Conceptions of Nature in Nynorsk Poetry: Local Language and Situated Knowledge in Ivar Aasen, Olav Nygard, and Aslaug Vaa

Conceptions of Nature in Nynorsk Poetry: Local Language and Situated Knowledge in Ivar Aasen, Olav Nygard, and Aslaug Vaa By Jenna M. Coughlin A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures in the Graduate Division of The University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Prof. Mark Sandberg, chair Prof. Linda Haverty Rugg Prof. Line Mikkelsen Summer 2017 Abstract Conceptions of Nature in Nynorsk Poetry: Local Language and Situated Knowledge in Ivar Aasen, Olav Nygard, and Aslaug Vaa by Jenna M. Coughlin Doctor of Philosophy in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures University of California, Berkeley Professor Mark Sandberg, Chair This dissertation proposes new readings of the Nynorsk poetry tradition and changing views of the relationship between nature, aesthetics, and language therein. Through the dual frameworks of ecocriticism and the study of global modernisms, I take Ivar Aasen, Olav Nygard, and Aslaug Vaa as examples of writers who are strongly associated with a particular rural region, yet also experienced increased mobility due to social changes brought about by modernization in Norway. I examine how these poets viewed their relationship to rural nature and cultural traditions and adapted them to create a new, vernacular literary tradition. Using ecocritical understandings of nature as the co-product of human and nonhuman processes, I argue that poets in the Nynorsk tradition often represent nature as an agent in the formation of culture, partly as an effort to argue for the cultural agency of rural people as well. This involves a situated, rather than detached, understanding of the environment. Moreover, using the concept of ecopoetics, I examine their understanding and use of language as something dynamic and not wholly subject to human control as a part of the Nynorsk tradition and aesthetic. This view of language facilitates an understanding of the poem and the lyric tradition as processual and creates a less individualistic understanding of the role of the poet. This dissertation thus contributes to ecopoetics by positing the efficacy of poetic practice, rather than representation, as a means of mobilizing poetry in the service of social or political ends. Likewise, it contributes to the globalization of both modernism and ecocriticism by interpreting the relationship between human and nonhuman nature in the Norwegian context as negotiated and positing that advocating for the co-agency of nature and rural people was a key part of the rural writer’s modern experience. In chapter one, I interpret Ivar Aasen’s glossary of vernacular plant names, Norske Plantenavne (1860), as a text that draws attention to the situated knowledge that rural Norwegians had of their local environments. This represents an attempt to legitimize such knowledge; however, Aasen ultimately participates in the effacement of that same knowledge by attempting to reconcile it 1 with Linnaean taxonomy. The collection and promotion of vernacular plant names in the Norwegian knowledge tradition, however, blurs the boundary between ethnobotany and the natural sciences and establishes a foundation for the idea of rural people as having a unique contribution to make to national identity. In chapter two, I examine how the relationship between the concepts heim [home] and verd [world] in Aasen’s poetry collection, Symra, similarly negotiates between rural environments and the changes occurring within and beyond them. By reconsidering previous ways of categorizing these poems, I demonstrate how concerns regarding nature and culture intersect throughout Aasen’s work. In particular, I argue that the negotiated relationship to nature Aasen represents in the rural context is constructed in an effort to demonstrate what assets and tools rural people can utilize to negotiate their entrance into a wider world without losing a sense of orientation or community. Aasen thus represents ways in which rural people and nature are uniquely vulnerable in the process of modernization but also champions their unique capacity to weather difficulty. In chapter three, I examine the work of a poet who did weather a number of difficulties that he faced as a person of rural origin compelled to mobilize in pursuit of economic and creative opportunities. I argue that Olav Nygard experienced modernity unevenly in that it provided him with access to education and the aspiration to be a poet but not with the economic stability to achieve his aspirations. In Nygard’s poetry, this informs his interest in both dynamic nature and language as unstable ground. Using the concepts of sensuous poesis from the field of ecopoetics and new materialist approaches to agency, I examine how Nygard not only represents but enacts new understandings of thought, memory, and the body as diffuse material processes not confined to the individual subject. However, rather than a source of distress, expanding the capacity of Nynorsk in order to express these novel understandings of nature