Hulda Garborg was a versatile author and cultural person. Hulda was 11 years younger than Arne Garborg. They married in 1887, and she had her literary breakthrough in the 1890s. However, her work did not only revolve around writing. She was passionate about raising the status of Norway’s traditional culture and developing it further. She wrote popular books about folk costumes, traditional dance, cooking and housekeeping, as well as novels, poetry and plays. Her literature was widely read in her time. Hulda Garborg was a prominent feminist and one of the country’s first female local politicians.
She was born on the 22nd of February in 1862 in Stange in Hedmark county. Her parents divorced a year later, and Hulda grew up with her mother. In 1875, they moved to Kristiania, where she later got to work in a shop owned by Mikkel Dobloug. With the pay she got from this job, she and her mother could sustain themselves. Through Dobloug, Hulda got in touch with people connected to the Christiania Labour Society, where she met renowned authors like Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Arne Garborg. This environment of radicals and idealists influenced Hulda. In the summer of 1885, she started going to a language school and became fascinated by Nynorsk. At the same time, she played the piano and learned French and German. She strongly desired to become an author and she wrote a lot. But she burned everything she had written when she got together with Arne Garborg.
When Hulda and Arne got together in the summer of 1887, neither had jobs. In September, Hulda realized she was pregnant, and they married on the 3rd of December. The day after, they moved to their cottage at Kolbotn in the municipality of Tynset. On the 25th of May, their son, Arne Olaus Fjørtoft Garborg came into the world. The nine years they stayed at the cottage turned into a creative phase in their lives. Hulda hadn’t given up her author dream. She told her husband about her life and wrote. Arne and Hulda travelled a lot during winters, to Italy and Germany, among others. The years at the cottage would come to have great meaning to Hulda. She started exploring her heritage and identity in her literature.

In 1897, Hulda moved with the family to Labråten in Asker. The political currents that led up to 1905 made Hulda feel quite creative. She became a part of, and an instigator for the Norwegian wave in the contemporary. The fight for Norwegian pride and Norwegian independence was important to her, and Hulda worked with public information and for rural Norway to come to light. Her public information work must be seen as a whole; a large program for food- and home care, clothes and National costumes, upbringing and lifestyle, visual arts, dance, theatre and literature. The goal was to inspire a richer and more sensible life. She wished for the city and the rural towns to stand together about something that was integrated into the people, and to lift it and fill it with pride. It started with Hulda collecting her meal recipes from “Den 17de Mai” of the book Heimestell from 1899. After that, she came out with multiple books and travelled a lot. She collected new knowledge wherever she went – she wrote down recipes, food booms, names of medicinal herbs, borrowed national costumes, and decorative patterns, and she learned dances and folk songs, and she connected with other people. Hulda was the engine in her home. She did most of the practical work because she believed that the woman’s most important role was being a wife and a mother. She also made time for writing novels, articles, travelling letters, diaries and plays. Examples of the themes she focused on in her literature were imperialism, the genocide of the Natives of the USA, child labour and children who were subjected to divorce, and sexuality in mature women.
From 1919, Hulda used inspiration from her life in Hedmark in her literature, and she wrote multiple novels about the environment there. In 1910 she founded an acting team with amateur actors. This team was the predecessor of The Norwegian Theatre which was founded in 1912. Hulda was the chairman for two years; she took on the administrative work and worked as an instructor. From 1919 to 1924, she joined the theatre’s council again, and in 1919 she also was the theatre manager. Hulda engaged in politics, and in 1917 she was the first woman in Asker’s municipal council. She worked two periods for the Liberal Left and one year as a deputy.
After Arne died in 1924, Hulda withdrew from the state church. The last few of her years were a fight to protect Arne’s legacy, and also to sustain herself economically and keep her social position in society. She wrote books and articles and edited Arne’s diaries. In addition, she rented out parts of her house, and she had enough resources to travel in Europe. She got the King’s Medal of Merit and was a renowned figure in the Norwegian cultural environment until she died on the 5th of November in 1934. Hulda was buried in the garden in Knudaheio alongside her husband.
