Ragnhild Jølsen
| Ragnhild Jølsen | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Occupation | author |
| Nationality | Norwegian |
| Period | 1903–1908 |
Ragnhild Theodora Jølsen (28 March 1875 – 28 January 1908) was a Norwegian author. Norwegian oral traditions were a recurring theme in her works. Her writings often focused on the conflict between the old rural society and modern industrial society.
Ragnhild Jølsen grew up on the historic Ekeberg farm (Ekeberg gård) in Enebakk, Akershus, Norway. This large farm had been in her family since 1634 and remained so until sold in 1903. Ragnhild Jølsen was youngest of nine children, four of whom died early. She moved to Kristiania in 1889 after the family had been hit hard financially. Her father, Holm Jølsen (1833–1906) was an early industrial pioneer and ran Norway's third largest match factory in Ekebergdalen between 1866 and 1886. She completed grammar school in 1891. Ragnhild Jølsen moved back to Enebakk in 1896. She attended a local girls' school (Nissens pikeskole). She later worked as a governess with relatives in Enebakk (1897–1898).
Jølsen was seen as a controversial author in a period of great change, as society transformed itself from the old ways founded on small farming communities into the modern industrial society. Short, chopped-up sentences were typical of her writing style, almost maniacally sounding, as in Biblical form, and her depictions always moved in the intersection between dream and reality. Having received a grant she traveled to Rome in November 1906 and returned to Enebakk in July 1907. There she began an affair with the married Norwegian painter Carl Dørnberger (1864–1940).
Jølsen died in January 1908, allegedly having taken an overdose of sleeping powder. She left for posterity some of Norwegian literature's most forceful depictions of agony-manifesting women. Both in her private life and as a writer she was an outsider, and during most of her short life she lived the life of a bohemian. Add to that her books which shocked her contemporaries with their open depictions of the sex lives and drives of women which caused some reviewers to assert that it had to be a man and not a woman who had written them.
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