Theodor Kittelsen,
A Norwegian Dream
Reaching Many

As a child, when our imagination are unrestricted and can mold everyday objects and nature and houses, I was afraid of the possibility that this enormous cat might be hiding behind a house. That it might have squeezed itself inside a garage, stalking me on my way home and then pounce from its ambush spot.

Worse, this rampant imagination would increase whenever the family visited our cabin outside the city. Forests and huge mountains could hide large creatures, and we could never really see what moved behind the leaves and trees while the car was moving so fast. And possibly and somewhat funny, I don’t believe I was the only one with these worries and fears in my class.

Often on the same paranoid walk back home from school I would visit my grandparents on my mother’s side. They lived in the street above the family’s house and would always have leftovers from their early dinners prepared for me and my brother. For whatever reason, old people with their funny ideas for decor (well, at least in northern Norway), our grandparents had statues of trolls in their living rooms.

They were almost the same height as me, long noses, grey skin and beady glass eyes. A pair of troll mother and father with their smaller brood placed on bookshelves or corners in the room. I never liked them. They looked hungry, had toothless grins, tufts of hair on their claylike heads.

I asked my grandmother if she had ever seen this image of a giant cat in the forest, specified that it almost blended in with the forest background. I used the word “trolsk”. “Troll like”, she answered, she described a drawing she had seen multiple times. The image had soft glowing light of the setting sun in the backdrop. Dusk enveloped the landscape. Trees everywhere, only the top of them visible and hidden inside the visage of an old being with one bright eye, again looking somewhat between starving and intently stalking the viewer.

This was before the convenience of easy access internet browsers, so my grandfather picked up a lexicon (or the book my grandmother had seen the drawing in), turned the pages and in a similar experience as the Norwegian class, on the page there was a big illustration. Under it, the name Trollskogen by Theodor Kittelsen.

Both me and my grandparents knew of this imagery, the lines used, depictions of nature and the mysticism dwelling inside it. I didn’t remember the name for a long time, but I think my grandparents did though. Later with my grandmother on my father's side, the same question was asked. She is not Norwegian, she is from England and met my grandfather while he stayed in Denmark. She worked as an English teacher and travelled wherever she had the opportunity to teach English to Norwegians. And she as well recognized the lines drawn, the imagery of folklore and superstitious legends by the hand of Kittelsen.

Theodor Kittelsen

Theodor Kittelsen was born in Kragerø, Telemark 27. April 1857. Kragerø is described as a “lively small city by the Telemark coast […]There many ships visited and docked from strange and unknown coasts and distant lands who brought with them stories and folktales from corners of the world”.¹ He came from a poor family, but he could still foster a creative interest, both parents could read and had books that were readily available for all the eight children in the family. Kittelsen from his early years always drew, constantly making caricatures of people in Kragerø.

Sadly, his father died when he was twelve which gave the family economic difficulties. Shortly after he found work with a watchmaker in the same town. Here, eventually at the age of 18, his sketches were discovered by Diedrich Maria Aall and who introduced Kittelsen's drawings to Wilhelm Von Hannos which gave him the possibility to enter drawing school in Christiania.

This was the huge and uncertain start of Kittelsen’s art career. He would through his mentors be able to travel to the Münch art school in Germany and visit Paris in France. He could work continuously as a creative artist, caricaturist, illustrator and also read and write his own work, both humorous and poetic. He gained no great fame outside of Norway, even though he had a notable creative output and did commissions or contributions. His stay in Münch was founded by a stipend sponsored by Aall who after 1879 stopped supporting the young artist.² Kittelsen was for a brief time stuck in the city and ached to return to Norway. Through the collective efforts of Norwegian students and artists he could return to his homeplace in the winter of 1880, to Kragerø.

The following year in 1881, was the year his career would gain tremendous velocity. Through his connections from art school, he and other future notable art figures would rent atelier rooms in the place “Pultosten” in “Lille Grensen”, Christiania. His fellow artists who wanted to bring change in the culture of Norway, tired of romanticism, cultivating plain air, realist and naturalistic painters. Some became close friends, Erik Werenskiold and Kristian Krohg and even a certain young man who we later know as Edvard Munch.³

His most important project, and longest contribution came through his friend Werenskiold, who got in touch with Peter Christian Asbjørnsen and vouched for Kittelsen artistic talents. Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe are still the biggest collectors of Norwegian folklore and legends. Kittelsen had read their published collections of stories in his earlier youths and his talent for depicting the fablelike characters stemmed from his immersion of legends and fairytales he so wished to bring to life from the books he has read.⁴

Kittelsen stood out from his companions of naturalists and realists, still, all of them harboured a deep love of Scandinavian nature, fjords, mountains and forests. Kittelsen loved caricature and satires and had a knack for it, he illustrated parodies of people in the guise of animals, reminiscing Aesop's fables seen in his own publishing Hvad er Livet? (1883-1886). Furthermore, as his companions painted or drew landscapes, with the wonder and awe from the perspective of modern man unbound of city lives, Kittelsen went a step further with personifying nature.

The Sights

"It is not the dramatic 'effects' in nature, I care about. It is the mystical pull of it, the quiet, the secretive"
- Kittelsen, Aftenposten, 9.10.1904.⁵

Kittelsen collaborations with Asbjørnsen and Moe was more than fruitful. The figures of Askeladden, Smørbukk and Kvitebjørn Kong Valemoen and many more became widely known characters in Norway, and he would continue drawing and bringing to life these beloved figures for 29 years. Kittelsen became famous not only for his work with Asbjørnsen and Moe, but also his handling of the motif "Pesta", the avatar of the Black Plague, and illustrations of trolls, either they were hungry antagonists or witty empathic characters from nature.

All his characters were handled with care, and respect tied to them, they all came from nature or small towns. This might also be the reason for his success and acclaim from both the younger and older generations. His depictions of Huldra, a feminine foresttroll, had deep connections to the Telemark legends and visually to the midsummers. The watertrolls or Draugr had stories connected to the roars from the ocean and waves crashing into the coastlines. Deeper inside the forests of Norway where ponds lay still, Nøkken waited to drown those drawn towards their water lilies.

Through superstitions, older generations believed in the existence of trolls. The younger generations, possibly feeling a connection with the sublime nature, could feel a presence within.

Kittelsen's fascinations and deep connections with the mystical creatures that lived underground or in the forests or on the mountains gave people the idea that he had been given the "sights". A superstition that people with immense fantasies (or born on a sunday, some say) could see the invisible and not be seen by them.⁶

Even his own daughter, Ingrid Kittelsen, told of this phenomenon, "We never saw any trolls or got close to them in the forests, but we always knew they were close by, especially when walking alone".⁷

It might be a paradoxical view on Kittelsen work, that his depiction of folktales and legends has such a strong grip on us Norwegians because of its intense realism that is rooted in the nature and regions where folktales originate from. Even when these fantastical elements are not within the frame and only nature is the main motive, there is still a lingering feeling that something or someone is out of sight living there.

This heightened feeling, observable in Kittelsen's work, is universal. It might not just be exclusive to the landscape of Norway. However, it is recognizable and very known to anyone.