An anthology that cited poems from Norwegian poet Knut Ødegård’s book that
pressed in Ireland had been published in March, 2015 by Komşu Yayınevi
(publishing house) by the name Yeryüzü İşaretleri (Earth Signs). Before I analyze my
findings about Knut Ødegård’s poems, I’d like to speak of –maybe- the greatest hero
that Scandinavia ever raised: Ragnar Lodbrok. Ragnar is a well-known hero who has
a saga about himself. A successful commander, Ragnar, embarked on successful
campaigns onto France and England. He struggled to come to the throne of Denmark
and became the king of both Denmark and Sweden. He got married to two famous
amazons both of whom claimed that they came from Odin, namely Lagertha and
Aslaug. It is written in the sagas that he was afraid of being overshadowed by his
successful warrior sons, Ivar and Björn. He especially managed to loot an immense
area by using the rivers in France. Because of being so restless, he abstained from
pitched battles that powerful Frank cavalry wanted and attempted to unexpected
brave campaigns. In the 9th century, after various victories, he was caught as a
captive of King Ælla in England and by being thrown into a pit full of snakes he licked
the dust in so humiliating ways. The myths about his life have different details from
one another. In French sources it is turned over that he died right after France’s (the
French) campaign. The Vikings that settled the area were referred as Nordmenn,
Northmen, Norseman which means “The Northerners”. In Norman history it is cited
that they spring from that specific area and the area that they had settled were called
as Normandy. Literally, Ragnar is a savior. He is the chief architect of unification,
enrichment and turning an inward-oriented society to an interactive society in
Scandinavia. At this point, I regard Knut Ødegård as the person who obliged Western
literature’s law-makers to change something. I am going to explain why Western
literature sympathized the writers who followed the mentality of Knut Hamsun, Henrik
Ibsen, Selma Lagerlöf and Tomas Gösta Tranströmer for years and break off the
relations with the others via this article.
In the first part, the emphasis of “Scandinavia” aroused your interest, I guess. Let me
start by explaining this. In my opinion, a country’s self-identity is separated by thick
dashes from the countries in same geographical region. For example; our literature is
quite different from the literatures of neighboring countries such as Greece, Iran,
Syria and Armenia. But I regard Scandinavian literature and partially South American
literature as exceptional about the situation. Don’t think that I ignore the geographical
events and the meteorology from this. On the contrary, it is closely associated with
identity. It is obvious how important Sisin is for English literature’s history. The
subject I insist upon is the issue of identity. In my opinion (no the) Scandinavian
society, which hadn’t been in interaction with any other culture, breathed the same
air, washed their face in same water of the sea and ate the same foods for centuries,
shouldn’t have been separated.
Yeryüzü İşaretleri consists of 16 poems. The book starts with the translator Erkut
Tokman’s preface. Erkut Tokman shared his determinations about Norwegian poems
and Knut Ødegård in the preface; I have to say that his determinations are so
conformable. Erkut Tokman says “Knut Ødegård’s poet’s principal axis might seem
as the religion and Christianity but the axis is more than blind belief, it
is reinterpreted and partly questioning. Christianity had been interpreted as the
principal axis in 16 poems that the book includes. It is possible to find a symbol about
Christianity in every poem. The religious theme of the book isn’t a traditional figure
that kept in subconscious, it is found as something that takes place in every single
moment that we live, sometimes earthbound sometimes as an emotion: Little Knut
wondered / How does the God look. / No, said the Big Knut / Only in the things that
he created / He can be seen, as a whole in the sky / Is full of his magnificence, /
Okay then, maybe the fields over here / Are the Skin of the God, said Little Knut / Is
this air Breath of the God, too? (Tanrı’nın Nefesi (Breath of The God) p.12) As Erkut
Tokman mentioned, Ødegård’s mentality of Christianity is to reinterpret and question.
This reminds me of Edward Said’s findings about religion’s influence on literature and
writers in his book, Kuran ve Roman (Orientalism). Edward Said points out that The
Quran had been given as “a unitary and achieved text” and says: [For this reason]
Islam sees the world, neither vilifying nor eminent world: For this reason, texts like
One Thousand and One Nights are fancy, they don’t comply with the world, they
emend the world. Muslims don’t even think about changing world with a literary
activity. And The Bible and The Torah are unachieved texts. [For this reason]
Christians and Jews tried to change the world and complete it. If we consider Edward
Said’s readings about religions, we can position Ødegård as the person who
completed the world just because The Bible is not a unitary text. The person who
takes responsibility, changes and narrates appears eccentrically: within the society,
a person that reflects himself/herself. This situation speaks of a different way than the
speakers in Roman Empire. Ødegård doesn’t raise his voice. So to speak whispers,
asks. “Have you ever thought to look at this so?” he says. In this context, we can say
that it has no truck with 20 th century Turkish poetry, too.
