Chapter 2
Erik Anderson hadn’t known what to expect from Norway, but it wasn’t this.
He walked out of Oslo Central Station into a large square bordered on one side by hotels and restaurants and on the opposite side by the water.
The fjord, he supposed. It was nothing like the centre of Toronto, where Union Station dominated the street with its Beaux arts colonnades across the road from the grandeur of the Royal York Hotel in the old part of the city.
There was none of that here, at least not in this part of town.
It felt altogether smaller, more functional, but nevertheless welcoming.
Resisting the urge to wander, he turned right and followed the directions on his smartwatch to his hotel.
He’d opted for the safe choice of a Radisson that was a stone’s throw from the station, and once he turned the corner, he abandoned the directions because he could already see it in front of him.
Now that he was here, he wished he’d been more adventurous because he could see more interesting places he could have stayed, but he knew there was adventure yet to come and he didn’t need it to start now.
Now he needed to rest. After being folded into an economy airline seat for almost eight hours, he was desperate to be flat, to stretch his legs out on the bed for a while before he did anything else.
Less than ten minutes later he had checked in and was lying on the bed, having not even taken a moment to look at the view.
The ache in his leg was overwhelming. He popped a couple of painkillers and lay back, his hands folded on his chest as he took some calming breaths.
Eight months on from his accident, his leg only stopped him in his tracks if he did something crazy, and he wouldn’t have thought the transatlantic flight qualified as that.
He was naturally active, and had got back to gentle hiking, kayaking, and going to the gym without any problem.
If he’d realised this could throw it off, he might have stumped up for some extra legroom.
It was a reminder that he might never be entirely back to normal. But then, that was why he was here.
Thankfully, he’d set an alarm for an hour in case he nodded off, which he had.
His leg felt better even if his head was a bit fuggy from jet lag.
The view from the window was wonderful, perhaps validating his decision to stay here.
Being on the twelfth floor meant he could see over the rooftops to the fjord.
There were several islands scattered along it, and in the distance, as the fjord curved to the left and out of sight, the hills on either side looked as though they met and were encircling the water entirely.
But Erik knew this wasn’t representative of the spectacular scenery that Norway was known for. That was yet to come.
Erik: Hey, I’m here and I’m good.
Mom: Make sure you eat something. Love you x
He smiled. As if he needed reminding to eat.
If anything, he’d had to lay off the food over the past few months.
Being less active now that his snowboarding days were over meant he needed far fewer calories.
Another blow he could have done without.
But now he was on vacation, he was going to eat whatever he liked.
Erik: I’m about to go find a burger. Love you too.
A quick search found a burger restaurant close by, near the Opera House. D?gnvill Burger Bj?rvika was a trendy, higher-end place than he needed, but after a day of airplane food, he felt like treating himself.
Since it was such a nice evening, and he had taken the precaution of wearing a hoodie, he opted to sit outside under the shade of the young birch trees, bright and leafy in huge rusty metal planters.
After he placed his order for the house burger with fries and a beer, he pulled his phone out and checked his emails.
He’d been trying to get a hotel reservation for his trip to Bergen.
Not for his whole trip to Bergen, he had a hotel in central Bergen for tomorrow night, but after that he wanted to stay in a particular hotel that was on an island in the fjord.
There was nowhere else like it, and considering he was interested in visiting the exact area where this island was, it was too perfect an opportunity to miss.
But the hotel was fully booked when he’d tried booking online, so he’d sent a begging email hoping he could be the first in line for a room if anyone cancelled their reservation.
And now, as he scrolled down his inbox, he saw an email from their reception desk.
A woman called Emilie had answered his prayers.
She explained that they were fully booked, but that there was a tiny single room available.
She went on to stress the smallness of the third-floor room.
Was she trying to put him off? He didn’t care what the room was like, especially since she’d done a deal on the rates he’d seen online.
He wrote back straight away, accepting it and confirming that he’d be there the day after tomorrow.
The following morning Erik was up early so he could see a little of Oslo before his train to Bergen at midday.
It was a beautiful day, perfect for strolling around the city, taking it in properly and giving himself a more accurate impression of the place.
Once he moved away from the area around the hotel, he found the older parts of Oslo with more interesting architecture, and the kind of imposing buildings you expect to see in a capital city, but on a smaller scale.
The modern trams still ran on overhead cables that crisscrossed between buildings, their rails curving in pleasing patterns where two or more lines intersected.
Wandering through the streets, he found the water’s edge and walked back alongside it to the station.
He picked up a sandwich and a coffee for the start of the journey, which would take around seven hours, but at least he’d be able to stand up and walk around on the train more easily than he’d been able to on the flight.
It was easy to find his train. Once he’d stowed his bag, he sat down and scrolled through his phone to find the audio guide he’d purchased alongside his train ticket that would tell him interesting facts about all the places the train would pass through on the world-famous Bergen Line.
With his AirPods in, he began munching his pastry and listened to a story about Oslo back in the day, before the railway existed, thinking that life couldn’t get much better than this.
