Nesset parish and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Now you have arrived at “one of the most beautiful farms in the land, which lies between two fjords with green mountains above them, waterfalls and farms on the opposite beach, rolling fields and life at the bottom of the valley, and out along the fjord, mountains with headland after headland shooting out into the sea with a large farm on each one” That is how Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson describes his childhood home in his book ‘Blakken’. Bjørnstjerne was born on the 8th December 1832 at the Bjørgan vicarage in Kvikne in Østerdalen. When he was 5 and a half his Father got the calling to be a Priest in Nesset and the family moved here in 1838. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson had his first literary breakthrough with the farming tale «Synnøve Solbakken». As a writer he was versatile and in 1903 he won the Nobel Prize for literature. Bjørnstjerne visited Nesset many times after his family had moved away from here and in many of his poems you can find people, places and events from Nesset. In a letter to Alexander Kielland in 1902 he wrote “I am a Romsdalener. That is where I came from, I have been defined by this land and people…and this is where I will live until I die”. The Romsdal museum has a guide at the vicarage during the summer season.