Running with the Pack

rhododendron—they should be at their best now—and ten thousand English roses! Rødal—the Red Vale! So called for its brilliant autumns.”

Later, in bed, Fraser studied the glossy brochure. Rødal was on the final day. Intervening visits were less alluring, though this was perhaps unfair: had his interests not been so obsessively botanical, there was much of promise, including a visit to Edvard Grieg’s house, complete with special piano recital; and a trip to the “magnificent island home” of another nineteenth century composer he had never heard of, Øle Bull, described as Hardangerfjord’s “best kept secret.”

He must have dozed, for he was awoken from a fearful dream which had seemed to be happening outside the window, as if something were scrabbling at the pane. It felt sufficiently disquieting and real for him to get up and check. Drawing back the curtains from the half-open window, he was startled by a fluttering commotion: a large bird, a raven maybe, flapped up into his face, its beady eyes glinting in the moonlight. He recoiled in loathing. It was some time before he could catch sleep again.

Next day began with a tour of Bergen, the most interesting feature being the Mariakirken, with a fine medieval triptych and a set of exquisitely carved wooden statues of Christ and his disciples. There was John, the only beardless one, denoting youth and not, as crackpot theorists claimed, Mary Magdalene. A model of a wooden sailing ship hung suspended above the nave, a routine feature of Norwegian churches, indicative of the country’s intimate connection with the sea; as were sarcophagi shaped like upturned boats. In the Museum of Modern Art they joined the gaping crowds before The Scream, Edvard Munch’s dreadful paean to human angst.

The highlight of the day, however, was Grieg’s villa, a few miles out of town. The great composer had chosen his domain well: the elegant wood-framed house was set in spacious grounds, with stunning views to the hills and across Lake Nordås. Everywhere there were trees. Inge was gathering them outside, like a fussing mother hen.

“Shortly, we are going into Grieg’s fine house, to hear his piano played. He lived here for twenty-two years with his wife, Nina. It was Nina who named the house Troldhaugen, the Troll Hill, for it is up here in the mountains that the trolls lived, where the ashes of Grieg and his wife now lie in the cliff above the fjord. You have heard Peer Gynt, which, of course, is about Norway’s legends? Peer, you know, is taken by troll maiden to the Hall of the Mountain King, where there is an orgy and, then, these troll girls, they want to kill him, for he is a Christian, but he is being too clever, and so escapes the terrible trolls.”

“There’s no end to them!” whispered Eloise.

“I think we’ve got one conducting the tour,” he remarked, too loudly.

The guide paused, thinking Fraser was asking a question, then proceeded, “Grieg’s grandfather, he came from Aberdeen in Scotland. And so, there are many saying his music is very Scottish, but it is the Norwegian inspiration really, all the hills and the forests. Many Scots they are descended of the Vikings, from when Norway was powerful. Nowadays, we are a peace loving people.”

The cruise around Hardangerfjord proved more rewarding than expected. At Bakke there were Bronze Age carvings, depicting fertility rites, the rocks hollowed out to catch the blood of sacrifice. At Eidfjord was Norway’s largest Viking graveyard, and a fourteenth century church built by one Ragna Asulfdatter to atone, so legend told, for the slitting of her husband’s throat. At Espevær they visited the Baadehuset, a stately residence of 1810, said to be haunted by the ghost of its creator, a conscience-stricken naval captain. Best was Øle Bull’s eccentric retreat on the wooded islet of Lysøen. The flamboyant, blue and white wooden villa, with its ornate fretwork and onion dome, was according to their ever-cheery guide the scene, on Bull’s death, of the most magnificent funeral ever witnessed in Norway. It was, nevertheless, with the satisfaction of reaching a long-awaited goal that they arrived, finally, at Rødal.

As they waited in the fine morning rain to be taken to the Barony, Eloise was like a racehorse stamping at the starting tape, keen to find her wartime witness.

“What are you going to say?” Fraser asked. “People are funny about the War, you know, here on the continent. It’s not like in Britain—all those jolly memories of the Blitz! . . . What did you say this bloke’s name was?”

