December 9
“I think it’s kind of hard to tell with the kids in my class. If they’re my friends or not, I mean. I’ve never gone to school
before. And I haven’t lived in this country before either.”
Ingrid looked at Hussein in surprise. She’d run into him in the parking lot as she was coming back from her morning walk and
he was waiting by the car for his mother, who was on her way out of the hotel. Ingrid had asked some casual questions—“How’s
it going at school? Have you made any friends?”—and received answers that were weightier than she’d been prepared for.
Ingrid put a hand on his shoulder, or at least roughly where she thought his shoulder was beneath all the layers of jackets
and scarves, and looked at the boy seriously.
“Are they not being nice to you?”
Hussein looked at her a bit shyly.
“I don’t know, really,” he said. “Maybe that’s just how friends are here.”
Ingrid watched as the car drove off toward Dalen, lost in thought. How was Hussein really doing? She had to find out. She wrested herself from her thoughts and went through the back door to the kitchen, where Maja
was busy baking. It smelled wonderful, and Ingrid helped herself to a fresh roll cooling on a rack.
The radio was on in the background, playing the usual morning chatter between music and news reports. “Yes, that was Hanna
and the Hearts with ‘Let it Snow,’” a woman’s voice said. “But what do the meteorologists have to say about the weather ahead,
Halvor? Any snow coming?”
“Well, Kristine,” a man’s voice replied, “it’s true that winter hasn’t really taken hold around here. Some people are probably
missing the snow, while others think it’s nice to have clear roads. But with the precipitation coming now, the risk increases
for freezing rain. So we should probably tell listeners who are planning on driving over the next few days to keep an extra
eye on the weather reports and drive carefully.”
The chef looked sternly at Ingrid and the roll she had in her hand.
“Ingrid! That’ll give you a stomachache! It’s not done. I freeze half-baked rolls so we have something on hand. We don’t know
how many guests we’ll have all of a sudden!”
Ingrid laughed and put the roll back down. “No, you’re right about that. But there won’t be many new guests for a few days.
As far as I know, at least. But don’t you have any fully baked rolls somewhere?”
Maja nodded at a rack on the other side of the counter, where there was an inviting pile of golden rolls. Ingrid grabbed one, broke off a piece, and spread on a generous dollop of butter, which quickly melted into the bread. Mmmm! Delicious.
“Mrs. Wilkins asked if she could come and help me bake goro and lefse one day,” Maja said.
“Really?” Ingrid asked. “She wants to bake? That’s kind of an odd thing for a guest to ask.”
“Well, she seems to be into that kind of thing. Everything traditional and everything Norwegian. Bunads and handicrafts, lutefisk and lefse. Old Norwegian customs. She has Norwegian roots, you know—that’s why they’re here. After Dr. Wilkins retired, they
started on a big tour—under her direction—to ‘find their European roots.’”
“Yes, I can picture her at one of those Daughters of Norway meetings in California,” Ingrid said with a smile.
“Yeah, she told me she’s actually the head of the Hulda Garborg Lodge,” Maja said, rolling her eyes. “But I’m happy to bake
with her. It needs to get done before Christmas anyway. As long as she doesn’t insist on following some Norwegian American
recipe that’s been handed down for generations. I’ve dealt with that kind of thing before.”
“I have a feeling that your recipes will be the ones being followed, Maja,” Ingrid said.
“Yeah, you can bet on that,” Maja said.
***
From Borghild Berg’s diary:
I can’t be completely sure that things are as I think they are. For now, it’s just a gut feeling. But what if I’m right? What should I do then? I can’t dig into it any deeper until I’ve made up my mind. In the meantime, though, I need to keep my distance.
These are tough times. I’m worried about Ingrid. About the hotel. What if it doesn’t work out? It’s gotten close to failing
several times over the past few years. If Ingrid hadn’t come home now, I would have had to sell. Ingrid knows a lot about
the hotel and our challenges, but I don’t think she quite realizes how demanding it’s actually been to stay open all these years. Or—maybe she’s starting to understand now.
Oh, my dear little Ingrid! I fear that it was duty and not desire that made her come home to Glitter Peak. She was so rattled
after the accident. The lively girl who just wanted to go out and climb was almost unrecognizable. Not surprising, though.
