Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

While we were moored at Skjolden I had the chance to take a run down to Urnes with Carl. We drove along the narrow road past Feigumfossen and Kroken, out to the bare green hilltop on which the stave church sits. It was morning and the light slanted down from the sun hanging over Tausasva. The wooden walls of the church had recently been oiled, it smelled of boats. We strolled round to the north wall and studied the most famous wood carvings in Norway, one of the reasons why Urnes church is on the UNESCO list of those buildings in the world most worthy of protection and preservation. ‘That is pretty much what we have in mind,’ Carl said. ‘ That is what I call software.’ I stared for some time at the sinuous figures. ‘ That ,’ I said, ‘is what I call a fjord.’ Carl eyed me quizzically: ‘So what’s the difference?’

I have to laugh — they are so keen. They hare about, talking to all and sundry, trying to track down people with access to archives, hunt up local contacts. Not surprisingly, here in Lærdal they are mainly regaled with stories about salmon, tales of the English salmon lords of the nineteenth century, the best ‘pools’, the fierce competition for fishing rights, the problem of parasites and the poison tipped into the river to combat them, thus putting the river out of action for years. None of them know much about salmon — apart from Martin possibly — but a visit to the Wild Salmon Centre has left them a lot wiser. They have already decided that fly fishing has to form one of the cornerstones in their presentation of the place. They buy books, collect brochures, take photographs, shoot video film. They delve and probe. They look, to me, as though they are investigating a serious crime, trying to unravel the threads of a massive conspiracy. They inspect the houses that have been preserved in the old part of Lærdal. They drive up to Borgund Stave Church. I go with them. I spend most of my time on the boat, but occasionally I go with them. I am, by profession, a secretary, I am used to tagging along. We walk the age-old, overgrown paths: Sverrestigen, Vindhellavegen. They are constantly discussing things. Making notes. Doing sketches. Drawing up charts, diagrams of which I cannot make head nor tail: they look like trees. Or fjords with lots of arms. They hear rumours of a French painter who is a regular visitor to Lærdal and usually stays at the home of a wealthy Norwegian family. Someone shows them reproductions of his work, abstract paintings inspired by the fjord, the mountains. Or by the colours and the patterns of salmon flies. They are familiar with the much-loved piece of music said to have been conceived at Lærdal. They pore over the plaque fixed to the rock face next to the jetty where we are moored, on it the first four bars of ‘The Ballad of Giants’ and the composer’s signature: Harald Sæverud. They have a tape with them, play the first bars of this protest against the occupation as they take in their surroundings. On the hillside on the other side of the lake they can just make out the ruins of a German bunker. They listen, they think. It seems so comical and yet so serious. But I have to admire their get-up-and-go. It is not enough for them simply to collect facts, catalogue information. They also need to come up with an outer framework, a story to bind the whole lot together.

She has chosen her team carefully. Hanna was born in Korea. Carl has an American mother, a Norwegian father. Between them, like two wings, they extend Norway to east and west. Martin provides the local credibility: he hails from Nordkjosbotn — ‘a crossroads in Troms,’ as he said. With pride. I remember what Kamala, who was seriously discriminated against until she became famous, said in one television debate: ‘Civilised society consists not of fortresses, but of crossroads.’ Martin is cook, ruling over the galley down below according to the principles of ‘enlightened absolutism’, dishing up everything from couscous to sushi. I have no idea how he came by such skills. He is the type to have long since drunk snake’s blood, with the snake’s beating heart and all. Himself, he claims to have picked it all up in Nordkjosbotn: ‘What did I tell you — it’s a crossroads.’

She has called her company the OAK Quartet. The OAK stands for Oslo Art Kitchen. They have shown me their website, laid out like an inviting kitchen — an appetising work of art in itself. I can see why people would spend time there, avail themselves of their services. This tempting cyberspace reminds me, of all things, of Aunt Laura’s seductive, limitless flat.

They often play string quartets on the CD player in the saloon, as if wishing to learn, to be stimulated. The music is pure and powerful, it is easy to hear how everything has been pared to the bone. The four young people on board truly are like a quartet. They each have their own strength, their own ‘instrument’. They are like one of those pop groups in which no individual member stands out, but where the combined effect is mind-blowing.

I sit on deck, scanning the sheer cliff face on the opposite side of the fjord. At its foot, where the land begins, is a little beach. It is growing chilly. Martin came up just a moment ago with some piping hot soup, a bowl of soba , Japanese noodles, and some chopsticks. ‘You slurp it down,’ he told me. The clouds are hanging low today. Rays of sunlight break through here and there, dancing like spotlight beams over the landscape. I cannot get enough of this sight, the play of light and shade on the mountainsides. I was in China once, in Xi’an, with Margrete, and simply by showing me a few sights she made me well, cured me of my all-consuming jealousy. I have sometimes thought that she stuck tiny, imperceptible needles into me, treated me to a sort of mental acupuncture. In the watchtower at the north gate in the old city wall we found a shop selling prints, those long, rectangular pictures that can be rolled up. I was particularly taken with these paintings, with their depictions of tiny, solitary individuals in the wilds of the countryside, and their complete lack of any fixed focal point — the perspective altering every time you moved your eye. These were living, breathing pictures, in which the emptiness, the unpainted areas, formed an indispensable part of the composition. Margrete bought one for me. ‘Every time you look at it, think of me,’ she said. I misunderstood. Did not see what she meant until it was too late. I had it hanging in my cell. I looked at it often. I travelled around in that picture often, a little person in a vast, rugged landscape containing any number of focal points. I have something of the same feeling here, in a narrow fjord running between plunging cliffs. When I see Sognefjord on the map, it looks to me like a dragon winding its way into the country. A dragon as they are drawn in China, long and sinuous. This too is a journey through a dragon.

I had been wrestling for ages with a big project. I was always wrestling with some big project. I kept having to redefine it, and almost as often had to rename it. Not until late on, too late on, did I see what my real project in life should have been.

One time on Hvaler — I must have been seven or eight — I found a cork bobbing about in the sea. I was out in my grandfather’s smallest rowboat, a craft which even I could handle. As the boat drifted past the cork curiosity got the better of me. I backed the oars. Pulled them in. I leaned out and fished it up. I noticed that there was a rope attached to it. This made me even more curious. I started to haul on the rope, pulling it into the boat. It turned out, of course, that I had got my hands on a net; although — it should be said in my defence — it was of an unusual make, and with an illegally fine mesh. No one could see me from the shore. Very carefully I pulled it in. Some flounders were caught in the top of the net, but I spotted something intriguing glinting further down. I pulled harder. I saw the pale, gleaming surface turn into something huge — and hideous, like a great maw lunging up at me. I got a fright. Dropped the lot. I do not know what it was, possibly a small Greenland shark or the underbelly of a giant crab. I have thought about it a lot since then. That experience reminds me of Margrete. You’re sailing through life when you spy a cork in the sea, you lift it out and there is this huge net, a skein full of things of which you could never have dreamed. You know, impossible though it is, that if you went on pulling long enough, if you put your back into it, kept at it, you would eventually haul the whole world up into the boat, including yourself and the boat.