Sigbjørn Obstfelder

Sigbjørn Obstfelder (21 November 1866 – 29 July 1900) was a 19th-century Norwegian writer and poet.

Background

Obstfelder was born in Stavanger, Norway on November 21, 1866. He was the eighth child in a family of sixteen children, being one of only six siblings to survive to adulthood. His father, Herman Friedrik Obstfelder (1828–1906), was a baker by trade and provided little financial or emotional support. His mother, Serine Obstfelder (née Egelandsdal) (1836–1880) died when he was fourteen. The difficulties he experienced, a threatening male figure, the loss of the mother and the sense of ever-present death, were strong influences on his writing.

He began to study at the University of Christiania in 1886. Two years later he started studying engineering at Christiania Technical School (now Oslo ingeniørhøgskole). In 1890, he moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he took a job as a draftsman at a bridge construction company. After only a year, he returned to Norway, where he had a nervous breakdown and was briefly hospitalized in Christiania.

Literary career

His first published work was a contribution to the feminist journal Nylænde (New Frontiers) on the topic of the chastity of men before marriage. The piece features early shades of a recurring theme in his work, the fear of the erotic woman.

Obstfelder's entry into the Norwegian literary scene comes with his meeting Jens Thiis in 1892 in Paris. They travelled together in Belgium, where Obstfelder wrote some of his best works and thereafter supported himself on his writing.