oh and everyone is named Hansa. Seriously, this book moves so slow, you could literally skip entire chapters (maybe even 2 or three), and NOTHING WOULD HAVE HAPPENED.

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh. To be fair, there is a lot of depth and meaning to the story and it does resonate with many Americans because for some, the story of the prarie life is the story of their ancestery. Most people don't consider American's Heartland much of a wilderness any more, but once it was wild and untamed. And it could be at times brutal, beautiful, and even evil. The story of the Norweigen family led by Per Hansa struggling to not only survive in this brave new world, but to try and make a place for themselves is truly the story of the American spirit. The wild west may get all the glamor, but the true story of America's coming of age is told in stories like this one.

That sounds all well and good but damn, did Rolvaag have to make it so dry? To put this in perspective, I've read "Paradise Lost" just for fun. And believe me, that is not something to be taken lightly. And that was easier to get through than this.

Here's an example of what it's like to take just about any 200 pages in the book at random and read through them:

"Today Big-Hansa tended the corn with Little-Hansa. It is growing. Soon we will have corn. To eat. We will eat the corn. Then we will grow something else. Ma-Hansa and Boy-Hansa put sod on the roof. Then we looked at the grass and made deep, philosophical conjectures about the meaning of life. Then it rained. The next day, we tended the corn some more. Hansa and Hansa took some corn to Hansa and then went to see Hansa to Hansa Hansa and get some more Hansa Hansa Hansa Hansa with his Hansa Hansa. It was a good Hansa today. Hansa Hansa Hansa Hansa Hansa Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Hansa Hansa corn. The next day, Hansa went outside and sat on the porch and died. Probably from too much corn. We ate some corn."

Randomly change the weather, the crops, and maybe have them get buried in the snow for 6 weeks, and you'll have written "Giants in the Earth."

[Jessaka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beret Covered the Windows to Block Out Her Fear

Dakota, Territory 1873

“She looked out over the prairie, and as far as she could see there were only tall grasses and a big blue sky with not a tree or bush in sight. It felt lonely, but most of all, there was no place for her to hide. Fear swelled up inside of her.”


I stood looking at the land surrounding a sod house in the Badlands National Park in South Dakota. I couldn’t imagine living here in the middle of nowhere, in this desert like land. I wondered what life was like for the woman who had once lived here. Some women may have liked the adventure, but I had once read that some women went insane, not just in the prairies, but as settlers anywhere in what is now called America. I don’t know if I would have gone insane or if I would have thought of it as an adventure, but I know the feeling of having nowhere to hide, because I was once in an area of America, maybe the Texas panhandle, where my husband and I were traveling, where there were no trees and the sky was almost all you could see. I felt exposed, as I realized that there was nowhere to hide. It felt eerie. Later, I learned that others have had this very same feeling. Some couldn’t take it. Perhaps, if you had grown up in the wide open spaces, being around trees could make you feel enclosed.

I tried to find books on the subject of pioneer life in sod houses, but I could never find one until now when I happened upon this book quite by accident. I am so glad that I had found it because it was perfect for me, and the story telling was wonderful. I can see why it is a classic.

This story centered on the woman, Beret. And like some pioneer women, she became insane for a while. Some pioneer women never recovered, and I question whether she ever had. For her, the prairie was God forsaken, and yet God had created the prairies, for what reason she did not know or perhaps she had not even considered it. Still, it was implied. It might as well have been hell as far as she was concerned.

My husband and I saw the prairie at a National Wildlife Reserve. It was so beautiful with all the wildflowers and grasses. When I was young, we had a field just like it that I loved. I used to lay down in the grasses and read comic books and listen to twin engine planes fly overhead.

The first thing that the settlers found, when they arrived at their land, was a burial mound on a small hill. They believed it to be that of an Indian, because they also found arrowheads and a large stone with a groove around the middle of it. A sledgehammer, I thought. Then, not far way there was a river with trees. Ducks were plentiful there, if only they had a shotgun.

