Regine Normann

Regine Normann was a Norwegian school teacher, novelist and story writer. She was the first known female writer from Northern Norway. Her literary work includes 18 books, ranging from social realistic and historical novels, short stories and a children's book, to fairy tales and legends. She was a board member of the Norwegian Authors' Union from 1913 to 1932 and was a good friend of writers Sigrid Undset, Nini Roll Anker and Barbra Ring. Together with her second husband, writer Tryggve Andersen, she was known in artistic circles for her literary parties in Stensgaten in Oslo. Regine Normann is today best known for her two collections of fairy tales from 1925 and 1926, which have been reprinted several times under the title Ringelihorn. [1](^1^) [2](^2^) [3](^3^) Regine Normann was born in 1867 on the farm Mårsund in Bø in Vesterålen. Her parents were Tina Amalie Lockert and school teacher Mikkel Normann. She became fatherless at the age of four, and her mother was left with five children under eight years old. Regine Normann was sent to relatives outside Harstad when she was five years old. She moved back to Mårsund at the age of 11, but lived with her uncle, because her mother had remarried and moved from the farm. After confirmation, Regine Normann worked for a period at the vicarage in Bø as a governess for the priest's children. She ended up, only 17 years old, in an unhappy marriage with the 21 years older clerk and teacher Peder Johnsen. Regine Normann started writing against her first husband's will, and she hid the manuscript in a cave in the mountain. Today, this cave in Eidet - Sinahula - is named after her, and it has become an important cultural heritage site in Vesterålen. [4] In 1894, she went to Kristiania (now Oslo) for the first time to take teacher education, this time with her husband's consent. A few years later, she left her husband and Vesterålen in secret and fled to Kristiania to take the teacher exam at Olaf Berg's Higher Teacher Education School in 1897. She was appointed as a teacher at Kristiania Folk School in 1901. Until her retirement in 1932, she worked at Sofienberg School in Oslo. [2](^2^) Her first novel Krabvaag was published in 1905. It was Henrik Ibsen himself who supported her first manuscript, written in secret during her first marriage in Vesterålen, so that the fee for the publication gave her the opportunity to pay the divorce. [5] From the beginning, she always used Regine Normann as her pen name. Her private name in the marriage with Peder Johnsen was Sina Johnsen. After she married Tryggve Andersen in 1906, she became known as Mrs. Normann-Andersen. Among her other novels are Stængt (1906), Barnets tjenere (1910) and Faafengt (1911). She published several collections of fairy tales, such as Eventyr (1925), Nye eventyr (1926), Nordlandsnatt (1927), and Det gråner mot høst (1930). She published 18 books in total and her fairy tales have never been out of print since they first appeared. In 1940, André Bjerke wrote that “very few in this century have been able to compose true fairy tales. Actually, I can only think of three: Rudyard Kipling, Selma Lagerlöf, and Regine Normann”. [6] Regine Normann received several awards, including the Petter Dass Medal in 1932 and the King's Medal of Merit in 1937. [7] In 1939, she moved to her farm at Skånland in Troms where she died later that year. [7]