Norway is a country of gorgeous scenery. When I visited it a couple of years ago, I was stunned by the beauty of its fjords and the charm of its small towns. It was also where I was treated to a fabulous display of the Northern Lights!
But besides nature, Norway also has a strong literary heritage as I am beginning to discover. Two months in and I have already savoured the novels of two Norwegian authors. One was the existential Novel 11, Book 18 by Dag Solstad, which I had reviewed on my blog earlier. The other is the one I will be reviewing now – The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas.
The Ice Palace is a haunting tale of two 11-year old girls Siss and Unn. When the novel opens, it is a cold winter’s evening and Siss is one her way to Unn’s house.
Siss thought about many things as she walked, bundled up against the frost. She was on her way to Unn, a girl she scarcely knew, for the first time; on her way to something unfamiliar, which was why it was exciting.
Those lines are intriguing and we get a whiff of an intense friendship about to develop between them.
We then learn that Unn lost her unwed mother last spring. Having never met her father, she now comes to live in the village with her only relative – Auntie.
From the beginning it is clear that Unn is shy, likes to be alone and does not participate in the activities of the other children.
Siss, on the other hand, is a lively girl, always at the centre of her friends circle and tries her best to persuade Unn to join them.
And yet, despite their different personalities, they are drawn to each other, finally culminating in Unn asking Siss to come to her house one evening.
This is where it gets intense, sensual even and the meeting between the two girls is so electric, it crackles.
Four eyes full of gleams and radiance beneath their lashes, filling the looking glass. Questions shooting out and then hiding again. I don’t know; gleams and radiance, gleaming from you to me, from me to you, and from me to you alone – into the mirror and out again, and never an answer about what this is, never an explanation. Those pouting red lips of yours, no, they’re mine, how alike! Hair done in the same way, and gleams and radiance. It’s ourselves!
These are the tentative beginnings of a deep friendship as both the girls are trying to figure each other out.
We get to a pivotal moment in their conversation, an exchange (and what it implies) that Siss will have difficulty in conveying to adults later on in the novel.
After a long silence Unn said, ‘Siss.’
The start!
‘Yes?’
‘There’s something I want – ‘ said Unn, flushing.
Siss was already embarrassed. ‘Oh?’
‘Did you see anything on me just now?’ asked Unn quickly but looking Siss straight in the eyes.
Siss became even more embarrassed. ‘No!’
‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ began Unn again, her voice unrecognizable.
Siss held her breath.
Unn did not continue. But then she said, ‘I’ve never said it to anyone.’
Siss stammered, ‘Would you have said it to your mother?’
‘No!’
Silence.
Siss saw that Unn’s eyes were full of anxiety. Was she not going to tell her? Siss asked, almost in a whisper, ‘Will you say it now?’
Unn drew herself up. ‘No.’
‘All right.’
And we also get a feeling that while Siss is the extroverted of the two, she is also warier. She wants to know more about Unn and yet she is afraid.
By this time, we are barely 30 pages into the novel, and there is still so much yet to take place. But as far as the plot line goes, I will not reveal more.
While the entire novel is from Siss’ point of view, there is one chapter in the early part of the novel – and the only one – which is told from Unn’s point of view.
But it is a chapter that I read with a growing sense of dread and foreboding – and also with a sense of wonderment, of the kind Unn felt too. It is also the chapter where we are first introduced to the Ice Palace (of the novel) in the Norwegian fjords.
Unn looked down into an enchanted world of small pinnacles, gables, frosted domes, soft curves and confused tracery.
A little further on…
The enormous ice palace proved to be seven times bigger and more extravagant from this angle. From here the ice walls seemed to touch the sky, they grew as she thought about them. She was intoxicated. The place was full of wings and turrets, how many it was impossible to say. The water had made it swell in all directions, and the main waterfall plunged down in the middle, keeping a space clear for itself.
The Ice Palace then is a haunting, mesmerizing novel of friendship, of loss, of redemption and recovery, of the forces of nature, of people and their lives in a village.
Vesaas’ writing (wonderfully translated by Elizabeth Rokkan) is superb. The prose is lean, spare and poetic. He is great at getting into the minds of children and conveying the world one sees through their eyes. Throughout the novel, things are implied, never explicitly stated.
He is also particularly good at expressing mood and atmosphere and describing nature.
A loud noise had interrupted her thoughts, her expectancy; a noise like a long-drawn-out crack, moving further and further off, while the sound died away. It was from the ice on the big lake down below. And it was nothing dangerous, in fact it was good news: the noise meant that the ice was a little bit stronger. It thundered like gunshot, blasting long fissures, narrow as a knife-blade, from the surface down into the depths – yet the ice was stronger and safer each morning. There had been an unusually long period of severe frost this autumn.
Clearly, Vesaas writing’ was influenced by his origins. Here’s his profile from the book:
Tarjei Vesaas was born on a farm in Vinje, Telemark, an isolated mountainous district of southern Norway, in 1897 and, having little taste for travel and an abiding love of his native countryside, died there in 1970 aged seventy-two.
I simply loved The Ice Palace. It had me captivated throughout, and I will be exploring more of this author’s backlist.
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