Almar Bjoernefjell

Biography

Almar was born in Christiania, (Oslo) Norway in 1898, as son of Anna Mathea Andersen and (Peder) Torvald Pedersen Hamsun, a customs officer and a younger brother of the writer, Knut Hamsun. He was baptized Thoralf Oskar Almar Hamsun. After finishing primary school, he worked with insurance, and was a correspondent in a Germany at war. Back in Norway he obtained a pilot's license, and had military duties on several occasions. Around 1920 he traveled to Nordland, northern Norway, were he first worked as a police officer, and later as a journalist. During an interview with film-director, Gunnar Sommerfeldt, Almar was offered a main role in the director's film; Markens grøde (1921), after a novel of Knut Hamsun. Sommerfeldt thought his surname, Hamsun, was good publicity for the film. But Knut Hamsun did not like that his name was used in the film's advertising, especially not after some newspapers wrote that Almar was the poet's son. A trial created bad relations between the two brothers and their children, and led to Almar changing his surname. He chose Bjoernefjell, which was the name of the customs station where his father worked. After 1945 Almar worked mostly as a journalist, he lived for a long time in Hobøl, Østfold County, later at Prestfoss, in Buskerud County. Almar was active as a writer and a diligent debater for life, he died at Prestfoss in the early autumn of 1982.