The scenery Erik saw on the way to Bergen was spectacular.
Canadian scenery was amazing, but this was on another level.
The way the mountains soared from right next to the water, the glass-like stillness of the fjords, and the colour of the water that looked inviting but would still be near freezing cold even in the summer, it was beautiful.
All along the journey, he was astounded to see cabins scattered across the landscape, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.
Who was living in these places that must be miles from a town or village?
The seven hours passed in what felt like the blink of an eye.
With so much to see outside of the train, it was the least boring journey he’d ever had in his life.
He’d especially loved it when they travelled through Voss, which was the Norwegian capital of winter sports.
He already knew a little about that town, which was famous for turning out more Winter Olympians than anywhere else in the world.
It was the biggest town they’d seen on the journey so far, and not all that far from Bergen.
Erik felt a pang for his old life. He’d been on the Canadian snowboarding team for over ten years with some career highlights that included winning gold at the Snowboard World Cup last year, a bronze medal in the last Winter Games and he’d been on target for a gold in the Winter Games the following year before it all ended.
It was all over in the time it took for an off-piste skier to come from nowhere, make a jump onto the slope he was boarding and collide with him.
Even before he’d known for sure the damage it had done to him, he knew it was over.
And not just his career, but everything that went with it.
All of his friends were also his teammates and they moved on without him.
They had to, just like he’d had to when other people on the circuit had career-ending accidents.
It could be a dangerous business, he knew that, but he’d always thought if an injury got the better of him it would have been a jump gone wrong, something he did.
Somehow, it would have been easier to deal with if it had been his own fault.
But all that had brought him here. He had to hold that thought in his head to keep the melancholy away.
And now that he thought about it, his mother had been right; he felt lighter being away from home.
This was the first time he’d felt that surge of loss since he’d been in Norway.
Okay, he’d been here twenty-four hours, not long at all, but at home it walked alongside him all the time.
As the train drew closer to Bergen, the skies grew greyer and drizzle speckled the train windows before they ducked into a series of tunnels.
Bergen station itself was relatively small.
It was one cavernous space with a few shops around the edge, including, bizarrely, a knitting shop. His mother would like that.
Again, being easy on himself, he’d booked a hotel right next to the station. This time it wasn’t a chain hotel, and there didn’t seem to be many of those in Bergen anyway. It was called the Grand Hotel Terminus and looked way fancier than Erik had expected for what he’d paid.
This time, there was no rolling vista to see from the window, just a soaring mountain with houses dotted across it. Erik was starving. He splashed some water on his face to freshen up and headed out straight away, taking his waterproof coat since it was raining.
Bergen had a completely different feel from Oslo.
This part of town felt old. The small streets wound in different directions, the buildings lining them a higgledy-piggledy arrangement of mostly wooden-clad two-storey buildings painted in different colours.
He found a pizza restaurant and ate, before returning to the hotel and sleeping, putting aside the excitement for the adventure to begin in earnest tomorrow.
The following morning, Erik knew where he wanted to go, and after some meandering around the unfamiliar streets, he ended up almost back where he’d started.
The Bergen Public Library was on the opposite side of the station from his hotel.
He laughed to himself when he realised, but then, it had been good to get a flavour of the city before he delved back indoors.
Thankfully, the librarian at the front desk spoke excellent English, like everyone else he’d encountered in Norway, and directed him to a computer terminal where he could browse through the local archives.
He took his coat off and hung it on the back of the chair, then pulled his document wallet from his backpack, laying it carefully on the table beside the keyboard.
It was completely unnecessary. Apart from a handwritten letter, which was difficult to decipher, he knew the rest of it by heart.
He was here to find the Larsen family. Larsen was a very common surname in Norway, and the research he’d attempted to do from Canada had been difficult because of that.
But he was pretty certain that he’d narrowed down the correct family.
If his research was correct, the Larsen family he was looking for owned a hotel on a small island in the fjord very close to here.
It took a few hours of searching, all the slower because he had to use an app on his phone to translate the text when he thought he might be on the right track, but eventually Erik found a newspaper article from April 1951 that corroborated the story he knew.
It was accompanied by a grainy black-and-white photograph of two men, probably in their thirties, grinning at the camera with their arms around each other’s shoulders.
“Mann fra Bergen redder uvitende livet til sin beste venn!” — “Bergen man unknowingly saves the life of his best friend!”
Erik took a photo of the article with his phone.
‘We can print anything of interest for you,’ the librarian called over.
His helpless look brought her over. She pressed a couple of keys. ‘It’ll be at the desk for you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Family history?’
‘Yes. I think this guy is my great-grandfather,’ Erik said, pointing to the screen.
‘Both common surnames, though. You’ve done well if he’s the right person.’
But Erik had a feeling, and the more he looked at the photograph, the more he could see the family resemblance. Or thought he could.
Either way, tomorrow he was going to Strandg?rden. And that would tell him once and for all whether he was on the right track.