Lundli, a protagonist in İçkiciler ve Deliler (Drunks and Lunatics) reveals how virtuoso
Ødegård is to create a character. Lord Raglan asserts that because the heroes in the
works that represents folk narratives are fictional, they essentially merge. Lundli
has the kind of characteristics that fit perfectly to Lord Raglan’s hero stereotype. If we
need to summarize these with a few titles: a) The hero is being sent somewhere: One
fine day at nightfall, when the Protagonist Lundli finishes his crucifix work and moves
away slowly, through the highway, with his clothes made of white sheet, he moves
along to town square as humping his crucifix. With his sinewy descriptions that
evocates Jesus, Lundli, comes out as a modern Jesus. b) Nothing is told
about the hero’s childhood: We don’t come across (no with) any information about
Lundli’s childhood. c) The hero; bears the palm against a king, a giant or a predatory:
Ødegård matches Lundli against characters like policeman, artisan, priest etc.
which represent the authority. Lundli takes the people’s support and rebels against
the authority. A regiment is gathered under a gigantic crucifix. The poet isn’t
impartial. He can’t stop calling himself the regiment “Regiment of Rose Feast”. There
is an Emphasis of people who were excluded from society. Lunatics, homosexuals,
drunks and many more are Lundli’s main assistants. While people who represent the
authority are mentioned with their appellations in the poem, people
who were excluded from society are mentioned with their nicknames: Old tinman
Hansen, Gay Jens, Drunks Konrad and Adolf. Ødegård pegs down that those
who were excluded from the society live independently in contrast to their agnomias
and their powers are under favor of their personalities. And those who represent the
authority get their power only from their ranks, lapse from grace and have also no
character. Yet another protagonist is Lisabeth from Dükkânda Çalışan Kadınlar
(Women Who Works in Shop). Lisabeth, as it is mentioned in the title, a woman who
works in a clockmaker. Ødegård’s mercy nested lyricism and comes out so
prominently in this poem. “…Imagines that everything is here, / Lisabeth the shop
worker: Everything that exists/ is here…” (p.21) Again, in Dükkânda Çalışan Kadınlar,
Ødegård puts himself in a fiction. He makes it known to the reader that they are in a
poem and they are the one who take the lead about their dreams, strictly. To be more
obvious, corroborate with parts of the poem: … I invented this woman / … now
gravely it starts to snow gently over this poem / …When I invent an another woman”
In Uzaklara Giden (The One Who Goes Far Away) poem, we find traces of
cinematographic narrations. This poem reminds us (is a reminder of) of Andrey
Tarkovski’s Stalker which is a hallmark in the history of cinema. In Stalker, big spaces
haven’t been seen till then and figures that forge polysemy in audiences’ minds had
been used and panned out with a technique that makes the audiences feel inside the
movie and interfere the flow. Ødegård had shortened a long narration to a minimum
level -8 lines-, left spaces so as not to mess with the reader’s imagination. Let the
reader decide who is the Grandpa Hol, where did he go?, why did he go?, however
they want: Grandpa Hol walks down the hill / Towards the Molde graveyard /
Watch’s ringing is being heard from the tower / The Sun stops over on him / light-
coloured hat with black silk welt / Shakes his charming walking stick / Goes far
away without hurrying with the Sun / And disappear under the ground. By making
God talk (pg. 20) Ødegård makes us see nature from a different perspective. God,
the procreator and protector, rebels for the Earth that he owns to be a toy for the
engineers. Ødegård doesn’t keep his silence about one of the biggest problem of the
modern world: …I, he says, God that sometimes becomes a woman, I created / the
wind, the sea, the human being and the animals / In waters, sky and ground / But I
didn’t create the crazy knives / that sweep out the sky and cut the laryngeals of the
birds / that make circles in canopy of heaven.
Knut Ødegård’s wording is narrative and expressionist. If we take a look at modern-
day of Norwegian poetry, we deduce that narration is widely used by Norwegian
poets. Norwegian poetry is mentioned in Yasakmeyve Dergisi’s 66 th issue’s “What
Does Poem Do Around The World?” file. One of the Norwegian poets, Rønnaug
Kleiva, narrated her thoughts about modern-day Norwegian poetry as follows:
“Modern-day Norwegian poetry has an extensive variety and it is possible to find
quite changing examples of this poem. This poetry that utilizes reality, adopts an
attitude which uses more of an autobiographic factors, narrative and documentarian
and outgoing as the wording. “It isn’t wrong to sort the same characteristics for the
other Scandinavian literatures –Sweden, Denmark, and Finland-. We can see all of
the characteristics that Rønnaug Kleiva stated about Norwegian poetry in Knut
Ødegård’s poetry. We can say that Ødegård came inside of reality beside of using
the reality. Autobiographic factors are dominant. Stated in other words, we can say “A
train that takes the road to the world from Molde” for Ødegård’s poetry.
I’ve told that the Western literature’s perspective of Scandinavia is related to different
criterias from Knut Ødegård’s. In my opinion, its strongest reason is based on
Ødegård’s conservative sense of tradition. He turned Voznesensky’s catchphrase “To
me, tradition is similar to making love with grandma’s grandma for poets.” upside-
down. Ødegård’s sense of tradition is a far cry from other Scandinavian literature’s
connoisseurs such as Ibsen, Hamsun and Tranströmer, partially close to Lagerlöf’s.
Even though the religious facts and tradition aren’t kind of views that Westerns would
like to see, it is poetry’s headquarter. In other words, translating his book to 14
different languages means acceptance of a nation and geography with its own
values of itself.
Undoubtedly, Knut Ødegård was a person who changed a nation’s fate. According to
the circumstances of his time, he did miraculous things by saying “We exist!” with his
ax in his hand. So many things has changed in last 1200 years. Axes left
their place to peace. Peace had been bawled via ballads and literature. Knut
Ødegård comes out with his good-shaped, complete book Yeryüzü İşaretleri, as the
representer of a rooted civilization. I have to point out its influences on pop culture, in
add-ons of video games Civilization IV Beyond the Sword and Warlords, Ragnar is
the king of Viking civilization. What about Ødegård? Could he be the king of the
Viking poetry 50 years later? To me it’s worth playing our card.
Fatih BALCIOĞLU
