Knut Hamsun (pseudonym of Knut Pedersen, Lomnel Gudbrandsdal, 1859 - Grimstad, 1952). Pseudonym of Knut Pedersen. Norwegian novelist. He practiced the most varied professions: a shoemaker's apprentice in Bodø, and then, always in Northern Norway, a coal miner, a schoolmaster, a stonecutter, a commercial clerk, a street vendor, and a clerk for a police post.
In 1882 he emigrated to the United States and, on his return, in 1888, published his first novel, Hunger, that provided an immediate celebrity to him.
His admiration for bucolic life and his rejection of the great city would take him to spend great stages of his life in a comfortable cabin of the forest. Fruit of this time are his works Pan and The blessing of the earth, by which he received in 1920 the Nobel Prize of Literature. In this same collection have appeared Victoria and its magnificent biography Hamsun, Dreamer and Conqueror.