Lars Mytting gave the world “Norwegian Wood” a few years ago. Now he gives us a novel based on an old legend from Gudbrandsdalen, about a pair of conjoined twin sisters who were unbelievably good at weaving.
The legend says that when the two sisters died, their father cast two church bells to commemorate his children, and donated them to the parish church. In his sorrow, he put both silverware and silver coins in the mold. That was how the sonorous sister bells in Butangen Church came to be.
Some generations later, the new priest in the village wanted to demolish the old drafty church and build a new one. It’s not to everyone’s liking, but in the cultural city of Dresden in Germany, it’s been noted that these barbarians up north are demolishing their national heritage, the stave churches. What if one could rebuild the original church in Germany – in this case, Dresden?
Cultural friendship
The author, Lars Mytting, welcomes us to his house in Elverum, just a short distance from Gudbrandsdalen in Eastern Norway, where the plotlines of several of his novels unfolds. And where the legend of the sister bells originates. “The legend of the bells is true,” Lars Mytting says. “But it has never been told in the form I have used now. And I have woven it together with another legend about some of the master weavers,” he says. Mytting’s book spans a huge canvas, and has already garnered excellent reviews in Norway. The action in The Sister Bells (Gyldendal/Agentur Literatur, Berlin) is mostly set in the valley Gudbrandsdalen, but with diversions to Dresden and Christiania (Oslo), and he says that he found the background material so rich that he plans to write “at least one sequel”.
He also sees exciting novel material in international relations from the same period. “The fact that the Germans were concerned about the Norwegian cultural heritage is quite accurate,” says Mytting. “Remember that up until the last century’s wars, there was a strong cultural friendship between Norway and Germany. This was reversed after the Second World War,” Mytting says.
But exactly where the books will take the bells and people, the author is keeping mum about. Nevertheless, he reveals that the old prophecy in the legend is powerful, and that it will require more than one generation for it to be fulfilled. And that several of the characters from the first volume definitely will be carried over into the next book.
Non-fiction as fiction
Lars Mytting debuted as an author at the age of 34 with the novel Horsepower in 2006. In the book, we encounter Erik Fyksen, owner of Norway’s last Mobil gas station. New plans for road diversions and the modernization of the gas station lead him into a lonesome battle against urban forces and ghosts from his own past.
The debut was a success and established Lars Mytting as an author. He has been one ever since. And he takes his time with his books. He does thorough research, writes every day, deletes a bit, rewrites, edits... He does something every single day. “If I start on a Monday, it may not become good until the end of Wednesday,” says the author with a smile.
Since his debut, he has published four novels and the ringing non- fiction success, Norwegian Wood, which has sold over half a million copies around the world, and won the British Book Industry Award for the Non-Fiction Book of the Year.
He himself thinks that the secret of the book about wood chopping and stacking, and everything else that concerns wood, is that it verges on being fiction. “Many people have read it as fiction. Some good non-fiction can be read like this because it stimulates the imagination, makes you want to do something – something practical. And I think it resonates abroad because the far north is a romantic place for many people. It has been read both as a user manual and a “book of dreams”. Perhaps, it transports a Southern European reader into a situation in which he or she must organize his or her own life in order to survive through a Norwegian winter. I didn’t know it when I wrote the book, but maybe the book became so popular because having wood and fire is an important safety mechanism for people around the world. Surviving the winter is a reflex that’s embedded deep in our being.”
Started as a journalist
Before Mytting became a writer, he was a journalist in local newspapers, and in Norway’s biggest music magazine, Beat. Thus, he has made his livelihood from writing his entire adult life. He tried to write literature already after he completed military service, but couldn’t make it. Not then. Not until he grasped the secret in 2006, and wrote Horsepower. After that, four years went by before the next novel, Spring Sacrifice, and then four more years before his great success, The Sixteen Trees of the Somme, in 2014.
That book has an even broader canvas than The Sister Bells. Here too, we find ourselves in Gudbrandsdalen, but the background for the plotline is in France during the First World War. There, some walnut trees grow... and there, a pair of Norwegian lovers die many years later. And from there, their little son disappears to reappear in a different place.
Then, we’re in Shetland and in France, and many other places, but the events are merged into a story that’s fully plausible – at least in a novel. This book also garnered excellent reviews from the vast majority of critics when it came out.
Mytting smiles. “Yes, some thought the story was too implausible, but I think I kept my feet on the ground in that one too. The first ideas for it were much more modest and simple than those of the finished book. The war story came to fruition when the main character visits Shetland. Then, a huge canvas opened up and eventually tied everything together. And amidst all that, there was room for a lot of other things I’m fascinated by,” the author says.
Love triangle
And now, it’s The Sister Bells, where young Astrid Hekne, who hails from the same farm as the conjoined sisters from several generations back, starts to wonder whether or not the sonorous sister bells will be moved to Dresden. If that’s the case, she’ll try to prevent it from happening. It develops into a love triangle where both the priest and a German architect cum art student fall in love with the beautiful and wise girl from the valley.
The plotline of the novel is first propelled forward when old Klara Mytting freezes to death during the endless New Year’s Church Service in 1880.
“She isn’t a real person,” Lars Mytting says. “But I like to use local farm names in the books, and poor Klara is so strange and so difficult that I had to use my own family name for her in order to avoid embarrassing people. Not only does she freeze to death during the church service, but they can’t bury her either because the ground is frozen. And in our time of realistic fiction, it was a bit of fun to plant my own name somewhere,” the author says. “There’s a little bit of reality in it too – the idea came about because my grandmother was always telling me about such an ice-cold New Year’s Church Service that never ended ...”
“There’re many of us who are excited about the sequel. When is it coming?”
“When it’s done,” Lars Mytting says with a cheeky smile.
The Sister Bells is already being translated into eight languages, and will be published in German this autumn.
For more information
Books from Norway: Lars Mytting