Jan Kjærstad - The Conqueror

It was not just the circumstances which I have outlined above which caused such an extraordinary furore when her anonymity was destroyed, the real problem was that Kamal Varma was also the detested and lambasted author of Norway — An Appendix , a book regarded by many as the most scurrilous attack on Norway and Norwegians ever penned.

Soon after Kamala Varma came to the country in the mid-seventies she obtained a post at the University of Oslo, and after years of work, studies in the field you might say, her sensational socio-anthropological treatise was published by the Oxford University Press: a work which has gone on — many would say, unfortunately — to win wide popularity and acclaim in international anthropological circles. To what extent this has harmed Norway is not something we will go into here. The title: Norway — An Appendix does, however, say a lot about its main standpoint: that a book on Norway can never be more than an appendix to a book about the world. To Kamala Varma, Norway is, as its contours on the map suggest, an appendix, an inconsequential adjunct, nourished by the body, but making no appreciable contribution to it, or — if it does — only in some obscure way. Certain chapters even give one the impression that there is talk here of an inflamed appendix, an area which could easily be removed without this having any effect on the rest of the world.

Right at the start, in the foreword, ‘Report from a Parenthesis’, the tone is set for a book in which each chapter looks at a different aspect of the Norwegian people and their culture: the survival of old Norse pagan rites (‘The Christmas Dinner’), the inhabitants’ relationship with the forests and mountains (‘The Rucksack’), the fear of making a stand (‘The Ash Lad’), oil as an economic sheet anchor (‘Blinkers’), gambling fever (‘Lottery Land’), the annual exercise in absolution (‘Collecting-Tin Nation’), the mania for encyclopaedias (‘Great Norwegian’) and, not least, the powerful faith that prevailed in Norway, faith so strong that there is even a church for those who have no faith (‘The Heathen Church’). Earlier I touched upon the question of Kamala Varma’s caste — it is no exaggeration to say that after this book was published, in Norway at least, she became a pariah, a person who did well not to show their face in public. For a lot of people, her biographical novel, The Seducer — which is to say, the combination of this woman, author of Norway — an Appendix , and Jonas Wergeland, viewed by many as a traitor to his country, no better than Quisling — was too much to take. A flood of letters to the press called for Kamala Varma to be stripped of her Norwegian citizenship and expelled from the country — an attitude that only served to confirm everything she had said in a chapter on the Norwegian’s latent hatred of foreigners (‘Norwegian Front’).

Not until the last evening but one did my black-clad visitor see fit to bring up the subject of the Indian woman. Her arrival — that of my unknown helper, I mean — happened, by the way, to coincide with a mysterious occurrence. Just before the doorbell rang I heard a boom, sounding right over the house, like a roll of thunder or a plane that had flown off course. It gave me quite a fright. I went to the window but saw nothing. Nor could I see anything when I opened the door for her. And yet there was something about the look in her eyes: it seemed even more intense than usual, as if she had taken some sort of stimulant, or perhaps rather, had just had a very exhilarating experience.

Up in the turret room her eye immediately fell on Kamala Varma’s biographical novel, which was lying on my desk. She ran her fingers over the jacket illustration of a Persian rug. ‘She did what she could to save him,’ she said. ‘No one can take that away from her.’ Right next to it, like an antipodean, lay the Norwegian translation of Norway — an Appendix . She picked it up, weighed it in her hand. ‘The question is whether this anthropological study does not provide a better key to some understanding of Jonas Wergeland than her faction,’ she said, taking her seat in her usual chair by the fire.

From where I sat I could see her profile silhouetted against the window, overlooking Fornebu, and beyond: the proud outline of Kolsåstoppen, like the back of a stranded whale. Again I asked myself who the regal figure before me could be, to what she owed her incredible memory, what motives she might have, behind those motives which she had declared to me — and for the first time I may have had a faint, a very vague, inkling. Be that as it may: what I had first construed as hate seemed more like concern, a sense of desperation almost, on Jonas Wergeland’s behalf. That evening her eyes were lined with an even deeper black than before, if that were possible, and this too conjured up thoughts of the Near East or possibly Arabia. I had also been wondering about the expressions she sometimes used, mostly when she wanted to underline a point: ‘inscribe it on the nail of your little finger’, for example, or: ‘lift my words like an earring to your ear’ — phrases which reinforced my suspicion that she had her roots in another culture.

As she browsed through Kamala Varma’s book on Norway she stretched her legs out to the fire, shivering visibly — she was always cold. ‘Listen to this,’ she said, ‘from the foreword: “I have set myself the fine goal of bringing to life an entire small civilization of which we know next to nothing.” Good, eh? As if Norwegians were an overlooked minority in Outer Mongolia.’ She turned a few more pages at random: ‘“What does it mean to be Norwegian?”’ she read. ‘“To be Norwegian is to watch a rape being committed and imagine that one is innocent.” Sounds familiar, wouldn’t you say, Professor?’

She put down the book, held her hands out to the flames in the hearth, looked out at the day which was fast fading outside, thus reducing our view to a band of darkness dotted with points of light, some of which moved and flashed. ‘I’ve said it before: part of the key to understanding Jonas Wergeland lies in the fact that he was Norwegian. It was the Norway within him that made him what he was — for good and ill. Some people say, you know, that every biography is everyone’s biography. Hence it must be possible to regard the biography of Jonas Wergeland as that of every Norwegian. In many ways I would agree with that. Let me begin, therefore, with a story in which Norway itself plays the lead. Hurry now, Professor, we’re running out of time.’

I had been ready for some time, sitting with my spiral notebook in my lap. I noticed that look of concentration come over her face, as if she were juggling things about in her head, already composing subsequent stories while wrestling with the opening of the first. And at the same moment I saw again, quite clearly, although she tried to hide it from me: she was in the depths of despair — like someone who had no idea what she was doing.

Is it possible to change a life by recounting it? If so, then we will have to begin with a February day in the early seventies, with three lads in holiday mood, standing at Tretten station in Gudbrandsdalen complete with skis and rucksacks. Like all good Taoists, the Three Wise Men often went wandering, but this was more than just a wander: this was a pilgrimage. They were about to head off into the Norwegian countryside. To be perfectly frank, the Three Wise Men had come to Gudbrandsdalen to follow in the tracks of Scandinavia’s greatest cross-country skier.

Before I go on, I ought probably to say something about the Norwegian countryside, because the question is whether the Norway countryside is not more famous than the people inhabiting it, whether the landscape of Norway has not made a greater contribution to the world, not to mention the history of ideas, than the Norwegians themselves. Because we are talking here about Norway as a place or, as they say in the movie business, a location.