Ronald Fangen

Ronald Fangen
Ronald Fangen in 1932 (photo by Anders Beer Wilse)
Born	(1895-04-29)29 April 1895 Kragerø, Norway
Died	Snarøya, Norway
Nationality	Norwegian
Occupation	Novelist, essayist, playwright, psalmist, journalist and literary critic

Ronald Fangen (29 April 1895 – 22 May 1946) was a Norwegian novelist, essayist, playwright, psalmist, journalist and literary critic.

Biography

Ronald August Fangen was born at Kragerø in Telemark, the son of engineer Stener August Fangen (1858–1933) and Alice Maud Lister (1864–1931), the second youngest of six children. He had siblings Alice (1884–1886), Christian (1886–1940), Stener (1888–1912), Wilhelm (born 1890) and Knut (born 1898). The family name came from his great-great-grandfather, regimental surgeon Anton Wilhelm von Fangen (1739–1804), who was born in Oldenburg but worked in Kristiansand. His great-grandfather Anton Wilhelm Fangen (1799–1872) was a priest in Vestre Aker and his grandfather Niclaus Stener Fangen (1830–1889) was a chief customs officer in Bergen.

His father was educated at Trondhjem Technical School, and founded Skåtøy mill at Tåtøy near Kragerø, later called Fangensaga. His mother was from an English family. Their marriage was dissolved in 1900, when Ronald was five years old. After the divorce, his father worked on the construction of the Bergen Line and the construction of breakwaters in Northern Norway, while his mother founded a mountain lodge at Finse. Three of the brothers traveled abroad; Christian Fangen settled as an engineer in South America, Wilhelm Fangen went to Australia, and Knut Fangen to the United States.

After his parents' divorce, he went to live partly with his mother in Finse and partly with relatives in Bergen, where he attended school. He was an early mature boy, and read authors such as Dostoevsky and Strindberg and philosophers such as Kant and Schopenhauer in his teens. However, his schooling was interrupted by illness, so he never got to take his secondary school exams.

In the spring of 1912, his older brother Stener, who attended a technical school in Bergen, took his own life after being accused of cheating at school. That same year, Ronald visited his brother Christian, who was an engineer in Argentina. He then sent articles to Verdens Gang, where he was hired as a journalist in 1913. In Kristiania, he was part of the bohemian circle, among men such as Sigurd Bødtker, Nils Kjær and Carl Nærup. In 1914-18 he was editorial secretary of Ukens Revy. His first novel, De svake, was published in 1915. A central theme in the book is homosexuality. He is one of the first to address the topic in Norwegian literature. On July 17, 1915, he married Solveig Nielsen, daughter of vicar Nielsen, Kristiania. They had three children, Alice (1916–1937), Gurly (born 1917) and Kitty Margaret (born 1920). He moved to Denmark in 1918, where he was co-editor of the journal Litteraturen until 1921. In the following years, he worked as a literary critic for several Norwegian newspapers, including Stavanger Aftenblad, Dagbladet and Tidens Tegn.

Ronald Fangen

In the 1920s, he lived at Hvalstad in Asker. In 1937, he bought the Dusgård chapel estate in Ringsaker, Hedmarken, previously owned by the Norwegian Enlightenment Fund, and with well-known authors such as Conrad Nicolai Schwach, Barbra Ring and Nils Lie among its former residents. In 1923, Fangen founded the culturally conservative journal Vor Verden (Our World), which he edited until 1932, with Henrik Groth as editor-in-chief. Fangen also co-founded the newspaper Vårt Land in 1945. He was chairman of the Norwegian Authors' Union from 1928 to 1933, and was considered to be part of the newer Christian humanist tradition. In 1928, by virtue of his position in the Authors' Union, he was the prime mover and speaker in connection with the 100th anniversary of Henrik Ibsen's birth. He was also behind the association's festivities in connection with the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Sigrid Undset in 1928. Fangen is perhaps best known for his novel The Man Who Loved Justice (1934).

In the summer of 1940, Fangen was visited several times by German authorities at his farm Dusgård. They knew his writings from before the war, and knew that he was hostile to National Socialism. In early November 1940, Fangen published the article "Om troskap" (On fidelity) in Kirke og Kultur. This was cited as the direct reason for Fangen's arrest, but a stronger reason may have been his extensive lecture tours that fall. Fangen also mentions that he was turned in by a Norwegian who had spoken to him on the train between Bergen and Oslo.

