Jan Kjærstad - The Conqueror

I had been thinking of getting myself a cup of coffee, but I couldn’t get out of my chair nor stop the video; I went on watching, had to see the next scene and the next and the next, felt almost as though I had become Sam Eyde in those last years before the turn of the century, first as a student and then working as an engineer in Germany, in metropolises such as Berlin and Hamburg, Dortmund and Lübeck. I meant to get myself a cup of coffee, but I went on watching, losing myself in the shots of the massive constructions which Eyde tackled: stations, docks, bridges — I even took his great idea about communication for my own. Without knowing how I got there, I found myself standing, so it seemed, beside Sam Eyde in Germany, in a highly developed society with lots of heavy industry. I identified with Eyde, living and working in a country experiencing explosive growth and thinking of Norway, a dirt-poor, underdeveloped country. But, Eyde thought — or we thought, Eyde and I — Norway had one enormous resource: its waterfalls. The question was: how to use all this potential? One would have to create a major industry — founded on what, though? And this is where Eyde mobilizes his powers of imagination, his bridge-building skills, by connecting two separate ideas. In Lübeck, two years before the start of the twentieth century, he reads a lecture on the catastrophic shortage in nitrogen with which the world will soon be faced. This is just the spark that is needed; a bridge is formed between two synapses in the brain. What, besides water, does Norway have in abundance? Answer: air. Eyde — or rather, we: Eyde and I — see a way of generating wealth in Norway from two things as elementary as air and water. He — we — will quite simply pluck assets out of thin air! An electrochemical industry! I sat there watching, staring, oblivious to all else, I was there, in the scenes depicting his collaboration with Kristian Birkeland, the development of the electric reverberatory furnace which drew nitrogen from the air; an invention which, once they had secured the capital and formed the company which would one day become Norsk Hydro, paved the way for the quite incredible development — by Norwegian standards — of the hydroelectric stations and factories at Skienvassdraget and Rjukan, while the people of Norway shook their heads: until, that, is, they were presented with the aforementioned Norwegian saltpetre — Norwegian air packed into barrels, nitrogen fertilizer for the soil — and what a success it was, a Viking ship which conquered the world. Thus the whole programme revolved, in an almost imperceptible but exceedingly elegant fashion, around the four elements: air, fire, water and earth.

As I say, I went on sitting there, had thought of getting up to fetch something to drink but went on sitting there, delighting in the way my senses became so involved; I spotted delectable details which I had not noticed before, even though I must have seen this programme at least four times. And it was not only the actual substance of it, those uplifting trains of thought, which enthralled me. I saw, or felt inside myself, with the whole of my subconscious, how important the sound was; I understood this better now, of course, after the story of Jonas Wergeland’s love of the radio and radio plays. Like its theme, the soundtrack to the programme on Sam Eyde was inspired by the four elements; the camerawork almost took second place to the sighing of the wind, the crackling of fire and electricity, the scrunch of shovels delving into earth — this last alluding both to the groundbreaking work done by the company’s founders and the relevance of the fertilizer. But the predominant sound — the essence of the programme — was that of water: waterfalls, of course, but also rain and murmuring brooks, conjuring up associations of something close to paradise, of Norway as an oasis of opportunity.

As I pressed the stop button on the remote control, I realized — as if this were a criterion of excellence — that not for one moment had I sat back in my Stressless chair, I had remained bolt upright through the whole thing, my wits somehow sharpened. There was no doubt: this programme, this grand conception, this bubbling, sparkling programme, would surely act as a counterweight to some of the dark tales my guest had told me.

Seeing that portrait of Sam Eyde again helped me to get over the worst of my frustration. It also reinforced my suspicion that this woman was not out to discredit Jonas Wergeland, a feeling which — to my relief — she confirmed the following evening by making what might almost be called a heartfelt plea. I could tell that I was ready for just such a clarification. For some time she had slowly and imperceptibly been turning what, to begin with, I had felt to be a negative picture of the man, into what I would call a defence of Jonas Wergeland. ‘Nothing, Professor, nothing is easier these days than to expose someone,’ she said, holding my gaze with eyes that seemed even more penetrating because of the black eyeliner. ‘You think, perhaps, that I am going to show you — and others — Jonas Wergeland’s treachery,’ she said. ‘Strip him bare and make fun of him for being a despicable charlatan,’ she said. ‘Not at all.’ She looked as if she was about to grasp my hands in her vehemence. ‘In my eyes, Jonas Wergeland is the embodiment of a heroic project, a project of the type that will always be in danger of coming to a tragic end.’

‘And what does this project involve?’ I was afraid I might offend her, but I was too curious not to ask.

‘Jonas Wergeland’s aim was nothing less than to do the impossible, even though he really did not have what it took. And he almost succeeded.’ She said all of this, embarking upon an argument from which I am only quoting fragments, while gazing out at the planes taking off from Fornebu, as if they could take her to a place that did not exist.

Jonas Wergeland’s story, she said, was the story of a man who refused to accept his lot in life. Unlike a character in a classic epic, she said, Jonas Wergeland had rebelled against his fate. He managed, she said, to become someone other than who he was destined to be. Instead of being a single-cell creature, she said, he became a two-celled creature. And thus, she said, he played a part in mankind’s development into something better. Her face glowed as she talked — and not merely with the reflection of the flames in the hearth. There was something about her eyes too, a look of entreaty that stripped her words of any pomposity; they were not so much statements as expressions of an almost traumatic, personal concern. Because this was not the story of a man who hoodwinked a nation, she said, but that of an individual who succeeded, with the help of others, in discovering the best in himself, she said, or begged me to believe. Jonas Wergeland was — could just as easily have been — a hero for our times, she said, or implored, me to consider, as if she knew I was just about to think something else, something damning.

We sat for a long time saying nothing, with only the crackling of the fire disturbing the silence, but she kept her eyes fixed on me. She did not wish, her eyes said, to do as so many others had been working very hard to do lately: reduce the genius to a banal, ordinary person. She wished, her eyes said, to lift the ordinary person up to the level of the genius, show that a man who considered himself talentless might in fact be in possession of tremendous riches, a wealth of possibilities. ‘We are all Sauls,’ she finished by saying. ‘Ordinary people who might at any minute be anointed king.’

I did not want to disagree with her, despite the inescapable reality which cast a disquieting shadow over this beautiful monument of a rationale, I almost said testimony: Jonas Wergeland was a murderer. I could not bring myself to repeat this painful fact — not because I was unwilling to, but because there was an insistence bordering on desperation in her argument which made me think she had some other explanation, that she had a card up her sleeve which could still make this impossible game of patience come out right. Or as she had said during our first session together: ‘There is only one reason for telling stories: to save someone who has already been condemned. Tell the story against all odds.’