Ole Peter Arnulf Øverland (April 27 1889 - March 25 1968) was a Norwegian author born in Kristiansund and raised in Bergen. His works include Berget det blå (1927) and Hustavler (1929). Øverland was a communist from the early 1920s, but changed his stand in 1937 partly as a reaction to the Moscow Trials. He was an avid opposer to nazism and in 1936 he wrote the poem "Du må ikke sove" ("Dare not to sleep!") printed in the journal Samtiden. It ends with "Jeg tenkte: Nu er det noget som hender. Vår tid er forbi - Europa brenner" ("I weighed: Something is imminent - and it’s dire. Our era is over — Europe’s on fire!"). The probably most famous line of the poem is "Du må ikke tåle så inderlig vel den urett som ikke rammer deg selv!" ("You cannot permit it! You dare not, at all. Accepting that outrage on all else may fall!") In 1933, Øverland was tried for blasphemy after giving a speech named Kristendommen - den tiende landeplage ("Christianity - the tenth plague"), but was acquitted. After the German occupation of Norway in 1940 in World War II, he wrote a series of poems which were clandestinely distributed, leading to his arrest. He was held first in the prison camp of Grini before being transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany. The poems were later collected in Vi overlever alt ("We survive everything") (1945). After the war, Øverland became a noted supporter for the conservative written form of Norwegian called Riksmål, he was president of Riksmålsforbundet (an organization in support of Riksmål) from 1947-1956, playing an important role in the Norwegian language struggle in the post-war era. In addition, Øverland adhered to the traditionalist style of writing, criticising modernist poetry on several occasions.
Works
(not a complete list)
External links
- "Du må ikke sove!" (Norwegian)
- translation of "Du må ikke sove" by Lars-Toralf Storstrand: [1]
- Kristendommen, den tiende landeplage (Norwegian)
