Book summaries

"The year is 1945. On May 26, the police chief in Arendal came to Nørholm and ordered my wife and I under house arrest for 30 days. I was not notified. My wife handed over my firearms to him upon request. I then had to write to the police chief afterwards that I also had two large pistols from the last Olympics in Paris, he could pick them up whenever he wanted."

“The place you come from is always beautiful, it is the feeling of homeland in a small way, the feeling of home. (“Farmer”, 1918)”

"When people show up at the pier for the coastal boat, it gives them no income but also no expense, it balances out, perhaps with a deduction for a little shoe wear. It doesn't exactly hurt, but it's rare that someone has a little left over for it. A special experience, a sight for the gods, some true blessing? No, no! Some people and boxes ashore, some people and boxes aboard. Nobody says anything, neither the mate at the row nor the clerk on the quay need a single word, they look at the papers and nod. That's it."

"The third generation now rules in Jensen's large hardware store at Segelfoss. The founder was Per Jensen, called Per på bua, it continued with his son Theodor, Theodor på bua, who ran it very widely and became a pot and pan and a progressive man in the town. It's not that long ago, people remember him well, he was at the same time as the old lieutenant's son, the one who only cared about music and didn't become anything."

"The polden is developing. There were a couple of good herring years and the common people flocked to this new place, Pauline at the kramboden did business well and steadily, she was skilled and found solutions, there was a spirit of trade in her."

"Two men came trudging north from the neighboring farm, they were dark-faced and had thin, gray beards, one of them carried a wind instrument on his back. No one in the whole hamlet had expected anything special from this day, but then these two strangers appeared, they stepped forward in a conspicuous place between the houses, put the wind instrument on a stake and began to play."

"Yes, we are vagabonds on the earth. We wander the roads and howl, sometimes we crawl, sometimes we walk upright and trample each other down. Like Daniel, he trampled down and was himself trampled down."

"People from the big cities have no appreciation for the measurements and dimensions of small towns. They think they can come and stand in the square and smile and be superior, they think they can laugh at the houses and the paving, they say that many times. But don't older people in small towns remember when the houses were even smaller and the paving worse than it is now?"

"There are many who write about the Norwegian Language and the Retskrivningkomitee now about Dagen, Sakligheten and Spirrevippen, Løvland and Anathon Aal, Stortingsmen and Professors, Editors and Actors. Almost everyone agrees that we should destroy the Language, it is the pace of the Thing they are arguing about."

"The long, long path over the marshes and into the forests, who has drawn it up? Man, the human being, the first to be here. There was no path before him. Then an animal or two followed the faint tracks over the moors and marshes and made them clearer, and then again an occasional skunk began to sniff out the path and walk it when he went from mountain to mountain and looked for his reindeer. Thus the path was made through the great common that no one owned, the untamed land."

"A man on the new flagpole, and what is he doing there? It's probably a prank by Theodor on the boat again, but his father, old Per on the boat, should have known! Look, Mr. Holmengraa, the owner of the mill, he had a flagpole and a flag and a flagman, it was reasonable and necessary, he was supposed to fly the flag for the mail ships and when a large freighter came into the dock with grain for the mill."

"The entire hamlet was once one property, and what is now the Segelfoss farm was the headquarters. At that time, Segelfoss was, by Nordic standards, a whole estate of fifty cows, and it also had a sawmill, a gristmill, a brickyard and many miles of forest."

"Now I have gone into the woods. Not for that, I am not offended by anything or particularly hurt by the wickedness of men; but when the woods do not come to me I must go to them. That is how it is. This time I have not gone out as a slave and a vagabond. I am rich and overfed, drowsy with prosperity, with luck, do you understand? I left the world as a sultan leaves fat food and harem and flowers and puts on his hair shirt."

"BLUMENSCHØN: Be careful now, Irene. GIRL: Sure. BLUMENSCHØN: Yes, you say sure, but. GIRL: They told me to hurry too. BLUMENSCHØN: Yes, I did. The man could be here any minute. He's the one who's going to buy the things. GIRL: Are you going to sell everything now? BLUMENSCHØN: No, don't touch that watch so hard. It's the only one of my watches that goes for a few minutes."

"There will certainly be a lot of berries this year. Cranberries, lingonberries and cloudberries. Not for that, you can't live off berries. But it's nice that they're there in the field and are pleasing to the eye. And many times they're also refreshing to find when you're thirsty and hungry. I was thinking about this last night."

"In the winter of 18** I traveled to Lofoten with one of Rønneberg's fishing yachts from Ålesund. We made the trip in just under four weeks, I disembarked in Skroven and began to wait for a boat apartment to move on. At Easter a homecoming boat was going over to Saltenlandet and although I didn't want to get to the destination with this boat team, I still went with it."

