Tarjei Vesaas

Tarjei Vesaas (1897-1970) is widely regarded as one of Norway's greatest writers of the twentieth century. Vesaas was born in the Vinje, southern Norway. Despite a stint of travel in the 1920s, Vesaas spent the majority of his life in Vinje, living on the farmhouse that had belonged to his family for three centuries. Despite his apparent isolation, Vesaas proved to be a prolific writer, publishing twenty-five novels and several volumes of poetry, short stories, and plays in his lifetime. His writing touches on a variety of difficult themes such as mortality, guilt, and angst, while often chronicling the deep intractable human emotions of his characters. Vesaas won a number of awards, including the Gyldendal's endowment in 1943, The Nordic Council's Literature prize in 1963 for his novel, The Ice Palace, and the Venice Prize in 1953 for The Winds.