Aftenposten
- Olav Duun
- Professor Dr. Richard Zsigmondy
- An Abuse of Power
Aftenposten's front page of 11 November 1926 set Norwegian literature, science and local alcohol politics side by side. R. Grieg's signed column profiled the novelist Olav Duun, recalling his 1907 debut with a slim book of stories and the new work he had brought out every year since. Docent Johs. Lindeman, writing for the paper, explained Professor Richard Zsigmondy's colloid chemistry through the alchemists' 'drinkable gold', a red liquid in which finely divided gold stays suspended in water for months or years. An unsigned editorial attacked the Faaberg rural council for refusing beer and wine licences to the district's reputable hotels, including the Lillehammer Tourist Hotel. The council had split 12 to 12 and the acting mayor's vote decided it, and the paper called the decision an obvious abuse of power.
Translation
Olav Duun
He made his debut in 1907 with a small volume of stories, and every year since then a work from his hand has appeared. What makes his books so appealing is that one always senses …
R. Grieg.
Professor Dr. Richard Zsigmondy
For Aftenposten, by Docent Johs. Lindeman.
… be dissolved in water, can nevertheless, by certain methods, be brought into so finely divided a state in the water that it stays suspended for long periods, for months, indeed years. One obtains a magnificent red-coloured liquid, which the alchemists called aurum potabile (drinkable gold), but which we now call a colloidal solution of gold in water.
An Abuse of Power
By 12 votes to 12, the acting mayor's vote being decisive, the Faaberg municipal council has refused the district's highly regarded hotels and boarding houses the right to serve beer and wine. Among them is the Lillehammer Tourist Hotel, which lies just outside the town boundary. The decision must be described as an obvious abuse of power on the part of the majority, and it will hit the hotels all the harder because they are being deprived of the licence to serve that they have held until now.
Context
Why Duun filled Aftenposten's front page on Nobel day
R. Grieg's portrait of Olav Duun ran on the day the Swedish Academy announced its literature prize, and the timing was deliberate. Duun was a perennial candidate: he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twenty-four times between 1924 and 1939. According to the English Wikipedia biography, Aftenposten was certain of a rumour that Duun would win, and on its front page of 11 November 1926, the date of this edition, it wrongly announced him as the winner. Later that day the Academy named George Bernard Shaw, and the mistake became a publication scandal in Norway. The same account says Duun lost to Shaw by a single vote. The passage selected here is the biographical part of the column, praising Duun's steady output. The announcement wording itself lies outside the excerpt.
Duun's landsmål fiction and the Juvik saga
Grieg's remark that Duun debuted in 1907 with a small book of stories and had published every year since matches the record. His first book, Løglege skruvar og anna folk, appeared in 1907, and between 1907 and 1938 he published 25 novels, four short-story collections and two children's books. Duun wrote in Landsmål, an amalgam of peasant dialects that later developed into Nynorsk, one of Norway's official written standards. His central achievement was the six-volume Juvikfolket, published from 1918 to 1923, which follows a family of peasant landowners over four generations. The yearly output Grieg admired came alongside a day job: Duun still worked as a schoolteacher in Holmestrand until 1927.
What the October 1926 referendum ended, and what it left to councils
Norway's prohibition was a ban on the sale and serving of spirits. The Storting passed a permanent prohibition law in the autumn of 1921 by a narrow majority, and the ban on fortified wine was lifted in 1923 as trade problems mounted. In the referendum of 18 October 1926, 531,084 voters (55.7 per cent) voted against continuing prohibition and 423,031 voted for it. The rejection was overwhelming in and around Oslo and in other towns such as Bergen. The spirits ban was formally repealed in 1927, and Vinmonopolet began selling spirits the year after the vote. The Faaberg editorial, written a little over three weeks after the referendum, concerns something else: hotels' licences to serve beer and wine, which the referendum on the spirits ban had not settled. The quarrel was therefore a local licensing decision, taken by a council split down the middle, at a moment when national opinion had just turned against prohibition.
Local control of drink and the trade pressures behind repeal
Norwegian municipalities had long decided how alcohol reached their residents, which is why a rural council could hold a hotel's licence in its hands. The first samlag was founded in 1871, a municipally controlled spirits outlet whose profits went to work for the public good. By 1913 the sale of wine and spirits was allowed only in the largest towns and a few municipalities in eastern Norway. Against that background, the Faaberg council's tie-break vote was an exercise of local power, and Aftenposten's charge of 'abuse' was a political judgement on how that power was used. The national mood the editorial appealed to had been shaped by commerce as much as by morals. Prohibition soon became more a question of trade policy than of social policy, and pressure from France, whose exports of alcoholic drinks had fallen, was one reason the 1926 referendum was held.
Original
Olav Duun.
Han debuterte i 1907 med et lite bind fortællinger, og senere har der hvert aar foreligget et verk fra hans haand. Det, som gjør hans bøker saa tiltalende, er, at man altid merker,
Professor, dr. Richard Zsigmondy.
løses i vand, allikevel ved visse fremgangsmaater kan bringes i en saa finfordelt tilstand i vandet at det holder sig svævende i lange tider, i maaneder, ja aar. Man faar en praktfuld rødfarvet væske, som alkemistene kaldte aurum potabile (drikbart guld), men som vi nu kalder en k o l l o i d opløsning av guld i vand.
Et maktmisbruk.
Faaberg herredsstyre har med 12 mot 12 stemmer, idet den fungerende ordførers stemme gjorde utslaget, nektet bygdens høit anskrevne hoteller og pensionater øl - og vinret. Deriblandt Lillehammer turisthotel, som ligger like utenfor bygrænsen. Avgjørelsen maa betegnes som et oplagt maktmisbruk fra flertallets side, og det vil ramme hotellene saa meget værre, som de berøves den skjænkeret, de hittil har hat.