Hansteen, Aasta (1824–1908)

Norwegian artist, author, lecturer, polemicist, and pioneer of women's rights. Born on December 10, 1824, in Kristiania, Norway; died on April 13, 1908; daughter of Professor Christopher Hansteen and Johanne (Borch) Hansteen.

Aasta Hansteen was born on December 10, 1824, in Kristiania, the daughter of Professor Christopher Hansteen and a Danish mother, Johanne Borch Hansteen. Her parents' home was a meeting place for the liberal intelligentsia of the time, typified by the poet Johan Welhaven, whom Aasta detested, reserving her admiration for his rival, Henrik Wergeland.

Hansteen trained as an artist in Kristiania, Copenhagen, and Düsseldorf, and was successful as a portrait painter. Her work was bought by the National Gallery of Norway, and exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1855, to which she was able to travel, she noted proudly, using money she had earned herself.

Norwegian nationalism and the New Norwegian language movement (Landsmål) engaged her interest, and her first book was published on the subject in 1862, followed by poems written in New Norwegian. She was even more strongly influenced by John Stuart Mill's On the Subjection of Women, which appeared in Danish translation in the early 1870s. This led her to give lectures in the Scandinavian capitals and many Norwegian cities, culminating in her book, Kvinden skapt i Guds billede (Woman Created in God's Image). As the book's title implies, she felt the state church to be in the forefront of "the tyranny of the male" and resigned her membership. Because of her temperament and outspokenness, as much as her uncompromising views, she encountered much criticism and caricature; this drove her to leave Norway and to spend the 1880s in the United States, where she participated in the women's struggle in Boston and Chicago, and took up her portrait painting again. When, after nine years, she returned to Norway, she was welcomed and hailed for her pioneering work for women, which she continued until her death on April 13, 1908.

Aasta Hansteen was immortalized by Henrik Ibsen in the character of Lona Hassel in his play Samfundets Støtter (Pillars of Society) and by another Norwegian dramatist, Gunnar Heiberg, in Tante Ulrikke (Aunt Ulrikke). Her portrait, painted by Oda Krogh , hangs in the National Gallery in Oslo, a bust by the sculptor Gustav Vigeland was placed on her grave, and a statue by Nina Sundbye was erected at Aker Brygge, Oslo, in 1986.

sources:

Aschehoug & Gyldendal. Store Norske Leksikon. Oslo: Kunnskapsforlaget, 1992.

Garton, Janet, Norwegian Women's Writing 1850–1990 (Women in context series). London & Atlantic Highlands: Athlone Press, 1993.

Norsk Biografisk Leksikon (Dictionary of Norwegian Biography). Vol. V. Oslo: Aschehoug, 1931.

Elizabeth Rokkan , translator, formerly Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Bergen, Norway