It took weeks before she was able to even talk about what happened. She came here pretty soon after she got out of the hospital
over there. I wanted to go there and see her, but of course I couldn’t. It was too far of a journey, and someone had to keep
things going at Glitter Peak as well.
Then she came home—thin, drained, quiet. When she finally started talking again, she said she was going to take over the hotel.
And I agreed. But I said yes with a heavy heart, even though I’ve been longing for her to come home. Now, I almost wish she’d
stayed out there instead. It might have been better than coming back only from a sense of duty.
And then there’s the breakup with this Preben Wexelsen. She tries to pretend that she’s doing better now, but I can see the grief is still eating away at her. She’d been crying the day we came in and he was on TV. I’d always felt that he wasn’t the right man for her and that this celebrity life wasn’t what Ingrid was meant to live, either. But what could I do? In any case, there’s no doubt that she feels burdened by the loss.
Worst of all, she’s not climbing anymore. It truly goes against nature. Ingrid, who was born to climb! But she’s scared. Scared
of heights, avalanches, losing control.
I wish I knew what I could do.
I’m old and I’ll be out of the game soon, but my greatest wish is that the hotel business can live on after me. And for that,
Glitter Peak Lodge has to have a manager with vitality and energy. But right now, Ingrid walks around with this dark cloud
over her.
Is there something else, I wonder? Something she hasn’t told me?
Well, I suppose I have my secrets, too. Some of them I’ve been keeping for all my adult life. Maybe it’s been wrong of me
to stay silent for so long. But I haven’t felt that I’ve had a choice. I had to keep my word. I had to protect Charlie.
Charlie... Even after all these years, it still hurts.
I had to protect myself, and Christian too. Create a future for us, protect the others from the painful truth. But maybe I
only made matters worse.
It should have been buried and forgotten. All of this. I had no intention of bringing it back into the light. But now it’s
happening all on its own—the past always comes back.
***
The road was slippery, and Thor Seter was furious. That wasn’t typical of him; he was mostly a pretty even-keeled guy. He
was raised on the motto roll with the punches , and he mostly tried to avoid both the high peaks and deep valleys—emotionally speaking, that is, if not literally. He could
get excited about spring days and good photo opportunities, he experienced joy when the lambs were born and when he heard
good music, and he could feel his pulse quicken when he was watching an exciting soccer match. But violent emotional outbursts?
That wasn’t his thing. And he was brought up to never swear.
Still, when he lost control and slid several feet forward, a God dammit! slipped out of him.
He hadn’t even made a scene when Sandra left for Oslo for the very last time. If she wanted to go, she had to go. The worst
part was that he had no problem understanding her choice when she had decided to leave both him and the village. For a few
years—when they’d first gotten together—Thor had thought that their love would make up for everything else, for everything
she’d given up when she moved from the big city. He’d imagined that they would create their own happiness, maybe with a couple
of kids someday, too. He thought that this life, in nature and on the farm, would compensate for everything she’d missed out
on. But it couldn’t, she’d said the last time. She was sick and tired of Dalen, tired of his grumpy parents in the neighboring
house, and tired of all the sheep shit. She was also tired of him. There weren’t any children, either. And he never bought
her flowers.
Flowers? Was he supposed to buy flowers? He knew he’d disappointed her in many ways, but this was the only complaint that came as a surprise. Thor had never bought flowers in his life—not for anyone. Keep the farm and house in order, take care of the animals, be a good husband, love her. Watch movies that she liked, sometimes go into town and eat at a fancy restaurant even though they couldn’t really afford it. He’d done all that. But buy flowers ? When you lived in the middle of a field full of them? That was the kind of thing people only did in the movies. Or was it?
Maybe he’d misunderstood. He could try flowers the next time he had a girlfriend—if that ever happened.
It hurt when Sandra left, but he hadn’t shown it. Anyway, it wouldn’t have helped if he had made a scene. If anything, it
would have made things worse. So he swallowed his tears and questions, loaded her suitcases into the back of the pickup truck,
and drove her to the train station. He stayed in the car for a long time afterward.
That was how Thor was, just like all of the men he’d known—his father, his uncles, his grandfather. Stoic. When challenges
came their way, they dealt with them in stride. They grabbed the shovel or the saw or the pitchfork, or the sandbags when
the Dalen River flooded. They didn’t buy flowers, but they did do what needed to be done—without big gestures or big words.
At least that was how Thor had perceived it. For a long time.