Next, a group of Indians showed up and decided to camp on their land. I could question whose land it really was. The men, of the four families that had moved there together, went over to meet them and this without bringing their guns.
They began building their sod houses, and I thought that this type of underground strucure must be cool in the summer’s heat. It seemed better than those built above ground, and they were more tornado proof, but they had their own drawbacks.

In another book that I had read, snakes and insects tried to make their homes in them, but the book was just clippings from pioneer women’s stories. It did not satisfy me. While I love snakes and insects, no way would I wish to deal with poisonous snakes curled up in some corner of the house or centipedes crawling under the wallpaper or anywhere else they desired to be.

Later on Beret’s husband went to town and found that one of the settlers, a widower, had used lime to paint on the walls of her sod house to make them white. He thought that it was quite pretty and thought of his wife. The sod house in the Badlands that I had seen had newspapers for wallpaper. At least you could read the walls. Same old news every time. Anyway, the point here was that he did the same for her, painting their walls white in order to cheer her up. He continued to buy her little things for that very same reason.

Only time would cure her or not, and pioneer women who had gone insane had to be sent home or to insane asylums, if not, they stayed wither their men and suffered. Outside of this book, I have never read what causes women to break down. Some did for fear of the wild animals or Indians, some because their were lonely, but I imagine that there are other reasons than what is mentioned in this book.

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought I would re-read this book about Norwegian pioneers in South Dakota, in anticipation of the arrival of our exchange student from Norway.

I love this book. It answers many of the adult questions I had when re-reading Little House on the Prairie with my kids. How did the mother bear the intense isolation? What was the psychological impact of that endless horizon? Did bugs crawl out of the sod house walls? (However, like the Little House books, Giants is silent on the subject of frontier outhouses.)

This could be subtitled “Manic-Depressive on the Prairie”. The hero, Per Hansa, provides the manic side: relentlessly optimistic, boundlessly energetic, canny, outgoing. His wife, Beret, is depressed: forlorn without her birth family, frightened by the limitlessness of the landscape, haunted by a sin. The children are sunny and untroubled. All the security they know or want – their parents – is right there.

Religious fervor plays a major role in the book. For Beret, it is salvation; for Per Hansa, doom. I wonder if the religious theme was considered at all controversial when this was originally published.

I am sympathetic to reviewers here who complain that this was 400+ pages of milking cows and feeding chickens (though in fact the chickens don’t appear until about page 200). And there are an awful lot of characters with some variant of the name Hans. I will have to ask our exchange student what is up with the troll phobia, too.

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 5 out of 5]

Giants In The Earth is the first of a trilogy by O. E.Rolvaag that deals with immigrant and pioneer life. As usual in this type of story, we see the characters dealing with a long trek, the insecurities arising from being in a new land with an unknown language, and not much more than their dreams to live on from day to day. But Rolvaag has also captured the isolation that comes from living many miles away from 'civilization', and
the loneliness of life itself, whether it is lived in a city or in the wilderness.

Per Hansa and his family move from Norway to the Dakota Territory to start a new life. Beret, Per's wife, immediately feels the threatening Otherness of the prairie, and does not see the beauty of the grasslands so much as the fact there is nothing to hide behind in all that open space around her. But she does not say anything to Per, for she thinks she must go where he goes and accept everything. These two feelings become the main force in Beret's life, affecting everyone around her, and pulling her into a frightening darkness that is never completely conquered.

Per himself does not register the changes in Beret; he is too busy dreaming of more. More land, more crops, more animals, more houses. He must be the first of the little community to do anything: first to get his wheat planted, first to limewash the inner walls of his house, first to do anything and to do it in a bigger and better way than any of his neighbors could. This is Per's blind approach to life, and it keeps him from connecting completely not only with his neighbors but with his own family.

I was totally transported while reading. I felt the snow, could imagine the horror of the locust swarms. I could see the beauty of the prairie, which Beret shied away from. But I do still wonder about one comment about birds and insects in the area. Our family settles in at their chosen plot of land, and there is no noise: no birdsong, no insect noises, nothing but mosquitoes. This prompts a footnote by the author saying that the early pioneers never heard birds or insects during their first year on the Plains. And later in the book, he talks of the meadowlarks that are singing and he repeats the statement that in the first year there were no birds. I know the author talked to many old-time settlers, including his father-in-law, but still. How could a rich habitat like the Great Plains not have bird life until after the farmers came?! That simply does not make sense to me and I refuse to believe it.

