Ole Peter Arnulf Øverland was born on 27 April 1889 in the small coastal town of Kristiansund. He was the son of Peter Anton Øverland, a ship machinist, and Hanna Louise Hage, a farmer's daughter. Øverland grew up with an older brother named Aage and a younger brother named Ivar. When Øverland was one year old his family moved to Bergen, where he attended and graduated from Tanks privatskole (Tanks Private School) and began Latin school (the equivalent to high school in the United States) at Bergen Katedralskole (Bergen Cathedral School). Throughout his education the myopic Øverland was ambivalent about books and reading. He was especially unhappy with his school's curriculum and showed his independence by dedicating himself to extensive reading of the Bible and the works of Ludvig Holberg and Henrik Ibsen. In the short story "Gud plantet en have" (God Planted a Garden, 1931), Øverland offers a highly negative portrait of his early education, depicting teachers as sadistic and portraying school as an institution of torture and oppression.
When Øverland was fifteen, his family moved to Christiania (later Oslo). His older brother, Aage, died from tubercular meningitis in 1905, and his fifty-two-year-old father died of the same illness in 1906.
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