But then it turned out that these men also had sides that weren’t quite as Thor had thought. His father, for example, had
caused problems for both himself and the family. Behind his controlled facade, he’d gotten involved in gambling and bad investments.
He’d been too proud to tell anyone about it until the debt was almost drowning them. Hallgrim Dalen and Co. had also been
involved—with predatory loans camouflaged as friendly help and advice. They never hesitated to profit from others’ misfortune.
Thor preferred not to think too much about the matter—but they’d been deceitful, treacherous. A lot like this damned shitty
weather.
Little infuriated him as much as freezing rain, this unpredictable phenomenon that made cold roads function like flash-freezers
for precipitation. The roads went from dry to skating rinks in a matter of seconds, and even cars like his own—solid, with
the best studded tires on the market—were sliding around like Bambi on ice. Storms had been in the forecast, and no sensible
person would think of driving right now unless it was absolutely necessary. But when Borghild Berg called from Glitter Peak,
he knew he had to show up.
“Aisha doesn’t have enough experience with driving in these conditions,” Borghild had said on the phone. “And Alfred has the
day off today. Could you pick Hussein up from school and drive him up here? We would be forever grateful.”
It was an unusual request, but Thor would never even consider saying no to Nana Borghild. He had more experience with the
weather and roads around here than most others—but he still hated it.
He’d taken his father’s ?koda; it smelled less like sheep than his own pickup. He already noticed how slippery the roads had
gotten on his way to the village center, and it only got worse over the few hundred feet to the school. He drove carefully
all the way to the schoolyard, where he found Hussein standing alone beneath the awning at the main entrance. Most of the
other kids lived down in Dalen and walked to and from school on their own. Hussein grinned at Thor as he ran over to the car
and got into the passenger seat.
“My teacher said you were going to pick me up today! Cool!”
Thor had to smile, too. It wasn’t often that anyone used the word cool to describe anything he did.
“What did you learn at school today?” he asked as they turned out of the schoolyard.
“We’ve been learning about old Christmas traditions,” Hussein replied. “And folklore and the Runic calendar and stuff. There’s
a lot that’s kind of spooky. Have you heard about the underworld?”
“Yes, tons,” Thor said. “Maja’s my aunt, you know!”
“Oh, yeah,” Hussein said. “She knows a lot about scary stuff from the old days. But I don’t think I should tell my mom about
the underworld. That would only make her even more scared.”
“Creatures from the underworld don’t have to be scary. They can be nice, too,” Thor said. “But maybe you can tell her about
Anna pissihose instead, if you want.”
“What?”
“That’s what Aunt Maja calls today,” Thor said. “Anna’s Day. It often rains a lot on the ninth of December, and that’s true
today, for sure. That’s why it’s a good day for washing clothes and brewing beer—because of all the water.”
“Rain, frost, sleet, hail, snow,” Hussein rattled off. “All of that is water.”
“That’s right,” Thor said.
“And rain like this, that covers everything in ice,” Hussein said.
“Yep,” Thor confirmed.
“Is it hard to drive?” Hussein asked.
“It would be easier if it didn’t freeze and get so damn...” Thor cleared his throat. “If it didn’t freeze and get so slippery.”
Hussein laughed.
“I heard that you said damn ,” he giggled. “But I won’t tell anyone.”
“No, that’s probably for the best,” Thor muttered.
***
Up at the hotel, Vegard and Ingrid had been working separately all day. Ingrid was still trying to get an overview of the
financial consequences of Friday’s flooding. She’d just finished a long phone call with the insurance company and was studying
the estimates from the workers when there was a knock on the office door. Vegard stuck his head in.
“Hi, Ingrid!” he said. “Want to grab some lunch?”
Ingrid looked at her watch. It was already two o’clock. Time also flew when you weren’t having fun. “Sure, let’s go downstairs and find something in the kitchen. Do you know if Pia’s eaten?”
“Yeah, she’s eaten...”—he pulled out his phone and opened Instagram—“...venison carbonnade and home-baked whole-grain
bread with pickled onions.”
He grinned and showed Ingrid the picture, which already had hundreds of likes.
“Awesome! Let’s see if Maja has any leftovers for us.”
Maja did indeed. And it was delicious—even without any likes besides the ones they got from their own stomachs.
Afterward, they met Thor Seter in the foyer as he came through the door with Hussein. The boy waved and ran up the stairs
while Thor stood there, looking a bit lost.