and language provided Nygard with a source of optimism in the face of change. In chapters four and five, I turn to the prose and poetry of Aslaug Vaa. Associated with the high mountain region of Telemark, Vaa developed a global consciousness during her studies in continental Europe and travels in West Africa. Thus, the creative capacity she believes Nynorsk to have is beneficial not only within the narrow confines of Norwegian culture and literature but is a potential model for how vernacular language and local cultural traditions might empower other communities marginalized by political and economic developments in modernity. In particular, I argue that Vaa represents women, rural Africans, and nature as silenced by instrumental rationality. However, through a notion of biosemiotics, or the ability of all living things to communicate in either unarticulated or articulated language, I contend that Vaa sees attention to the language of living things as a practice that can revitalize language and the mind and safeguard the creative capacity of the individual. Furthermore, I explain how Vaa enacts that attention in her poetry through poetic forms that emphasize poetry’s ritual function, thus engaging the reader in a practice of attending to aural and visual signals in nature. 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Situated Nature Knowledge in Ivar Aasen’s Norske Plantenavne (1860) 15 Chapter 2: Situated Nature Knowledge in the Poetry of Ivar Aasen 43 Chapter 3: Situated Nature Knowledge in the Poetry of Olav Nygard 79 Chapter 4: Situated Nature Knowledge in the Poetics of Aslaug Vaa 103 Chapter 5: Situated Nature Knowledge in the Poetry of Aslaug Vaa 122 Conclusion 148 Works Cited 151 i Acknowledgements I am grateful to many people and institutions for providing the professional, financial, and emotional support that made the completion of this work possible. This project began to take shape in the summer of 2013, during which I conducted research at the Ivar Aasen-tunet in Volda, Norway. Particular thanks go to Ottar Grepstad for providng me with an invaluable bibliography on the language debate in Norway. Thanks also to Stephen Walton for generously providing housing during my stay there. I am also very grateful for the opportunity I had to participate in the festivities surrounding the 200th anniversary of Aasen’s birth. The second important phase of this research project was conducted at the University of Oslo. Thanks to the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies for hosting me, especially to Ellen Rees and Elisabeth Oxfeldt for making logistical arrangements and to the members of the ScanGuilt research group for many pleasant hours spent researching, writing, and taking much-needed breaks. Thanks particularly to Kristian Lødemel Sandberg for Nynorsk consultation, to Julianne Yang for bringing Solaris korrigert to my attention, and to Kristina Leganger Iversen for sharing her knowledge of contemporary Nynorsk poetry. Thanks too to Marit Barkve Dally for moral support and many enlightening conversations. Particular thanks go to Ingeborg Kongslien and Dagfinn Worren for reading and commenting on a draft of the chapters on Ivar Aasen. Their thorough knowledge of Nynorsk and Aasen scholarship provided both assistance and reassurance. Thanks to a fateful meeting at the library scanner, I was also able to benefit from the assistance of Ronny Spaans, who donated several books to the cause of Olav Nygard scholarship and put me in contact with Håvard Tangen, who through Norskt Måldyrkingslag [Society for the cultivation of Norwegian], donated a copy of Slette’s Norsk Engelsk Ordbok to me. This saved me countless hours and was doubtless beneficial for my mental health as well. Funding sources during this phase included the Fernström Fund, the Norwegian Center for International Cooperation in Education (SiU), the Royal Norwegian Embassy, and the Norwegian Researchers and Teachers Association of North America (NORTANA). I am particularly grateful to have been one of the last occupants of the Bjørn Jensen apartment. My family will always have fond memories of our time there. Particular thanks are due to the faculty and staff of the Department of Scandinavian at the University of California, Berkeley. It is in no small part due to them that my graduate experience has been not just relatively painless but, dare I say, fun. Thanks to Mark Sandberg for his candid and reliable guidance, Linda Rugg for her encouragement and pragmatism, and Line Mikkelsen for her willingness to step outside her field. Thanks also to Jonas Wellendorf, who served on my exam committee, and to Karin Sanders, who has been an invaluable mentor throughout my time at Berkeley. I take full credit for any errors in this work, since it will have been quite a feat to have gotten them past any of the people named above. The bulk of the emotional labor necessary for this project was carried out by the longsuffering Ryan Kiesel, whose adventurous spirit, sense of humor, and dedication to our daughter, Annabel, have been indispensable.

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