In the opening pages Rolvaag describes the sounds of the ox-carts moving through the countryside, and I felt as if I were walking alongside the cart, taking my first steps into a new world:
"Tish-ah!" said the grass..."Tish-ah, tish-ah!"...Never had it said anything else -- never would it say anything else. It bent resiliently under the trampling feet; it did not break, but it complained aloud every time -- for nothing like this had ever happened to it before...."Tish-ah,tish-ah!" it cried, and rose up in surprise to look at this rough, hard thing that had crushed it to the ground so rudely, and then moved on.

For me this passage reveals another theme of the book: Man against Nature. Who will win in the end?

[Mmars · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's lots of books about settlers of the American Prairie out there but Rolvaag does one thing remarkably well. Read this about 15 years ago, but still clearly remember Rolvaag's portrayal of the grueling solitude of early settlers of the northern plain. Especially of the wife, often left with her children while her husband went for supplies. Not unlike a sailor's wife, but without the near companionship of other women. Rough living quarters, coping with illness, scarcity of food, etc. Also, remember, these were stoic Norwegians. The men bear their own hardships and are constantly physically challenged. Having been caught in blizzards (and whiteouts) in my lifetime it was evident that Rolvaag wrote them only as one who has been through them could. Frightening - then & still. Some things about nature do not change.

If you're in the mood for a longish classic I highly recommended this for long winter nights by the fire.

[Sketchbook · Rating 5 out of 5]

A giant of a pioneer novel. Isolation, loneliness and death in the stark midwest states...I have never forgotten the ending, first read when 15, of humble pioneer, 1870s, whose wife sends him into a blizzard, because--you see.... the lonely wife became a religious crackpot...and thus, out of religious - madness, America develops...with too many deaths.

[Swjohnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me years to read "Giants in the Earth"; the novel felt over-familiar, since I grew up across the street from Ole Rolvaag's house in Northfield, Minnesota near the campus of St. Olaf College, where he taught and where a library bears his name. His descendents still lived in the house, and my parents were friends with his great-great granddaughter and her family. I spent many hours there in the 1970s, and the fabled shadow of "Giants of the Earth" hung heavily over the residence in the form of original posters and a reverent display of the first editions. Rolvaag's own library and office, accessible through a pair of French doors, remained buried in a deluge of papers and books; it had likely been untouched since his death in 1931 and had the unmistakable, pharaonic gloom of a shrine. It was forbidden territory, but we still entered it often.

That dusty room, with its framed quotation from Dante, fencing swords and antique volumes, suggested something of “Giants’” mythic immensity. When I finally returned to the novel, a cursory glance at Rolvaag’s title, biblical epigraph, and chapter titles alone confirmed its vast, heroic ambition. There’s no question that Rolvaag plans to align the story of Norwegian pioneer Per Hansa and his family with heroic archetypes and eternal themes.

But the novel’s prose style and execution offer something more nuanced, if still ambitious: In an opening scene overflowing with bold sensory impressions, Hansa travels with his wife Beret and their children through an ocean of prairie grass as Rolvaag’s prose churns with formidable energy, punctuated by ellipses, exclamation marks and vigorous fragments of observation. The technique is remarkably similar to the technique of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s 1932 “Journey to the End of Night,” where disconnected language and exclamations evoke a world exploded by the author’s solipsistic energies. Rolvaag’s world is similarly menacing and uncontainable, but his protagonists subsist on the blind faith that it can be reordered and subjugated.

Douglas Moore composed a Pulitzer prize-winning opera based on Rolvaag’s novel in 1951 and I’ve been unable to find a recording. In the absence of Moore’s music, I choose to imagine the work as a natural expression of Giants’ truly operatic material: larger than life, bursting with epic emotion in the best sense of the ideal, as tragic and bravely expressive as Rolvaag’s extraordinary prose.

