On Reading a Trilogy

 

 

  I had never read a trilogy until now and that speaks to the fact that I was not an avid reader earlier in life but now find much pleasure in reading, later in life. The Sister Bells trilogy by Lars Mytting, a best-selling Norwegian author, kept me captivated throughout its more than 1300 pages.  In reading the three books I was immersed in a saga from another time, place, and culture; accompanying people with whom I felt a deep affinity – hoping the best for them, cringing with empathy for their suffering, and celebrating when they overcame great challenges.  I suppose part of my identification with this story and its people is that my own heritage is Norwegian.  My ancestors came from rural Norway and settled in rural Minnesota; great-great grandparents Knut and Mari Aaker emigrated to America in the 1840s.

Reading the trilogy was somewhat like taking a long trip and coming home feeling impacted by encounters with people, places and cultures other than my own and being satisfied with the experience; in fact, inspired by it.  As with some of the many long international trips I took during my working years, I often came home to experience a bit of reverse culture shock.  I almost always traveled alone and had experiences which I could not easily explain or share with others when I returned. When friends and colleagues would ask, “How was the trip?” I knew they didn’t expect me to go into a monologue about the impact the experience had on me personally; so, I would say, “It was good”, and leave it at that.   Oh, I could write a report, but that was not very interesting and nobody read it, so I tried to develop a way to write stories about the places and people I had encountered.

When reading an engaging and well written book we often come to the end and feel like talking about it with someone. But usually there is no one at hand to discuss it.  For many years I tried to capture my experiences and their meanings in my journals – personal and private reflections. Now it is in writing on this blog.

A trilogy obviously consists of three books which are presented as distinct stories on their own, setting up the place, characters and events and creating suspense and “I want to know more” in the first book; building on a larger saga and aiming for closure and an ending that ties it all together by the end of the third book. There should be an “arc” of the story and in this case as with other epic sagas the arc carries the story through several or many generations.   

That pretty well sums up my reading of these books, The Bell in the Lake, The Reindeer Hunters, and The Night of the Scrouge. The arc of this story reaches back to the 1600s in the rural Norwegian village of Butangen telling the myth of twin sisters of the Hekne family who were conjoined at the hip but became skilled weavers of wonderful tapestries. Two church bells are fabricated by their father to commemorate the twins after their deaths. This legend is foundational to the story of the Hekne family and the community starting in 1880 and going through WWII.  The character arc is carried by Kai Schweigard, the local pastor, who in 1880 was a sort of representative of civilization in a largely illiterate agrarian population.  Through many changes and turmoil of society, modernization, two world wars and the loneliness of his position, he carries on as pastor, leader and consoler to the saints and sinners in this village.  He is a crucial figure from the first of the story to the last.  In an interview with the author, it was interesting to hear him say he was “proud of Kai Schweigard” as if he was a real person.  Lars Mytting is also a master of character development with the three generations of the Hekne family, especially the strong women who labor in and challenge the male dominated culture of the times.  At the end of book three there is a list of all the characters, a few of whom were actual historical figures, and brief descriptions of each – and there were many.

Some of the themes of the story are births attended by a midwife in primitive conditions, death and burials in the cold of winter, folk myths about the bells, poverty and extremely hard work just to survive.  This slowly changes with the coming of electricity, machines, vehicles, roads and education.  This is somewhat the experience of my own family on the farm in Minnesota.  My parents worked hard through the depression of the thirties and lived without electricity and modern appliance and farmed with horse drawn machinery for the first decade of their marriage.  I was born in 1938 and was about 8 years old by the time we got electricity, plumbing and running water in our house.  Imagine living in darkness and cold of winter in Norway in the 1800s, or Minnesota in the 1930s – or a village in the Andean mountains of Peru today!

Norway is now a modern, prosperous and, according to surveys, happy country.  But in the great sweep of history, this is a relatively recent phenomenon.  Resilience is the word to describe the generations of this story.  It also describes people in many rural villages I was privileged to visit and work with in the third world over almost four decades.  People are still struggling for dignity and a better life for their children in the face of great odds. It is the epic story of humans over the centuries.

For more about Lars Mytting and his philosophy of life and approach to writing, check out this link. And click on “more about Lars”. Well worth reading. say that you can spend 18com/ bout it About Lars Mytting — LARS MYTTING