Møllergata 19, where Vidkun Quisling surrendered to the Norwegian authorities after Germany's capitulation in World War II

He was the first Norwegian author to be imprisoned by the occupying forces. It happened in early November 1940, when he was in Oslo to meet his publisher Harald Grieg. He was told by the Germans to appear in the Storting. Fangen showed up, with no idea that he was going to be arrested. He was interrogated and then taken to Møllergata 19, where he was kept in a solitary cell until after New Year 1941. His stay in prison took a toll on his health, but he otherwise suffered no ill effects. He was often visited by Bishop Eivind Berggrav. During this time, he was interrogated several times by the Gestapo at Victoria Terrasse, and was told several times that he was to be released, but nothing happened. After New Year 1941, he was transferred from Møllergata to the German ward at Ullevål Hospital, where conditions were milder and he was guarded by Norwegian police officers.

After the Hamsun family's intervention with Commissioner Terboven the prisoner was released and driven home to Dusgård by the Germans on the night of June 24th 1941. He was later summoned for further interrogation by the Gestapo, but not arrested again. Fangen was able to write during parts of his time in prison, and soon after his release he edited or wrote an account of his experience. It was probably intended to be published, but he never managed to complete it before his death. I nazistenes fengsel 1940-1941 was only published in 1975.

After the war, he was involved in the Christian People's Party and in the newly launched newspaper Vårt Land, which he was one of the initiators of. But on May 22, 1946, while on his way to Stockholm, he died in a plane crash at Snarøya, which became known as the Snarøy accident. Ten passengers and the crew of three perished. The plane was a former Luftwaffe machine. Among those killed was the famous Swedish painter Isaac Grünewald.

He is buried at Ringsaker Church just south of the south portal of the main nave.

Works

His manuscript about his time in prison during the war remained with a friend until it was published in 1975, when Fangen would have turned 80, as I nazistenes fengsel. He had used some of the material in his novel En lysets engel, published in 1945. It depicts two cousins who die on opposite sides of the war. On the same day in 1943, a Norwegian newspaper published two obituaries in succession, one for Harald Mørk Moe, who died in Germany on August 20, 1943; the other for his cousin, Carsten Mørk Frigård, who was killed in Russia on August 12, 1943. They were good friends and relatives, raised in the same environment, concerned with the same interests, and both loved their country. Nevertheless, one joined the home front and died in a German concentration camp, while the other joined Nasjonal Samling and risked his life as a member of the Nordland regiment. The story is told by an older cousin, a young priest, and Fangen raises the question of whether Nazism also led sincere idealists astray.

From the outset, his ambition as a novelist and playwright was to paint souls. His expressionist dramas depict violent binary oppositions, archetypal of Norwegian literature: The Fall, published in 1920, marks the opposition between life and sacrifice, while The Enemy, published in 1922, reveals the conflict between the spiritual universe and the brutal reality of our world. Den forjaettede dag, a drama published in 1926, paints a picture of a wealthy, but cold and icy European family, a loveless bourgeois couple and a family with no morals left.

Deepening his early approaches to domination, the 1932 novel Erik marks the pitiless opposition between the weak and the strong. He was the first Norwegian author to deal frankly with the theme of homosexuality, in his 1932 novel Duel.

In the 1920s, he became an increasingly fervent Christian. Fangen was influenced by English Catholic thinkers. He hailed Sigrid Undset's conversion to Catholicism as the spiritual path to his intelligence as a writer. The Christian organization known as the Oxford Group went to Norway in 1934 at the invitation of C. J. Hambro, President of the Norwegian Parliament. The Oxford Group (later known as Moral Rearmament) was an American revivalist movement that sought to resolve social conflicts in the Christian spirit. He joined the movement alongside other prominent Scandinavian authors such as Kaj Munk and Johan Falkberget.

In October 1934, Fangen took part in an Oxford Group house party, at the invitation of Carl Hambro. The Oxford Group had been founded by founded by the American Lutheran missionary Frank Buchman. Hambro invited 120 of his friends to meet Buchman and thirty companions at the Hotel Norge Høsbjør at Brumunddal. Garth Lean, Buchman’s biographer writes that: ‘Fangen, the novelist, brought two bottles of whisky and a crate of books, expecting boredom. He did not find time to open either. His change was immediately visible and long remembered. Even twenty years later, poet Alf Larsen spoke of the “hopeless naivety” of the Group's philosophy as compared with his own anthroposophy. It had however completely transformed Fangen, who before that, in his opinion, had been the most unpleasant man in Norway.’