[El · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came across this book a few years back when we visited Washington, DC (a shout out to Second Story Books in Dupont Circle). I picked it out because I had never heard of it. Then I find out while I'm reading this that at least two people I know on Goodreads had this book assigned to them in high school as mandatory reading.

This doesn't even make sense to me.

This book, written by Norwegian-American author O.E. Rølvaag, was published in 1927 though it tells the story of a Norwegian immigrant family's trials and tribulations starting in 1873. There were a crap-ton of trials and tribulations, too, and eating porridge day and night was only one of them. (Seriously, there's a lot of porridge-eating here. I'm not saying this isn't accurate to the time and circumstances; I'm just saying it was a surprise at how frequently Rølvaag felt the need to share this information with us.) I eat oatmeal almost every day for breakfast, but I don't feel compelled to tell you about each occasion.

But there are other, much more important horrible things this family endures. The most impressively told parts, in my opinion, featured the snowstorms, blizzards, and all things snow-related. This is where Rølvaag really excelled as a writer, creating the visual of being trapped in a small space with ones family, sometimes not being able to open the door due to the amount of snow piled against it, utilizing their children to help plow a path (because that's fun for kids, dontcha know), etc.

Unfortunately I had a hard time connecting with any of the characters. It didn't help that Rølvaag had a dry style of writing and that he used a lot of ellipses throughout his paragraphs. The ellipses are a tricky form of punctuation marks because if it's done well, it works, and if it's not...

See what I did there?

My point is that if you overuse ellipses, whatever your point might have been, it's lost because I for one can't tell if you're trailing off because you're uncertain what else you want to say, or if you want the reader to guess what you're trying to say, or the author removed sections of the text for whatever reason. I mean, there are so many reasons, but the end result is that over-utilization of ellipses looks like sloppy writing and/or that the author is not very confident in his own story.

"God, if a fellow had thirteen barrels of this stuff of yours, Gurina!...You don't happen to have another little drop in the pan?"...She gave him a second bowlful, which he emptied as greedily as the first...All at once, something occurred to him. He turned to ask a question...Had any of them seen him drive past them in the storm?

Drive past them!..."You're talking wild, Per Hansa," said Tonseten, with an anxious look.
p316

I mean, that's an excessive use of ellipses, don't you agree? And the entire text is like that, so if the book is 531 pages in paperback, and there are at least seven or more instances of this on each page, then that means there's a gatrillion ellipses used in this novel. A GATRILLION, I say.

What I did especially appreciate about this book is the extensive footnotes. Not extensive in a quantitative sense, but in a qualitative. There's a lot of fantastic information in the footnotes of this novel, helpful in the sense of what actual immigrant pioneers experienced (this book was partly based on Rølvaag's own experiences as a child, so he would definitely know what it was like to live in the Dakota Territory in the late 19th century), Scandinavian mythology, artifacts that were used, and details about Norwegian names, and how they came about. I mean, really interesting, mostly useless (except to nerds like myself), information. It's because of the footnotes that I bumped this up to a 3-star rating. Otherwise I feel the text by itself would be a solid 2-star for the reasons stated above. (Okay, primarily the ellipses. There's just way too many of them.)

I understand there are two sequels, Peder Victorious: A Tale of the Pioneers Twenty Years Later and Their Fathers' God. I am fairly certain I own one, if not both, of them. I didn't dislike this one enough to sell back the others without reading them, and I also have a sick curiosity to know if Rølvaag ever learns about other forms of punctuation.

[gaudeo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The month of July wore on. The small patches of fields in the Spring Creek settlement were slowly ripening and made a brave showing. Never had one seen finer fields! The grain had started to head out long ago; the kernels were already formed, tiny bodies wrapped in the most delicate green silk. With every day that passed the wheat filled out more and more; the heads grew heavy and full of milk; as soon as the breeze died down in the afternoon, they would tilt toward the setting sun and slowly drop off to sleep, only to dream of the marvellous life that was now stirring within them."

