He found a bench to sit on, took a pencil and some paper out of his pockets, and started writing: ‘It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has set its mark upon him…' He kept writing on the deck of the ‘Thingvalla' until it became too dark to see. He remembered how lonely and desperate he had felt in Kristiania. He remembered the girl he had fallen in love with, the times he stood outside her house waiting to catch a glimpse of her. He remembered the people who had lent him money. He remembered the houses and the attic rooms where he had stayed, suffering from the cold. Hamsun walked around on the deck of the ship and the sight of the city of Kristiania brought back many painful memories of a time when he had wandered around that very same city, almost dying of hunger. The ship stayed in the Kristiania harbor for a full day but Hamsun felt he could not face the city where he had once lived in poverty, trying to become a successful writer. When, after about a week of traveling, the ship stopped at the harbor of Kristiania (the city now known as Oslo), Hamsun decided to stay on board. In 1888, twenty-nine-year-old Knut Hamsun (born as Knud Pedersen) sat on board of the transatlantic ocean liner ‘Thingvalla', traveling back to his homeland Norway from the United States, where he had worked as a laborer, a trolley conductor, and a pastor's assistant. The birth of the modern psychological novel
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