ABSTRACT
Knut Hamsun´s novel Hunger, follows a nameless protagonist along his aimless walks as he immerses into the young capital Kristiania in Norway in the 1880–1890. By tracing the former rural fields between the renaissance city and the Royal Palace, a central space in the novel and the city was, over the nineteenth century, furnished with new public institutions such as the University, the National Gallery and Parliament. By looking at how the urban topography and specific spaces mediates and resonates in the starving protagonist´s tortured physiognomy and mind, we see how the city’s topographical characteristics play into the history of this urban transformation. The protagonist renders the promenade not by its potential architectural monumentality, but as a space of appearance orchestrated and regulated by the topography and time of day. We sense reminiscences of the city´s remolded agrarian land and wilderness, the monumental institutions still appearing as pavilions in the fields. The ways the urban spaces reflect and contrast in the protagonist´s fluctuating, nervous mind, unveil the nature of untamed lusts in the park. From his walk and perceptions, a portrayal of a city lingering between tamed and untamed nature in spaces closely knit to the topographical and geological physical conditions, about to be remolded, flattened out, and veiled into the new urban built landscape. By documenting the protagonist´s itineraries throughout the city’s topography, traceable at times only through vague thematic and verbal hints—the history of the places is activated and questioned, distorted, and reinvented.