I have read numerous novels of the European settling of the West. Many of them are very good. But none could better this one, in my view. Rolvaag, in addition to capturing the adventure, the hard work, the natural disasters, and the ultimate success of the settlers, also vividly portrays the immigrant experience, the sense of camaraderie and neighborliness, and the exhausting struggle of a determined and resilient people. Most rewarding to this reader, he inhabits the mind of a woman who fights both depression and insanity when faced with the desolation of the endless plains, and that of a despairing preacher who feels impotent in the face of the lives of the people to whom he ministers.

My copy of this book (a first edition) touts it as "one of the few books on American pioneer life which will endure." I know it has endured among readers in the Dakotas, but it deserves to be read much more widely.

[L. Frockcoat · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A small caravan was pushing its way through the tall grass. The track that it left behind was like the wake of a boat - except that instead of widening out astern it closed in again."

This sentence, on the first page of Giants in the Earth, captures many of the conflicting emotions that the book's Norwegian immigrant characters face as they homestead in South Dakota during the 1870s. The settlers are moving forward into new experiences, adventures, and the possibility of wealth and status not available to them in the old country. At the same time, they are cut off from family, lost in a trackless prairie, and subject to the sometimes brutal turns of nature.

This isn't a particularly cheery book; the closing chapter is entitled "The Great Plain Drinks the Blood of Christian Men and Is Satisfied." Still, between the hardships, the book paints a comprehensive picture of everyday pioneer life that is deeply moving and convincing, as alien as it is from our way of life only 140 years later. Rolvaag also finds time to drop some heavy questions about religion, family, and heritage into the mix.

Highly recommended.

[Lesle · Rating 4 out of 5]

It bent resiliently under the trampling feet; it did not break, but it complained aloud every time — for nothing like this had ever happened to it before. …"Tish-ah, tish-ah!" it cried, and rose up in surprise to look at this rough, hard thing that had crushed it to the ground so rudely, and then moved on.

Per Hansa looking forward to the west and the thought of land. He is full of passion and strenght for this new golden life that awaits him. Beret his wife looks back, east to the family, consumed by doubt, guilt of wanting to get away, loneliness, remorse and maddness of what she puts up with and just deals with. He works proudly and she is saddened because the children are of the new world not of the old.
Giants in the Earth is about a Norwegian couple that came in the late 1800's by a caravan of two ratty wagons pulled by oxen with their family to get a claim of the southeastern South Dakota. During the trip Per gets off the trail and is now lost but keeps heading west telling Beret it is all good as long as they head towards the sunset. It tells the story of the Great Plains and how hard the pioneer life really was on the wagon train and on the prairie, how some were able to adjust and others that could not.
The tragedy of the child that had to be buried along the way and the joy of what this life will have to offer them other than sod homes, the grasshoppers and the winters that never seem to end with the loss of cattle and many people.
What the pioneers had to really go through mentally and are tested by the harshness and isolation of the prairies is quite remarkable. The minister that comes feels he did bring them some ministry but not much relief. Though he did bring hope to some. Per is the Giant and how the earth ultimately reacts. The test...faith, love and heartbreak.

Honestly this is written from truth and understanding as Rølvaag's uncle who had emigrated to America sent him a ticket in the summer of 1896, and he traveled to Union County, South Dakota to work as a farmhand. This novel is based partly upon Rolvaag's personal experiences as a settler and as well of the experiences of his wife's family who had been immigrant homesteaders.

[Katie Groom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll withhold my review until ppl have had their WRM meetings…

[Effie Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's 2:45 in the morning and I've finished it. Ron Wilcox, I can't believe you made me read that book knowing full well how it turns out. O.E.Rölvaag, I enjoyed your book so much, I never wanted it to end - and then when it did end I realized I was right in not wanting that to happen because the ending sucked. It sucked, I say. Here's my hasty revision, which I hope will make me feel better:

(WARNING: Contains spoilers. If you haven't read the book, don't read the following until you get to the part where the minister is leaving for the second time. Then return the book to the library and read my ending instead.)