"There is a forest between the sea and Benoni's house. It is not Benoni's forest, but a common, a large mixed forest of conifers, birch and aspen. At a certain time in the summer, people from two parishes come together here and ravage and chop to their hearts' content; when they are finished and have brought the wood home, the forest lies quiet again for the rest of the year and the animals and birds have perfect peace again."

"The sea was mirror-clear yesterday and it is mirror-clear today. It is Indian summer and warm on the island – and oh how gentle and warm it is! – But there is no sun. Many years have passed since I was in such peace, perhaps twenty or thirty years, perhaps in a previous life. But once before, I think, I must have tasted this peace since I walk here humming and being delighted and caring for every stone and every blade of grass and they seem to care for me in return. We are familiar."

"In the outlying areas there are many islands and there is a small one called Blåmandsø, it has barely a hundred people. But the neighboring island is much larger, there are probably three or four hundred people, and there is a church and authorities. It is called Kirkeøen. Since my childhood, there has also been a post office and telegraph on Kirkeøen. ("On Blåmandsø")"

"The housemaid in the rectory, Marie van Loos, stands in the kitchen window and looks far up the road. She knows the two up there by the gate, it is clearly the telegraphist Rolandsen, her own fiancé, and the bell-ringer's daughter Olga. Now it was the second time she had seen these two together this spring; what could that mean? If Miss van Loos had not had so much to do just now, she would have gone straight up the road to them and demanded an explanation."

"I kneel and hold out my hands / even though I hear there No. / Take these flowers with Thanks for them / you decorated my road with. ("With Red Roses")»

"FIRST SERVANT: Where did you come from? SOLDIER: I came in this way because I don't know which way to go in. FIRST SERVANT: But where are you going? SOLDIER: To Prince Giorgi. I come from the camp."

"Written by me. Written today to ease my heart. I have lost my post in the café and my happy days. I have lost everything. And the café was Café Maximilian. A young gentleman in grey clothes came evening after evening with two friends and sat down at one of my tables. So many gentlemen came, they all had a kind word for me, – this one nothing. He was tall and slender, had soft, black hair and blue eyes with which he sometimes looked at me. On his upper lip a small moustache had begun to grow. ("The Slaves of Love")"

"We will be in St. Petersburg only in September. I am going on a state scholarship to travel to the Caucasus, to the Orient, Persia, Turkey. We have come from Finland, where we have lived for a year. On nineteen marshy islands, Peter the Great built a city exactly two hundred years ago. The Neva pierces the city everywhere, it is wonderfully torn up, piecemeal, and it is wonderfully mixed: magnificent Western European barracks teem with Byzantine domed buildings and delightful mud houses."

"ANIMALS: No, you see – as I said – that's what one does, / one behaves as one should. / That teaching should not be despised by any small people, / even if one, like you, is a member of the awakened."

"The miller's son walked and thought. He was a big boy of fourteen, brown from the sun and wind and full of many ideas. When he grew up he wanted to be a matchmaker. It was so deliciously dangerous, he could get sulfur on his fingers so no one dared greet him. He would be greatly respected among his comrades for his uncanny craftsmanship."

"KARENO (sitting at the desk. He is 50 years old, beardless, with almost white hair, wearing worn, gray clothes): The future of my philosophy, you say? It depends on whether it has any future. THE FARMER (56 years old, fat, with a pinched nose, a little shabbily dressed, in a chair): You have already got your party, though. KARENO: I am the chairman of an association, that's all. People still believe today that philosophy is thinking; I have thought that philosophy was life theoretically expressed through thinking."

"You travel around a bit, you wander from place to place and you have the fate of bumping into people you have seen before, meeting them suddenly, in unexpected places, so that out of surprise you quite forget to take off your hat and greet them. This happens to me often, yes very often. There is nothing you can do about it. ("The Queen of Sheba")"

"KARENO (heard on the right): This is where I thought (comes up the walkway and climbs up the slate rock. He is 39 years old and has completely gray hair). Here is a place, I thought. MR. OTERMAN (comes up behind, plump, 60 years old, jovial): Here yes (also climbs up the rock and looks around). Yeah. Yes, as I said, build your little house here. I will give you all the land you want."

"THE LADY: So, Ingeborg, now there are only a few handkerchiefs and other small things left and I can do that alone. Now you go on that errand. Throw on a scarf. INGEBORG: Yes, (willing to go). THE LADY: Yes, but take the basket with you. INGEBORG: Oh yes, that's true (takes the largest basket full of linen and walks past the veranda to the back steps of the house)."