Garborg, Arne

Garborg, Arne (är`nə gär`brg), 1851–1924, Norwegian writer of the naturalistic school. He founded the weekly Fedraheim (1877), in which he urged reforms in many spheres—political, social, religious, agrarian, and linguistic. Garborg championed the use of Nynorsk, New Norwegian, which is based on rural dialects, as a literary language; he translated the Odyssey into it. Several of his early novels presented male views in the debate on sexual morality conduted throughout the 1880s. Two outstanding novels, Tired Men (1891) and Peace (1892, tr. 1929), relate the tragic disintegration of morally bankrupt and guilt-ridden men.

Bibliography

See study by J. Sjåvik (1980).