“Hi, Thor!” Ingrid said as she walked toward him.
He smiled. “Hi!”
Vegard punched Thor lightly on the shoulder and said he had to get back to work.
Ingrid got the feeling that he wanted to make sure that she and Thor got some alone time. You little matchmaker , she said to herself, but to Thor she said, “Thank you for driving Hussein back home. Aisha gets so scared when the weather’s
like this, understandably.”
“No problem,” Thor said. “Happy to be able to help.”
He ran a hand through his light bangs, tousling his hair even more. He was pretty cute.
“Are you hungry? Thirsty? Want some coffee?” Ingrid asked. “Why don’t you come to the library for a cup?”
“Yes, sure, that... that would be nice. Thanks,” Thor said.
She came into the library, placed two steaming mugs on the table, and sat down next to Thor on the sofa. She pulled a small
bag out of the pocket of her cardigan. “Do you like caramels?”
“They’re my absolute favorite candy,” he said.
Thor was such a likable guy. She’d always thought so.
It was so nice to talk with him that she almost forgot how busy she was. They chatted about the weather, the new guests, Hussein,
the hotel. It was almost as though she hadn’t ever been away from the village when they sat here like this. It was different
when it was just the two of them.
Thor talked enthusiastically about the farm and sheep but didn’t have much to say when it came to topics such as relationships
and family. Thor had been young—in his midtwenties—when he got married, and Ingrid had felt a little sorry for him when she
heard about his divorce. She’d never really known Sandra but had heard a little about what happened from her grandmother and
a bit from Maja. Well, quite a bit from Maja, really. She’d been upset that her nephew had been abandoned that way.
Thor didn’t seem to have any need to talk about the divorce himself, and Ingrid wasn’t going to nag. She of all people knew that breakups and heartbreak weren’t something you wanted to talk about with just anyone. But Thor was handsome and had his own farm, so surely there must be a woman for him somewhere out there? She knew that many girls in the village had been interested in the past.
Ingrid had never come close to getting married or settling down. Her relationship with Preben was the closest she’d gotten,
but it had been—or so she thought in retrospect—based on physical attraction and a shared sense of adventure. Preben had been
married before and had never hinted that he wanted to try it again. His divorce from Sylvia had probably been too public and
painful. And when things ended between him and Ingrid, it seemed as though everyone in the world was a part of the breakup
somehow. Even though Ingrid felt that the biggest blow in that context had been to her and not him, she didn’t really know how Preben had felt afterward. She hadn’t wanted to speak with
him.
When their coffee cups were empty, Thor started looking around the library. She followed his gaze. Large, custom-built bookshelves
covered one wall. Row after row of fiction and history.
“I’d almost forgotten how many books you have here,” he said. “Has anyone ever written about the hotel? Books to commemorate
one of its anniversaries, or anything like that? I’ve been getting more and more interested in that kind of thing lately.
Pretty soon I’ll be one of those old men who trawls through archives and writes about local history.”
“I’m not aware of anything written about the hotel apart from some old newspaper articles,” Ingrid replied. “No anniversary books.” She thought for a moment. “The hundredth anniversary of the hotel was around the time when Mom and Dad died. Nana Borghild probably had other things to deal with then.”
Thor’s face fell. “I didn’t mean to...”
“No, of course not!” Ingrid said. “It’s totally fine for you to ask. I think it’s interesting, too. We have a lot of historical
materials, like the guest books, for example.”
She stood up and walked over to the bookcase. “That reminds me, Sunny asked if she could look at them for a paper she’s writing.
I guess she wants newspaper clippings and such too. It’s a bit of a mess here, but I’ll see what I can find for her.”
She opened the bottom cabinet—solid wood, creak-free hinges.
On top of the large stack of old guest books, there were also a couple of yellowed paper folders. Ingrid knew there were more
in the archive, but apparently some had ended up here as well.
“Maybe Sunny could combine her homework with a tidying project,” she said over her shoulder. “That could be the seed of a
history book, too!”
She took a couple of the books and the two folders back to the table and opened the top folder out of curiosity. It contained
old newspaper clippings. She picked up the one on top.
Thor stretched his neck to look. “That’s the old logo for the Daily .”
“Yeah, kind of weird seeing it again. I remember it from when we were kids.”