In addition to the religious writings that followed, the Oxford Christianity is already apparent in his novel The Man Who Loved Justice. His deep convictions and faith are best revealed in the novels The bourgeois festival (1939) and The Priest (1946), his unfinished sequel. The author argues that Christian charity is far superior to bourgeois selfishness or soulless ideology. Material interest, when it is not imposed by violence and proceeds to a sharing of gain, is preferable to the loss of soul. Thus, Fangen, a man of principle and the right, contrasts with Sigurd Hoel, a man of letters and a scholar disillusioned by life, but an outspoken fellow traveler and constant supporter of Norway's socialist regime.

Literary experts distinguish between the carefree, talented early novels and the poetry-filled novels of the 1930s, in which the crucial role of life and the values of will and responsibility take on a haunting quality. Fangen's novels take the form of long moral discussions: they have no action as such, no ambition to evoke a specific milieu or scene. They merely describe an inner life, leading the reader to a perception of the symbolic dimension, if necessary through digression and discussion.

Fangen issued several religious essays and publications during his career. He is most commonly associated with the hymn Guds menighet er jordens største under (1942). With melody by Arild Sandvold (1895–1984), it was originally a part of the Missionary Canton of the Norwegian Missionary Society's 100th anniversary published in August 1942. The hymn has remained popular in Norway and was included in the Norsk salmebok in 1985 and 2013.

Major publications

• De svake (1915; novel)
• Slægt føder slægt (1916; novel)
• En roman (1918; novel)
• Streiftog i digtning og tænkning (1919; essay)
• Syndefald (1920; play)
• Fienden (1922; play, reworked 1931)
• Den frie søn (1925; play)
• Den forjættede dag (1926; play)
• Tegn og gjærninger (1927; essay)
• Nogen unge mennesker (1929; novel)
• Erik (1931; novel)
• Duel (1932; novel)
• En kvinnes vei (1933; novel)
• Mannen som elsket retferdigheten (1934; novel)
• Dagen og veien (1934; essay)
• Som det kunde ha gått (1935; play)
• En kristen verdensrevolusjon (1935; religious text)
• På bar bunn (1936; novel)
• Paulus og vår egen tid (1936; religious text)
• Allerede nu (1937; novel)
• Kristendommen og vår tid (1938; religious text)
• Borgerfesten (1939; novel)
• En lysets engel (1945)
• Presten (1946; novel)
• Nåderiket (1947; collection of sermons, published posthumously)
• I nazistenes fengsel (1975; notes from prison; posthumous)

Awards

• Gyldendal's Endowment (1940)

References

• Elseth, Egil Yngvar (1953). Ronald Fangen. Fra humanist til kristen. Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forl.
• Engelstad, Carl Fredrik (1946). Ronald Fangen: en mann og hans samtid. Oslo: Gyldendal.
• Friese, Wilhelm (1971). Nordische Literaturen im 20. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Kröner.
• Govig, Stewart D. (1961). "Ronald Fangen, A Christian Humanist" The American-Scandinavian Review, Vol. XLIX, No. 2, pp. 152–59.
• Govig, Stewart D. (2005). Ronald Fangen: Church and Culture in Norway. New York: iUniverse, Inc.
• Houm, Philip (1955). Norges litteratur fra 1914 til 1950-årene. Oslo: H. Aschehoug.
• Huseby, Reidar (1995). Frihet, ansvar, tjeneste. Ronald Fangens liv og visjon. Oslo: Verbum.
• Oftestad, Bernt T. (1981). Kristentro og kulturansvar hos Ronald Fangen. Oslo: Gyldendal.
• Rossel, Sven Hakon (1973). Skandinavische Literatur 1870-1970. Köln: W. Kohlhammer.
• Schanke, Andreas (1998). Ronald Fangen: en dikter med budskap. Asker: Fredagsforum.
• Sørbø, Jan Inge (1999). Over dype svelg. Eit essay om Ronalds Fangens aktualitet. Oslo: Gyldendal.
• Stolpe, Sven (1942). Fem norrmän: Christopher Bruun, Eivind Berggrav, Arne Fjellbu, Ronald Fangen, Fredrik Ramm. Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren.

External links

• Works by Ronald Fangen at Open Library
• Works by Ronald Fangen at National Library of Norway