| Provisional Notes |
Went to primary school.
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Family connections: Father Sivert Aarflot
Spouse: Amund Knutsson Hovdenakk Aarflot
Poet, songwriter
Born on a farm in Volda, and worked hard all her life as a farmer's wife and mother of seven children. Her father was a well-known printer (Sivert Aarflot) who started the first rural newspaper in Norway in 1810. He encouraged his daughter's writing, and just before he died (1817) saw to it that her first collection of poems would be published (1820).
She wrote poetry and songs from an early age (12 or 13). Her dying father read and provided a title for her first collection. Her poems were emotionally intense, religious songs. Her intellectual background was partly formed by her father's Enlightenment ideas, and partly by the new religious awakening fronted by Hans Nielsen Hauge, which combined a low church emphasis on personal conversion with a new focus on the importance of reading and writing skills, not least for women. She was a very productive poet who composed her songs when working in the house or outdoors, and then wrote them down later when she could find the time, as reported by her son. She was popular among her neighbours for providing comforting poems in difficult situations, and her popularity spread to the rest of the country and beyond, as confirmed in the obituary written by the famous, male author Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson: "Her deeply religious songs are a treasure found in every farmer's house in the whole counties of Trondhjem and Bergen: they have also wandered further through the country and are even sung in the neighbouring countries. One dares claim that few in this country have contributed to religious growth in such a wide circle as she.' Her collections of poems were mostly read and not so often sung, and they were reprinted again and again in many copies. In the present day, the main building of Volda University College has been named after her. |
