John Weinstock

Krabvaag John Weinstock

Normann's first novel (1905). Regine Normann (1867-1939) was born and grew up in northern Norway. Early on, she knew she wanted to be a writer. In 1895 she showed a preliminary version of her novel to Henrik Ibsen. He is reputed to have praised her innate artistic ability but to have said that she needed to develop her linguistic skills. "One doesn't send a royal child out in rags. [...] You are a natural talent, but you must learn Norwegian." A decade later, Krabvaag was published. In a remote fishing village above the Arctic Circle, where the sea is savage but productive and the land is precipitous but habitable, a mother and her teenage daughter engage in an ultimately mortal conflict. The novel is a powerful portrayal of a woman, widowed a dozen years, who staunchly maintains the family farm, but whose only source of positive emotional engagement is the religious revivalism of an itinerant preacher. It is also a wonderful but tragic story of young love that is doomed because of unacceptable Sami bloodlines.