Viking Magazine - November 2021 - 29

from Gudbrandsdalen, which adds to the blurring
between the idea that the stories have roots in this
very specific place, but where the stories go from
there is up to the storyteller.
Volume 1 begins in 1880 and revolves around
three main characters-this pastor, the German
architect who arrives to oversee the dismantling
and transport of the church to culturally vibrant
and cosmopolitan Dresden, and Astrid Hekne,
a complex young woman with curiosity and
ambition beyond her preordained farmwife future
who is forced to choose between the passions and
paths of allying her life with either the pastor or
the architect.
Mytting's love of arcane detail and specificity
adds so much richness to the description, and
many passages reveal the brutal and precarious
nature of rural life in Norway just a few
generations ago. Mytting artfully illustrates the
bleakness and the struggles of the time when so
many Norwegians left in desperation to scratch
out a new and hopefully better life in North
America.
Ringebu Stave Church in
Gudbrandsdalen is one of
Norway's 28 remaining
buildings of its kind.
At one point during the writing, Mytting
climbed the Ringebu stave church's bell tower at
night, with only his cell phone as a flashlight to be
able to get into his characters' skins.
" I did it without permission and that was also
intentional, because in the book, Astrid does it
without permission and so I wanted to live her
experience. "
Volume 2 begins 20 years later, where Butangen
sees the clash of the modern world against its
folklore and legends. This is marked by the
arrival of the telephone, railroads, airplanes and
a growing consciousness of women's rights and
liberation.
THE PLOT THICKENS
Despite his uncertainty about all the finer details,
clearly the larger plot has been carefully mapped.
" Where we experience a sort of shocking end to
Volume 1, the reader really gets a sense of the
purpose of that ending in Volume 2. And, I can
promise you that you will not see the full scale of
it until Volume 3, " Mytting teases.
In the meantime, Mytting values the slow
process and the slow reveal in such a drawnout
mode of storytelling. He feels it adds to the
readers' experience, too. " I think it's a mechanism
that you only find when you write over several
volumes . . . that you just have to wait to see what
happens. And the period where you, the reader, are
waiting-well, you get to work things out in your
own mind, too. "
It's a proposition that cannot be achieved with
standalone novels. " It's just really scary when you
haven't written it yet. It's not a fun place to be
and it's nothing I do deliberately, I just always get
into a state of despair. But that sense of despair,
is also something that sparks creativity. And your
imagination gets to work. You get a whole new set
of ideas when you are in that state of despair, "
he smiles.
With that, Mytting's gloom transforms into what
sounds more like the confidence of a writer who
has finally found the key to escape the room, ready
to leave the despair of his characters to the page.
sonsofnorway.com VIKING NOVEMBER 2021 29
PHOTO BY SALEX RAMSAY / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
http://www.sonsofnorway.com
Viking Magazine - November 2021

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