The minister rode out of town feeling like a failure, but at that moment his prayers were answered and Beret snapped out of her postpartum funk. Per Hansa immediately recognized the change in his wife's demeanor and they sent word to the minister that all is well, so he didn't have to continue feeling so down on himself. Per Hansa and Beret lived happily together for the rest of their days because she didn't turn into a frigid pious nag. A big storm came and dumped a decade's worth of snow on the settlement in just a few weeks, but everyone was prepared, so the animals and people were all safe in shelters and there was a sufficient supply of fuel and food, so the storm was hardly worth mentioning except for the fact that it made for excellent skiing conditions, which Ole and Hans-Store enjoyed until the spring melt, which was sufficient to water that season's bumper crop yields. The settlement prospered and our beloved settlers lived to see their great-grandchildren intermarry with non-Norwegians, which even the elderly had finally accepted as fellow humans. The aged pioneers sighed their last contented breaths and died peacefully before they saw their descendents get the hell out of Dodge, abandoning the land they had toiled long to claim for their posterity. The End.

[Karyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is as close as I would ever want to be to a prairie settler of the 19th century, and here we see Norwegians in search of land of their own do just this.

[Chana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book, that kind that you don't even remember you are reading as you are so engrossed in the place and lives of the characters.
Norwegian homesteaders to the Dakota territories in the 1870's, sod huts, terrible hardships, great beauty, life and death on the Prairies. I was fully engrossed in this story and sorry when it ended.

[ForestGardenGal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book to be very easy to read, it flows quickly once you become accustomed to the characters and situation. The author is primarily concerned with the mental costs and psychological flexibility needed to successfully survive in the frontier and create a new homestead settlement in a location remote from all familiar society. The author acknowledges the obstinacy that can come from devotion and trust in a higher power, and how that may have been useful for pioneers, but he also stresses the psychological inflexibility caused by rigid adherence to religion which in conjunction with severe loneliness and seemingly insurmountable obstacles caused so many pioneers to lose hope, lose their sanity, and perish- some by their own hands, some through lack of adequate preparations, some through foolish decisions, and some by the hands or foolish decisions of others.

While this book was an easy read, at the same time I was disturbed by the offhanded treatment of the Native Americans. I understand the fear felt by the pioneers; they put themselves in a vulnerable place and didn't understand the language or culture of the Native Americans. They respected the Native Americans enough to trade with them, and to give medical assistance when they saw a need. However, the settlers made such a ruckus over claim jumping and destruction of landmarks by other settlers, but never is it suggested or mentioned that they might not have a right to the property at all- even when they discovered they were claiming land containing a burial mound. Was this willful blindness or selfishness? Did these supposedly God fearing people really not consider the Native Americans to be other children of their God? Or even possibly some of the lost tribes from their very own Bible? I know that this was somehow seen as an acceptable practice, but I do not believe that it could possibly have gone unquestioned by all. Somebody must have seen the hypocrisy. And one would think that the Norwegians, with their fear of trolls and other mythologies, might have at least hesitated before disturbing burial grounds.

Also, no spoilers, but I think the ending was horribly inconsistent with Per Hansa's character.

PG for themes of extreme fear for survival and religious hysteria. No violence, sexual content, or language.

[Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was beautifully evocative of the 1870's prairie life of Norwegian-American immigrants in the Dakota Territories in the 1870's. Although there are lots of hardships to overcome and there is an ever increasing tension between the depressed inner life of the wife Beret and the can-do exuberance of her husband Per Hansa there wasn't enough real drama and suspense until the final "The Great Plain Drinks the Blood of Christian Men and is Satisfied." Previously each crisis seemed to be bypassed relatively easily and several years of locust plagues pass by in only a few pages. But in the last section the life and death stakes are more nakedly on display.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Penned way back in 1924 by Ole Rolvaag, a Norwegian, this book captivated me.

The plot is relatively simple and highly realistic. It’s about three Norwegian families who homestead in South Dakota in 1870. It was clear from page one that their outlook — in an area with no trees for miles and only time to build sod houses before winter — was bleak. I think the sub plot around Beret’s depression and her homesickness for her home in Norway put this book into the five star category for me. There are some high points in the story to offset the harshness.

