Hans Seland

Hans Seland (5 March 1867 – 30 June 1949) was a Norwegian politician and author.

Hans Andreas Johanneson Seland grew up on the farm Seland near Nes in Flekkefjord in the county of Vest-Agder, Norway. Seland attended Stend Agricultural School (1884–1886). He was editor in Nordmands in Christiania (1893–96) and before 1896 went back to Nes to take over father's farm. He was deputy to the Parliament of Norway for the Norwegian Liberal Party (1915–18) and for the Norwegian Agrarian Association (1921–24). Locally he was a member of Nes council board and bank auditor for 30 years. Hans Seland, together with Hans Haga and Nils Trædal, were among the most influential politicians in the Agrarian Party (Norges Bondelag) to prevent this group from joining the fascist Nasjonal Samling of Vidkun Quisling.

Seland reached out to a broad audience as the author of over 50 books. Almost all literature written by or about him is only available in Norwegian, reducing a potential international audience. He may not be among Norway’s most known authors, but is certainly among the most celebrated ones within such diverse circles as Norwegian emigrants in America. His fame as a wandering storyteller eventually led him to the States in 1904, where he visited several of the Norwegian immigrant communities which had grown up after the great migration from Norway. In 1925, he represented the Norwegian Farmers' Union at the Norse-American Centennial, the 100th anniversary of Norwegian emigration to America.

He writes in his autobiography Aar og Dagar how stunned he was to see how faithfully the Norwegian immigrants had preserved their dialects and the formal church language, and at the same time successfully accommodated to the American way of living. His travels inspired him to write several complimentary articles of the United States and the preservation of Norwegian history, literature, and culture in general among the emigrants living there. His fame led him to meet with President Theodore Roosevelt.

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