The Dalen Daily was written in Gothic letters beneath a logo of a sun over mountain peaks.
64th Volume. Monday, March 5, 1962. 75 ?re.
The top of the right-hand side had an advertisement with a picture of the “Volkswagen Family Deluxe”: father, mother, three
children, and a dog with a pile of luggage in front of a Volkswagen Beetle. “Put Volkswagen wheels on life,” it read.
But the headline just below stood in stark contrast to the family idyll of the ad:
YOUNG GIRL MISSING
“What’s this?” Thor asked.
Ingrid read on. Beneath a photo of the main road through Dalen with houses on both sides, the story read:
The sheriff of Dalen and Innviken is searching for a young woman who went missing from her home two days ago without a trace.
See page 5.
But she couldn’t find page 5 because the rest of the newspaper wasn’t there. Ingrid flipped through the rest of the stack,
but it looked as though the other clippings were from other years and about completely different things.
“I vaguely remember hearing about this, actually,” Ingrid said. “There was a disappearance in Dalen sometime in the ’60s.
But I don’t know much about it. Do you?”
“No,” Thor said. “I’d think that Aunt Maja would’ve told me about it in detail if something exciting happened... but I
guess she had barely even been born at that time. And it could be that the girl turned up the next day, and it wasn’t a big
deal.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Ingrid said. “But I’d like to know what happened.”
“Do you think it has something to do with the hotel?” Thor asked.
“I don’t know. But otherwise, it’s weird that someone would have saved this front page, isn’t it? I’ll have to ask Nana Borghild!”
“Yeah, do that. And I can ask the Dalen Daily if they have the old newspapers downstairs at the editorial office,” Thor suggested. “Or maybe there are some libraries or
archives that keep that kind of thing? Like I said... I’m going to become one of those old local history guys. Or maybe
a detective? I’m already excited about it!”
His blue eyes shone eagerly. Ingrid caught a glimpse of the boy she’d known in her childhood—adventurous and optimistic. He
was still there.
***
Ingrid sat down at her computer again once Thor had left. Her task truly felt Sisyphean. For every estimate from the workers
that she read through and every form she filled out, another estimate and another form awaited—like an eternal uphill battle.
When she’d gotten as far as she could for the day, she slammed down the lid of her computer and rubbed her hands together.
Now, a more joyful task was on the horizon: she’d been summoned to sample Maja’s krumkake .
She jogged down the stairs and into the kitchen, where Maja and Hussein were already waiting. Maja had made coffee and set out cups and plates. This had to be one of the very best parts of being the manager of a hotel, Ingrid thought as she squeezed in next to them on the bench. They hadn’t seen Nana Borghild since breakfast. Ingrid didn’t want to bother her; they could catch up early tomorrow morning.
The cookies were exactly as they should be: golden, light, and crispy, with a taste of butter, cream, and vanilla. It’s nice that something can be so simple , Ingrid thought. Just sitting here in the warm kitchen with completely uncomplicated people, eating something good and looking
forward to being able to go to bed soon.
She heard a car outside—probably the Wilkinses returning from one of their excursions.
Hussein grabbed another krumkake.
“Auntie Ingrid,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about something. Could Mrs. Wilkins be one of those people from the underworld?
Or maybe a hulder ?”
Ingrid laughed out loud, but Hussein just looked at her gravely.
“We’ve been learning about them at school,” he exclaimed. “Wood nymphs. They live in the forest and they try to be like ordinary
people, but they aren’t. They have tails, and hair that looks like gold. So does Mrs. Wilkins, even though she’s old.”
“She is not old!” Maja exclaimed. “Around my age, I suppose. Even if she does dye her hair.”
Ingrid laughed again, but Hussein looked a little embarrassed.
“I’m sorry, Miss Maja. I didn’t mean it like that. But Mrs. Wilkins has green clothes, too. And she’s kind of nice, but weird.”
“I think she wears a lot of green because she likes nature colors. But why do you think she’s weird?” Ingrid asked.
“She smiles sooo much and asks lots of questions.”
“What does she ask about?”
The six-year-old took a bite of krumkake while he thought. “All kinds of things. Where I’m from, who works at the hotel, and about people down in Dalen. But she doesn’t have a tail. I think.”
“I agree,” Maja said. “I get a strange feeling about that woman. It’s like she has something to hide. She’s not totally normal,
that’s for sure.”