Karl Ove Knausgaard adorned the front page of the New York Times Sunday Magazine’s 1st March issue.
In addition to the front page image, first part of his essay “My Saga – On the trail of the first Europeans” was published on 13 pages in the magazine.
“The New York Times Magazine contacted Knausgaard in December to ask whether he would travel across the United States and write about his trip for them. The editor proposed that he traveled to Newfoundland to visit the place where the Vikings had settled, then rent a car and drive south, into the U.S. and westward to Minnesota, where a large majority of Norwegian-American immigrants had settled, and then write about it. He also suggested that he should see the disputed Kensington Runestone while he was in Minnesota. It was on display in a little town called Alexandria, near where a farmer had claimed to discover it in 1898, and it could be proof — if authentic — that the Vikings had not only settled Newfoundland but made it all the way to the center of the continent. It probably was a hoax, he said, but seeing it would be a nice way to round out the story.” (*
The essay is a commissioned work describing the Viking’s journey from Newfoundland through America.
Part two will be published Sunday 22.
Karl Ove Knausgaard is the author of the six-volume autobiographical novel “My Struggle.” The English translation of “My Struggle: Book Four” will be published in the United States in April. Translated by Ingvild Burkey from the Norwegian.
*) Excerpt from the introduction of the essay.
The images are not from the New York Times Magazine article.