“I didn’t. But it’s Jonas Nielsen . . . Must be well into his eighties.’”

“The family’s still here then?”

“The von Merkens?” Eloise gave him a thoughtful look. “No, no, not anymore. Anders disappeared after the War. No-one ever found out what happened to him. The Barony passed to a distant member of the family in Denmark—an absentee landlord, a playboy. A hideout for his mistresses, basically! After that, it’s the usual story. It fell into disuse, conservationists got going about national heritage, the government stepped in, and now it’s run jointly with the University of Oslo. Everyone who lived and worked on the estate had the option to stay including, presumably, Nielsen.”

The party was chauffeured up to the Barony through rolling park-land by minibus. The house stood in brilliant formal gardens; built of stone, painted white, with grey-tiled roof and mullioned windows; plain, unassuming, functional, yet with an elegant solemnity. It spoke of tradition, stability, of all that was fine and ordered, of continental gravitas; and, whilst calling to mind a baronial house of Scotland, was quintessentially Scandinavian. A park and lake stretched beyond, enclosed by woods. A stark mountain skyline completed the view. Fraser could hardly wait to explore.

First, however, there would be the conducted tour of the house. This he would have been happy to miss; they only had a few hours, and the last thing he felt like was listening to any more babble from the guide.

“It’ll probably only take half an hour,” Eloise protested. “Then you can wander round, and I’ll see if I can find Nielsen.”

The tour lengthened beyond the half hour, beyond three-quarters, beyond an hour. Thankfully, it was not conducted by Inge, who grinned and nodded throughout like a toyshop doll, but by an attractive young woman in her twenties, with brown, intelligent eyes and long blond hair, Solvejg, a heritage student from Oslo University.

“Keep your eyes off, she’s too young for you!” Eloise cautioned, as Fraser smilingly signalled approval of their new chaperone.

Solvejg spoke with an American twang, blending curiously with the Norwegian vowels. Though her command of English was occasionally eccentric, she gave a professional account of herself, and was remarkably knowledgeable, even when asked questions.

Except in one respect: her detailed history of Rødal’s owners, delivered outside in the courtyard, skated hazily over the War, leaving unmentioned its last and most controversial master; though the family’s earlier tenure was lengthily described, and much made of the rakish playboy and the conservation story. All attempts by the inquisitive Eloise to coax her were politely sidestepped behind a bland public relations smile; and by this process of attrition, as the party became increasingly impatient, not helped by Eloise’s insistent donnish manner, the matter dropped.

“Well, what do you expect?” he whispered. “Going on like an intellectual. People hate that! And I told you, continentals don’t like the War!”

Rødal dated from 1665 and was granted the status of barony, the only one in Norway, by King Christian V in 1675. The house itself was extensively rebuilt in 1745 following a terrible fire, attributed by local lore to an ill- advised marriage. The gardens and park were laid out in the 1840s, amidst inhospitable wilderness. The first owner, Ludwig von Merkens, scion of a Danish aristocratic family, had been awarded Rødal for ridding the area of brigands, associated with an ill-reputed nobleman of Swedish ancestry, ousted amidst great bloodshed in 1664. The name of this renegade was Cornelius Lindhorst, descendant of a family going back centuries, linked with all sorts of primitive superstition and atrocious violence. Here their young chaperone had lapsed into a dramatic manner worthy of the garden gnome.

“In the twelfth century, they say, one of Lindhorst’s most evil ancestors lived here in an old castle, which was destroyed. His name was Björn, which means the bear. Björn, well, he was berserkr. You know, a man of unnatural strength and diabolical fury? And so you have in English “going berserk?” Well, it is said, he was often changing form. Sometimes appearing as an awful bear, or a wolverine, sometimes as a running dog, or a wolf, or a bloody snarling fox, sometimes as a cruel bird with terrible beak, or a bat, or even, they say, a spider or bloodsucker insect—for always he is sucking the blood—and that the form you see him in, well, it is the form you most fear in the creatures.

“Of course, what we are remembering, actually, is a very bloody landlord who killed and tortured his people.