4.5 stars. Similar to Willa Cather’s O’ Pioneers.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was a little girl, I loved to read books about the pioneers heading west. What little girl doesn't like Little House on the Prairie? I had forgotten my enjoyment of such books. But Giants in the Earth was so much better. I was glad it was a longer book, so there was more for me to enjoy.

[Donia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can understand that this book is not for everyone but I was shocked to read some of the sarcastic silly reviews. This book was written in a foreign language in 1927 and I approached it as a history book. I wasn't expecting a bodice ripper.

One might wonder how I can assign 5 stars to such a slow paced read but I hope that I can explain my view of this wonderful history. Giants is not meant to compete with nor mimic Little House On The Prairie. I adored all of the Ingall's books and re-read them from time to time.

This is a scholarly read. This is adult fare and does a brilliant job of placing the reader into the shoes of a non English speaking foreign born women who is brought to the vast plains of Nebraska against her will.

As others have noted this book moves slowly but I understood that aspect of this tale. For me, the pace of this novel mirrored the experience of the first settlers putting down roots in that vast wilderness; especially the women who so often got ignored, left behind , left to birth babies alone, to care for sick and dying children without a doctor, who watched helplessly as insects or blizzards, tornado or fire raced across the plains to potentially end their lives in a heartbeat.

Imagine not speaking English; not understanding America and it's ways and being thrust down in a vast wilderness devoid of contact with the outside world. This novel creeps along just as life did for those early settlers.

Secondly, their native culture was filled with legends or spirits that they respected and or feared. Eating often starvation diets low in certain many nutriants and vitamins, it is also possible that anemia was rampant and played tricks with the mind.

For those who have not traveled into that part of the United States, it is a vast expanse not broken by trees, mountains or much else as was mentioned in the story. This is true even today but especially before the area was populated and built up.

The women in this story came from Norway; a land of culture, mountains, vistas, trees, rich culture and family and friends and had little say in most matters. The main character did not want to be where she found herself living. She had stated this before they went there. She was pregnant, she was scared and alone much of the time and she loses her mind. Who can not understand this when faced with all that came into fruition?

This review is jumbled but I wanted to get my thoughts down while they are fresh in my mind.

[Isaiah Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Scandinavian novel follows a family as they settle in the grim Dakota prairies.

I recently heard someone say that American stories are known for having happy, but unrealistic, endings. This story was not so. It took a very realistic approach to the physical and psychological challenges early settlers faced.

This translation from Norwegian to English is not perfect, but it preserves a lot of the beauty of the norse /scandic culture that gives the story a unique flavor.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a long time to get through this book the second time around, I think because I knew what was going to happen. But it was more meaningful to read it this time, having just returned from a visit to Slip Up Creek in South Dakota. I stood on the land where my great-great-great-grandparents were among the original settlers in this area of Dakota Territory. The characters in the novel were based on my ancestors, as the author, Ole Rolvaag, married into the family and got much of his information for the novel from his wife. It's fascinating to get a taste of what life was like for these pioneers. It was not an easy life, living in such isolation and punishing weather conditions. I have special admiration for my great-great-great grandmothers, as the women had it especially hard, a fact which was not much recognized by the men. Living in such difficult conditions, some of the settlers could not imagine the area every becoming permanently settled, "... nothing but the eternal, unbroken wilderness encompassed them round about, extending boundlessly in every direction; that these vast plains, so like infinity, should ever be peopled and settled, would be a greater miracle than for dead men to rise up and walk." Things can change a great deal in just a few generations!

[Jrobertus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, translated from Norwegian, is a classic of pioneer life by an author from my home state of Minnesota. It is considered a minor classic of American literature, and I see why. In the story we follow a young family Per Hansa, his wife Beret, and their children. With a handful of other Norwegians they make their way from Filmore county Minnesota to a homestead just north of Sioux Falls South Dakota. This is a story of the stuggle to live on a treeless prairie that gives a much harder efge than the Little House books. It is also the story of persoanl disintegration as the lonelyness and isolation lead to Beret's increasing madness, and how the isolated little community struggles to cope. She ultimately recovers her ability to act, but becomes a religious zealot that the community can not bear and her neurosis ultimately leads to tragedy in the famous winter of 1880-81. This book is evocatively written, and it is a powerful story for America and humanity.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I first skimmed it 25 years ago, looking for good quotations to insert into a paper due the next day for a college immigration history class. Of course, the assignment had been to read the book, not skim it, but no such luck. Since then, I've remembered it as bleak and cold and brimming with Hans and Hansas. Now that I've actually read the book, I realize that my earlier assessment didn't do the novel justice. The psychological drama that plays out between Beret and Per Hansa is fascinating, and the South Dakota prairie is one of the best drawn characters in American literature. Like "My Antonia," "Giants in the Earth" is on the surface a simple tale of pioneer life. Look more closely, however, and you discover a squirming mass of existential questions.

