OVERLAND, ARNULF

born April 27, 1889, Kristiansand, Nor. died March 25, 1968, Oslo Norwegian poet and Socialist whose poems helped inspire the Norwegian resistance movement during the German occupation in World War II. He studied philology briefly at King Frederick's University. His first book of poems, Den ensomme fest (1911; The Lonely Feast), was immediately acclaimed for its style, its clarity, and its economy. All his life verland was an uncompromising defender of the oppressed, but not until after World War I, in his Brd og vin (1919; Bread and Wine), did he develop a radical opposition to bourgeois society and to Christianity and recognize a need to make his poetry into a social weapon. His poems of the 1930s were intended to alert Norwegians to the danger of Fascism and Nazism. The best-known of these is Du m ikke sove! (1937; You Must Not Sleep!). The poems that he directed against the Nazi occupation and that he wrote and distributed secretly in 1940 led to a four-year imprisonment in a German concentration camp. When he was liberated in May 1945, the Norwegian government presented him with the old home of the great national poet, Henrik Wergeland, as an expression of gratitude.