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| Category: Fiction:Historical |
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| About the Book | |
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DRUDE is a fictional history of Drude Krog (1846-1934), a minister’s daughter in Norway, who dreamed of following in her deceased mother’s footsteps to become a stage actress. After being one of the rare female students at the university she married Kristofer Janson who had refused Lutheran ordination in Norway because of his liberal theology to become a novelist, poet, and lecturer. Drude became an accomplished pianist and writer. The Saloonkeeper’s Daughter is her description of what it felt like being a kept woman in Minneapolis in the 1870s. Janson was engaged by the Unitarians to help found liberal congregations amongst Norwegian immigrants who had lost confidence in orthodox Lutheranism. One rural congregation in Hanska MN still thrives. Norwegian Lutherans in America came to be divided into five groups (synods) each claiming to be true followers of Holy Scripture. It is little wonder that more than a few sober Norwegians began to doubt all these conflicting assertions and find the more rational theology espoused by the Jansons appealing. Drude developed an abiding friendship with their neighbor, Bjornstjerne Bjornson, 1903 Noble Winner, and through him added Edvard Grieg, Ole Bull, Henrik Ibsen, and Georg Brandes to her social circle. The Jansons wintered and played in Rome with their artistic friends during which time one of her seven children died in Norway, a loss from which she barely survived. The Janson residence on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis became one of the city’s cultural centers where weekly lectures, play readings, and music recitals were held. Janson hired Knut Hamsun (Noble Winner 1920) to assist him in his writing and lecturing. Either because of Hamsun’s virile presence in the Janson home or because of Kristofer’s fascination with spiritualism and the medium, Louise Bentzen, their marriage foundered. It was not aided by Drude’s later brief affair with an itinerant violinist, Claude Madden, who eventually played with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. Although considerably less is known about Drude’s activity after the dissolution of her marriage with Kristofer, it is known that she and her three daughters together with her youngest son, now also a violinist, moved to Dresden, Saxony. The novel projects her active continuance in the political and cultural life of this exciting city including the scene of a politically charged dinner party in which Hamsun bestows his Noble gold medal upon Joseph Goebbels. This fictional scene is based on a report that Hamsun did actually give this medal to Goebbels. Drude fled Germany after that event to return to her beloved Norway and become part of the intelligentsia surrounding the university community in Oslo.
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| Reviews | |
(Danielson) celebrates Norwegian immigrants who doubted existence of hell, verbal inspiration of Bible and doctrine of Trinity. . .Their descendants have taught their children to think for themselves. ". . .DRUDE is exciting and mesmerizing reading."
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| About the Author | |
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David Danielson, retired Lutheran minister, developed new congregations, and was a community organizer in Singapore. He was a court mediator and now writes. He has four books in print. Joan and he have been married fifty-seven years, live near Minneapolis, and have two children and four grandchildren. |
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