Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

I could not help thinking of both Viktor Harlem and the aforementioned programme when we were in Eivindvik, in Viking country, where there are traces dating back even further than Harald Hardråde. Outside the churchyard gate stood an ancient stone cross, and on a green hillside nearby we found a similar cross, carved in a slightly different style. Both could have been erected around the time when Christianity came to Norway, by kings such as Håkon the Good, Olav I or Olav II. The ground on which the Gulatinget , the first regional moot, was held had also lain somewhere in these parts, possibly in Eivindvik first, then at Flolid, where a stone now marked the site of the moot ground.

From Brekke we had sailed out into the fjord estuary, bore south, then made our way into Eivindvik’s nice, sheltered harbour, where we were assigned a berth alongside the local shop. Eivindvik was the perfect place in which to review our findings on Sognefjord and Viking times: with the pictures we had taken and the plethora of notes regarding rune stones and burial mounds — and the battlefields, like the bay off Fimreite where King Sverre won such a decisive battle over King Magnus in 1184. And only a little to the north of here, at Solund, Harald Hardråde had assembled his fleet before the disastrous expedition to England. Carl thought we should insert clips from Jonas Wergeland’s television programme into our presentation of Solund. I saw a circle being closed, I saw my two projects being juggled together to form a whole. I saw how, simply by being there, Jonas Wergeland had moved us to take a more radical approach to the OAK Quartet’s products, to wonder whether it was possible for us to transcend our medium, as he had once expanded the television medium.

From Jonas’s own ramblings it was clear that he was more interested in Dean Niels Griis Alstrup Dahl, of whom there were traces at every turn in Eivindvik. I could see why Jonas Wergeland would identify with someone like Dahl: a Prometheus, a popular enlightener in the true sense. Dahl was an individual who wanted to think big, a man who squeezed ‘bread from stones’, who instilled culture in farmers and fishermen. Jonas said he liked the thought that his mother’s family came from around here, most likely from Verkland Farm, not far from Brekke.

Just before we were due to leave I was sitting alone in the saloon on board the Voyager , making a note of things to add to my manuscript. It was here in Eivindvik that I decided to write a frame story about the sail along Sognefjord, because I saw that the inclusion of this voyage would make a difference — all the difference — to the picture of Jonas Wergeland’s life presented in the final draft. Here, too, I realised that by observing him so closely I had come to see myself in a new light. In writing this account I had also changed my own life. I think this must have been what I had in mind all the time. That deep down this was why I had done it. I now knew, what is more, how I felt about Martin.

The previous day I had taken myself off to a bench outside the old church to read through the big notebooks which Jonas Wergeland had come up and handed to me with a smile, just like that, as we were sailing up Prestesundet towards Eivindvik. ‘I’d better add my pittance,’ he said, ‘my contribution to the collective epic.’ I sat there, reading the handwritten pages, surrounded by the scent of cherry blossom, and I make no secret of the fact that I was so moved that I frequently had to stop, as my emotions got the better of me. Here, at long last, I had the answer to my question as to why he had done it, why he chose to go to prison. I had known. But I had not known in quite this way. I realised right away that I would have to weave these stories into my own book. With his permission. I would probably have to synchronise our accounts of some events. In other cases the contradictions would be allowed to stand.

But still: even our joint efforts offered no guarantee. It struck me that I might have been writing with a confidence that was quite unwarranted. The true story about Jonas Wergeland might just as easily be the sum of all the untold stories about him. Even at that point, sitting outside the church, I began to have some doubts about his own version of events. What bothered me most were the passages in which he described all his ventures, even his television series, as failures. I could not agree with him. As I rested my eyes on the old vicarage, once the home of Niels Griis Alstrup Dahl himself, a memory surfaced. Things get a bit more personal here, there’s no way round it: the truth is, you see, that I not only think, I am quite positive, that Jonas Wergeland once saved me, and possibly even my life.

This incident occurred on a beautiful autumn day, the sort of day that sharpens all the senses, a day so ineluctably clear that you suddenly become sensible to the element air. It was no coincidence that I should have been inspired to conduct my experiment, or seen that it could be done, on such a day.

I was working at the time for an advertising agency, among bright, young things with hip lighters and slick business cards: a milieu in which the right sunglasses counted for more than moral backbone. It had been a hectic week: the Advertising Association’s gala dinner and awards ceremony on the Friday followed, on the Saturday, by a party to mark the fifth birthday of our distinctive little agency; a pretty riotous affair at which we fêted ourselves as if we were the very lynchpin of society. The latter do was held at one of the city’s rock clubs, one of those dingy venues which make you feel as if you’ve landed in a disused factory or the hallway to hell. The only decorative element in the vast, totally black hall were the television sets dotted around the room on little trolleys, each one hooked up to a video recorder. On these monitors we had our own ads running non-stop without the sound. I had been responsible for setting this up, it was also up to me to make sure that all the equipment was returned to the suppliers. On the Sunday, after only a few hours of fitful sleep, I went for a walk on my own, and that’s when the idea came to me. I don’t know why. It may have been the wistfulness encapsulated in such crisp, clear autumn hours, the detachment from life that they bestow. As I watched a maple leaf drifting gently to the ground, the thought settled in my mind, as crisp and clear as the air around me.

I ought to say that this was also a special day in another respect. I had woken that Sunday morning with a feeling of listless melancholy, of body and spirit, which I had long feared was going to engulf me completely. All I wanted was to stay there in bed with the curtains drawn for days. I had just come out of a relationship, so maybe that had something to do with it. Or maybe it was all the partying I had been doing, two bashes as vacuous and frenetic as only such gatherings can be. But even that could not explain it all. I knew my mother had suffered from depression; I had always been scared, terrified, that I might succumb to something similar. In my teens I had sometimes caught glimpses of a darkness that frightened me, but I had never felt anything like this vague numbness, this weight which was pressing down on me when I opened my eyes that Sunday. All my senses told me that I was in danger, that at any moment I could be hurled into some indefinable darkness. For the first time it occurred to me that my life might go the same way as my mother’s. The thought made my heart pound with dread.

So even as I tried to make the most of this clear autumn day, the keen, invigorating air, inside I felt gloomy and angst-ridden. It is hard to put it into words, but I walked along beneath the flaming yellow leaves on the trees with an uneasy feeling that the world was grey. Grey and flat. It must have been this that rendered me so receptive. An idea that should have occurred to me before was forced to the surface by a semi-conscious sense of desperation, a vague horror that all the colour and depth would drain out of life.