Rudolf Muus

Rudolf Muus (February 19, 1862 – November 9, 1935) was a Norwegian author, among the best selling and most read authors of popular literature of his time.

Biography

Rudolf Muus was born on Ullevål farm. He was the son of Abraham Falch Muus, and his grandfather was Isach Muus, the owner of Åsen and Ullevål farms. Rudolf grew up at Åsen farm, close to the working class districts on Sagene and Torshov.

The talent for writing was revealed early in Muus’ life. He started writing about the age of six, and at school he was given 50 øre for each essay he wrote for his classmates. When he was about 7-8 years old, he was the theatre director for Aasen Theater and instructed young actors in little plays he had written himself. At the age of 12, he finished off a book on fairy tales, but it never got published.

In 1881 he completed artium (necessary for acceptance to university level studies) in one year, and after further studies at the University of Oslo he earned the title of cand.philos.

Muus was married to Olga Erikka Jørgine, whom he had ten children with. His wife was very musical and had performed on Kristiania Theater. Their home became a meeting place for artists and was filled with song and music.

Muus enjoyed outdoor life, and particularly picked up an interest in fishing and picking mushrooms.

It is assumed that Muus wrote about 50 novels, many of them very long. Many of these were crime fiction characterized by scary persecution scenes and a dose of light romance. In many of his stories, the plot took place in Kristiania (the former name of Oslo). In spite of varying literary quality in his work, many of Muus’ stories are authentic descriptions of city environments long gone from the present city of Oslo. In addition he also translated several grand German and English novels.

Literary Work

Rudolf Muus’ first published work was printed in Morgenbladet in 1881, under the title “En myr” (“A swamp”). According to Muus this was a “poetic-political idyll”, where he compares certain political conditions with moss swamps. His first fictional work that was publicly well-known was the comedy “Ole Høiland”, which was written in 1883 and performed the same year at Møllergatens Theater. The following year he wrote the story “Smedens datter”, which was published under the name “R.M”. Later came “Kongemordet i Bergen” and “Svenskene på Norderhov”, under the pseudonym Rollo. In 1885 he started writing Kristiania novels, the first one being ”Gardistens kjæreste”.

In addition to Kristiania novels Muus later on wrote a lot of crime fiction and stories about rural districts. What perhaps intrigued the author the most, was historical tales. Muus was very much interested in Norwegian history, and studied the topic throughout his entire life. In connection to his 25th anniversary as a writer, he expressed this by stating that the historical stories “Ravn den fredløse” and “Olaf Trygvessøn” were his favourites in his writing career up till that point. Muus also wrote cookbooks and even a sex education book under the name “Professor J. Souris”. Throughout his career he wrote under some 40 different names, including Sigmund Tofte, Bjørn Farmann, Gaston Ring, Rolf Ragnvaldsøn, Herman Brage, Spectator, Diogenes, Maximos and Rollo. The pseudonyms was used for different reasons. At one point he wrote for two competing publishers, and to prevent the publishers from finding out, he used the name Wilhelm at one publisher and Julius at the other.

In his books, Muus often let the underclass represent the villains, while the financially strong upper class represents the heroes. Some have claimed that Muus was promoting anti-socialistic propaganda through his writings, while others think that his life’s work indicates that he had a deep sympathy for the weaker people in society. Several of his comedies were performed in Arbeidersamfunnet (a labor community), where he often visited as a guest. A few times he even had to step in as an actor when the original cast either got a bit tipsy, or for some other reason could not perform.

Muus’ high productivity can to a big extent be credited to his big family. A normal fee for writers of fiction was about 10-15 Norwegian kroner per 16 page piece, regardless of the size of circulation. Handing in scripts at a steady pace therefore became a necessity in order to keep food on the table. The majority of the profits from Muus’ books and booklets fell into the hands of the publishing companies. One publisher supposedly made 50-60 thousand Norwegian kroner in one year on Muus’ books alone. Converted into today’s currency value, this number can safely be multiplied by one hundred, without exaggerating.

The total production of Muus’ books is difficult to estimate with precision. Due to his fascination with disguises and fake names, Muus operated with many pseudonyms. Furthermore, an estimate is complicated by the many obscure publishing companies that released his books. It is however raised beyond doubt that he sold in the millions, and at his time he was more read than Henrik Ibsen. Several of his books also sold very well as translated pirated editions abroad.

Miscellaneous

Even though it was not mentioned in the opening credits, the movie Trysil-Knut was based on Muus’ book about the skilled cross-country skier.