[Iva · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a true American classic on many levels. Like My Antonia or O Pioneers, it treats the harsh reality of early life on the plains. Written in Norwegian as Rolvaag emigrated to the midwest as a young man, and then returned to Norway for some of his education. He spent his life as a professor at St. Olaf College. The novel (actually two books combined in one volume) captures the hard work, the harsh weather, the importance of cordial relations with neighbors, fear of Indian attacks and most of all, the emotional hardships of those who left everything behind. Rolvaag gives most of his attention to the physical work; raising children, birthing, and household management, not as much. A compelling and fast moving plot and interesting characters will make a memorable impression on any reader interested in early immigrants.

[Lindsey Lauterwasser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had quite low expectations for this one but it surpassed all of them! I would like to go back and reread portions- I definitely rushed through the latter part of the book to finish in time for book club…Prior to book club, would have given a 3, but the rich conversation led me to a deeper appreciation for the story and alas, the 4! Now here I go to find the opera version!!!

PS- I definitely would not survive on the prairie if anyone is wondering

[Sandra The Old Woman in a Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is an interesting story about this book. I read it in high school (Iowa, Des Moines Lincoln) back in the 1970’s and remembered it since that time as a remarkable portrayal of the early settling of the Northern Plains by homesteaders. The descriptions of the prairie and the psychological responses of the settlers to this extreme geography stuck in my mind for decades. I wanted to read this book again - for years I looked for it but I could not remember the name and no amount of Googling helped me find it. Then earlier this year I read A Thousand Acresa Pulitzer Prizewinning novel by Jane Smiley. This book was set in Iowa during the 1970’s and amazingly somewhere deep into the novel the mother character is reflecting on her high school daughter and mentions she is reading Giants In the Earth. I immediately recognized the book - at last!! And too funny; was this novel standard reading in Iowa high schools in the 70’s? With the title in hand I searched out a copy of the book and finally had an opportunity to read it again. It did not disappoint. This is not Little House on the Prairie. It is a deep psychological tragedy written originally in Norwegian by an author who himself immigrated to the US, farmed in SD and landed in MN as faculty at St Olaf’s College. The book was written in the 1920’s so the author had access to some of these early Norwegian settler’s first hand accounts. If you want to really feel what it must have been like in those first years settling the prairie there is no better book to read. The sense of place and sense of being - or immersion into the psychological impact of the vast horizons, loneliness, hardships and precarious life of these settlers this book delivers. This is all through the eyes of Norwegian immigrants and provides deep in-sites into the culture and behaviors still attributed to the people of this region. The book is fascinating. It now goes onto my very special shelf for very special books.

[Colette Castro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really beautiful writing, and amazing storytelling. Extremely dark and heavy.

There's so much to this book, I haven't processed it fully. I really liked it but I was also deeply disturbed. 5 stars without a doubt.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I…. don’t even know what to say. This book is a constant rise and fall of “anticipating/foreshadowing/something crazy is about to happen”, then nothing happens. Don’t even get me started on the ending. 😂 I don’t understand what the point of this book was supposed to be, other than showing that this time period and settling on the prairie was hard. Nothing resolved and I can’t get these hours of my life back. 🤣 The only thing that’s keeping it a 2 star instead of 1 is that I liked the writing style and it kept me intrigued enough to find out what happened next… BUT THEN NOTHING HAPPENED. I probably should have waited a day to process before writing this, but here we are. 😆