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The article examines the relationship between man and nature in Knut Hamsun's Growth of the soil (1917) and Stina Aronson's This Side of Heaven (1946). Combining an ecocritical and a postcolonial perspective, a set of ideologically charged notions associated with the northern wilderness come in to light. Through depictions of farmers, landscapes, animals, Sámi characters and supernatural elements, the analysis highlights both anthropocentric and colonial tendencies as well as a questioning of the perceived power structures between these actors. Thus, the article can also be regarded a contribution to an ongoing discussion of Hamsun's controversial Nobel Prize-winning novel as an ecological text. The comparative and situated approach helps widen the ecocritical perspective, especially regarding the status of the Sámi in the text., Artikkelen undersøker relasjonen mellom menneske og natur i Knut Hamsuns Markens grøde (1917) og Stina Aronsons Hitom himlen (1946). Et komparativt perspektiv inspirert av postkolonial økokritikk viser at begge tekstene forholder seg aktivt til et sett av ideologisk ladede forestillinger knyttet til den nordlige ødemarken som motivfelt. Ved å sammenligne fremstillinger av bønder, landskap, dyr, samer og overnaturlige krefter, blir det tydelig at forfatternes måte å forholde seg til dette motivfeltet på, er preget av ganske ulike syn på menneske og natur. Artikkelen tar for seg noen pregnante tekststeder der slike ideologiske posisjoner blir særlig tydelige. Dermed kan artikkelen også leses inn i en pågående diskusjon av Hamsuns omstridte nobelprisroman som en økologisk tekst. Det komparative, situerende og ideologikritiske perspektivet bidrar til å nyansere tidligere økokritiske lesninger, særlig knyttet til samenes status i teksten.

Both scholarly and popular perceptions have identified a profound cultural and political realignment of Europe with the Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: a largely Protestant North confronting a predominantly Catholic South. This replaced a medieval conceptual geography of East-West, in which the North (on the basis of scriptural passages) was a zone of sinfulness and danger. This chapter argues that the emergence of a North-South cultural-religious dichotomy was more fraught and uncertain than often supposed. Late medieval North European humanists countered negative perceptions with patriotic accounts of national origins. In the era of the Counter-Reformation, British and Scandinavian Catholic exiles emphasised the intrinsic virtue and orthodoxy of northerners, and the potential for reclaiming their homelands from heresy. Protestants were often ambivalent about the North, not least since northern parts of England, Scotland, Ireland and Denmark-Norway were often associated with Catholic resistance, as well as with magic and superstition. The propaganda of the British Civil Wars reinforced both positive and negative stereotypes. While a cultural association of Protestantism with the North eventually took root, this was a contingent process, and should be seen more as a consequence than a cause of the stabilization of Europe’s confessional borders.

The imaginary of North, in the Western world of the imagination, refers to a series of figures, colours, elements and characteristics conveyed by narratives, novels, poems, films, paintings and advertising which-from the myth of Thule to contemporary representations in popular culture-have forged a rich, complex network of symbolic meanings. The "North" poses the problem of the relationship between geographic realities and the world of the imagination, since those who have written and read about it in Europe and America, have, for the most part, never been there. Representations of "North" are discovered like layers of discourse, laid down by different cultures, and picked up on and shaped by different aesthetic movements.