"No reiser me heimanfrå" : om reisemotivet i Tarjei Vesaas' roman Sandeltreet

This paper focuses on the motif of the travel in the 1933 novel Sandeltreet by the Norwegian writer Tarjei Vesaas. Vesaas' literary works are usually divided in two groups, the early psychological one and the later symbolist one, with the novel Kimen representing a turning point between the two. Chronologically, Sandeltreet belongs to the earlier group, but the symbolic weight of the central motif connects it to his later career. Throughout the novel, the travel serves, among other things, as a richly developed metaphor for both life and death. There are many allusions to the medieval Norwegian visionary poem – Draumkvedet. The motif of the travel is analyzed in relation to the particular characters in the novel and in the context of the scholarship on Vesaas' poetry.