Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

As I went on swirling round and round, as I went on trying to keep my eyes on as many screens as possible, I felt the impending depression loosen its grip. I had a sense of being lifted up. Pulled up. At that moment I was sure that by vouchsafing me a glimpse of his vision, this circle of tales which filled each other out, Jonas Wergeland had saved my life. Saved me from the darkness.

I made up my mind to do something different, start a new kind of company, the OAK Quartet, try to break new ground.

It was morning in Eivindvik. With departure in the air. Kamala and Jonas were travelling on with the Voyager ; Martin and I were driving back to Oslo. Hanna cheerily announced that they were planning to sail out to Utvær because Jonas was so keen to see the outermost isle, where the Vikings were said to have sharpened their swords before setting out on expeditions into the west. Harald Hardråde too must have gone ashore there on his way across the North Sea to conquer England.

Martin suggested that we wave them off from a spot from which we would be able to see them for as long as possible. The others had found someone who knew the waters around there, they huddled round a sea chart while he showed them a possible course through the scattering of rocks and islets to the west of Ytre Sula. We walked briskly up the slope to Høgefjell, reached the radar dish on the top then carried on across the broad sweep of Kjeringefjell. We parked ourselves on the rise furthest to the west. It was a hot day, we were dressed in just shorts and T-shirts. We sat with the sun on our backs, gazing out to sea. It was the Whit weekend so there were quite a few boats out. Visibility was exceptionally good. We could see the skerries around Gulen, the islands out at Solund and Lihesten’s distinctive rocky profile all the way to the north. Below the knoll on which we sat lay the foundations of a lookout hut used during the war. From here you could spot any enemy approaching Sognefjord.

We had not been there many minutes before the Voyager came sailing under engine-power through Nyhamarsund, right below us. Martin waved his T-shirt. Hanna and Carl, Kamala and Jonas waved back. The water of the sound was an unreal turquoise due to the algae, shifting to blue at the mouth of the fjord. I settled myself more comfortably while Martin warmed up some mulligatawny soup on the storm cooker, leftovers from the previous evening’s farewell dinner on board the Voyager . ‘I’m terribly sorry, memsahib, I’m afraid it lacks a little pinch of coriander,’ he said, and made me laugh. He was actually working on another little project on the side, a booklet he intended to call Cookbook for Two Nomads and a Primus . We followed the boat with our eyes as we slurped the highly seasoned soup. We saw the old lifeboat veer west, saw them setting sail — mainsail, foresail, jib — and suddenly, at that distance, the Voyager took on the air of a timeless vessel. It was a beautiful sight. And a beautiful thought. One Norwegian, one half-American, one Korean and one Indian. And all of them Norwegian. On their way to Utvær. An Outside Left position, I thought. A new Norway.

I glanced across at Martin, a guy who claimed to come from a little junction in Troms, a guy I liked a lot. He had Norway’s most common surname, but he was the most uncommon Norwegian I had ever met. He had climbed just about everything, from the Bonatti Pillar to Ama Dablam, but here he was, sitting next to me at the top of a 1,400-foot hill, looking totally awestruck. He gazed out across the sea. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ he said. ‘It’s like sitting at the world’s biggest crossroads.’

We sat quietly, relishing the last spoonfuls of mulligatawny soup and the sight of the boat. A boat laden with questions. I glanced at the ruin below me, the vestiges of the lookout hut. Jonas Wergeland was sailing away from Festung Norwegen . I thought fondly of the man on board the lifeboat out there at the mouth of the fjord. I had finished his story, I knew what was needed to complete the final draft. I would have to bring myself to write about the Belém tower. It was only right that this idea should have come to me atop a hill called Kjeringefjell — Old Wife’s Fell. It was from women that the most telling stories about Jonas Wergeland had come.

The Voyager had a fair wind. As the lifeboat passed the southernmost point of Husøy and bore north, something flashed on the deck, like light off a mirror. I was not sure, but it was my guess that Jonas had got out the sword he had bought, more as a joke really, at Balestrand: a copy of a magnificent Viking sword. I pictured him standing in the stern, brandishing this sword, putting on a little show for Kamala; or maybe he was waving it at us, in farewell. Or signalling that he was cutting himself out of a net — a net which so many people had tried to throw over him, catch him in. One mighty slash and he would be free. Maybe this was only the beginning. Maybe Jonas Wergeland was, in fact, now poised on the starting line, all set to embark on his real career, the great conquests of his life. He just had to stop off at Utvær first, to hone his sword. I suddenly remembered the moment when he gave me his two notebooks. I had not been quite sure whether he had called them his pittance or his pretence. He had been smiling, but the look in his eyes had been quizzical, admonitory: So you think you have me now?

We lay there for a long time — until the Voyager was no more than a speck slipping or drifting off into the blue. For a second the vessel looked like a little spaceship heading for a star cluster, heading out across the cosmos.

When the boat vanished from view, the thought flashed through my mind that Jonas Wergeland had ‘left the saga’ as they said in the old tales; but on second thoughts I am more inclined to say that he sailed out of a minor, local saga and into another, greater one. As the secretary of a world-class storyteller. Lying there on the top of Kjeringefjell I realised that all of my thoughts and my literary efforts were not, in fact, aimed at explaining, through reference to stories from the past, why Jonas Wergeland had become who he was. I was more intent on looking forward, on considering what he could become. He would have applauded such a thought: the future, that was the crucial story.

It was also the future he had been thinking of in Lisbon, when he met Marie H., the head of programming, at the Hieronymite Monastery as arranged, having first run into her, accidentally on purpose, on the Rossio the day before. She was dressed differently, in a light, patterned summer dress which revealed that she still had a healthy tan. After almost dutifully surveying the south portal of the chapel, a prime example of Manueline architecture, they walked round the monastery gardens, with Jonas airing his knowledge, perhaps a little too blatantly, as if keen to prove that he was only here for the architecture. He could never be sure, but Marie’s suggestion that they visit the Maritime Museum might have been a form of revenge; he meekly followed her to the west wing of the monastery, and through the endless rooms dedicated to the discoveries made around 1500. Wherever he turned his eyes were met by objects testifying to great navigational feats. And yet: right then he could not have cared less about navigation; he wanted to drift with the wind and the waves. He eyed her on the sly: her tanned legs, her partially exposed breasts, her glowing eyes; he tried, vainly, to concentrate on the makeshift sea charts, the compasses, the astrolabes. There’s only one way to save my life’s work, he told himself. By losing control.

Why did he do it?

‘It was from the harbour here that Vasco da Gama set out,’ Marie said when they were outside again. ‘Belém is where it all began.’ How apt, Jonas thought. He too would have to discover a cape, a new strait, if he was to have any future. The next minutes with this woman who had decided to call a halt to his magnum opus , a television series the likes of which had never been seen, would decide everything. Whether he would be able to produce an extraordinary work or merely an amputated version, the contours of which would be indiscernible. Jonas felt as though he were standing before a great queen, and that he had to convince her of the possibility that an apparently hazardous expedition could succeed.