Jan Kjærstad - The Conqueror

To many children in the world, or at any rate to those who grew up in the fifties, Norway was synonymous with a country overrun by lemmings. The mere mention of the word ‘Norway’ conjured up in their minds images of hordes of these little rodents, millions of lemmings all marching in the same direction across a rugged, fjord-side landscape. This can be put down, not to a common intuitive sense of the Norwegians’ innate urge to act as one, but to the influence of a comic strip by the aforementioned Carl Barks, a story about Norwegian cheese and a lemming which, because of a medallion hanging round its neck, was of vital importance to Uncle Scrooge. It later came to light that Carl Barks got the idea for the lemmings and Norway from an issue of National Geographic , although we won’t hold that against him; whatever Norwegians may think, this is how the majority of foreigners have always seen and always will see Norway. As a gaudy colour spread in National Geographic.

One of Barks’s most avid readers in the fifties was George Lucas, soon to become a successful film director. He and another movie giant, Steven Spielberg, were the men behind the Star Wars epic. And now we’re getting to the crux of the matter, because in the second film in the first Star Wars trilogy, which bore the famous subtitle, The Empire Strikes Back , Norway plays a starring role. It was, in fact, in Norway that George Lucas and his team shot the part of the film which takes place on the inhospitable snow planet of Hoth, where the heroes and their rebel forces have sought refuge after the dark side’s temporary victory. Many cinemagoers will never forget those spectacular scenes with the bounding Tauntauns and fearsome battle droids. No, don’t laugh, Professor. This may well be Norway’s most valuable contribution to the world to date: to have fired the imaginations of almost a billion people, given them the illusion of a distant ice age. And when you think about it, it isn’t really such a far cry from fantasy to reality, or vice versa, because no matter how you look at it, this image was only further consolidated by the 1994 Winter Olympics, when Norway provided collective proof of a modified version of Andy Warhol’s theory, by showing that every country gets its fifteen days of fame. Not because of the citizens of Norway — although, with their massive turn-out and energetic use of sheep bells, they yet again proved themselves worthy of the epithet: ‘world’s best spectators’ — but because of the picture-postcard shots depicting Norway as a chilly, sun-spangled snow planet, which were beamed irretrievably around the world by satellite and would remain fixed in the world consciousness, no matter what Norwegians might say or do to try to change that image — for two or three generations at least.

Don’t worry, I haven’t lost my thread: you see it was this same snow planet Norway that the Three Wise Men were going in search of when they got off the train at Tretten station and, after hitchhiking a short distance, found themselves outside the remains of what had, in times gone by, been known as Winge Sanatorium, situated roughly halfway between Tretten and Skeikampen. For it was here, at Winge, that the greatest cross-country skier in Scandinavia had once stayed. And the greatest cross-country skier in Scandinavia is not, of course, either Fridtjof Nansen or Johan Grøttumsbråten, but Niels Bohr.

Now to some people such an assertion — that the Dane Niels Bohr should be the foremost cross-country skier in Scandinavia — probably seems as shocking as proclaiming Denmark’s Kurt Stille to be Scandinavia’s greatest speed skater, but when it comes to the consequences of cross-country skiing, its significance for posterity, this postulate is sound enough. Because there was no talk here of skiing as fast as possible, or of crossing a geographical continent, but of conquering an ideational pole. Niels Bohr’s skiing expeditions in Gudbrandsdalen changed the world. It is as simple as that.

‘I already know all this,’ Axel said as they were standing on the steps outside the Winge. ‘Bohr saw the trees as particles and the landscape as waves.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Jonas. ‘They’ve got trees and a landscape in Denmark too, you know.’

‘Yes, but to talk about something more important,’ said Viktor, turning anxiously to Axel. ‘I sincerely hope you remembered the elixir?’ He was referring, of course, to the aquavit.

Winge Sanatorium had had a chequered history, from its modest beginnings around the turn of the century to its time as one of Norway’s more fashionable hotels; a palatial white building, patronized by royalty, with tennis courts and a golf course, open fires and an indoor swimming pool. Then, in 1957, the main building burned down. A new, less ostentatious building was built; the Winge was sold and converted into a rest home. The Three Wise Men had, however, been in luck, because although the Winge Convalescent Home, as it was now called, was not normally open to the general public, the proprietress did allow them to stay there for a few days, partly because the home was not very busy that week and partly because she was won over by Viktor’s irresistible charm and powers of persuasion. After all you don’t turn away pilgrims.

Not many people, not many Danes or other Bohr scholars even, have taken much interest in physicist Niels Bohr’s four-week trip to Norway in 1927, although it has long been known that it was during this skiing holiday that Bohr gained his momentous insight into the concept of complementarity: a discovery which he presented later that year at the conference in Como in Italy, in a lecture entitled ‘The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory’. Bohr’s theory endeavoured to resolve a conflict, inasmuch as some experiments showed that light behaved like particles, and others that light seemed to be waves. According to Bohr — Bohr after those skiing expeditions, that is — it has to be acknowledged that these two possibilities are mutually exclusive, and yet both are essential to a complete understanding of the phenomenon — a most provocative philosophical and scientific contention, to put it mildly. Bohr’s ‘complementarity’ is history’s greatest argument for having it both ways. A massive expansion.

But why was no one, not even the Norwegians, interested in where this idea had come to him? The Three Wise Men saw it as only natural, not to say their patriotic duty, to find out more about Bohr’s skiing holiday, about the inspiration that Norway must have given the Danish genius. I believe Viktor Harlem should be regarded as a pioneer, for the zeal with which he threw himself into this undertaking, even visiting the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, in whose archive he at last unearthed the location of Bohr’s ‘base camp’ on this expedition to those intellectual peaks. Viktor was not only able to differentiate, at the drop of a hat, between such complex concepts as analytical, phenomenological and hermeneutical philosophy, he also managed to lay his hands on a copy of a letter which Bohr wrote from Norway, dated February 25 1927, with a letterhead which quite clearly gave his place of residence as Winge Sanatorium, near Tretten Station: ‘…my staying at present here in Norway on a short recreation tour of a few weeks.’ In Bohr’s day — this was another fact thrown up by Viktor’s research — the Winge had been run by Agnes Berle; at that time the place had consisted of one large manor house, built on two storeys.

‘To Agnes Berle!’ said Axel.

‘A credit to Norwegian hospitality!’

‘A woman who did more for Gudbrandsdalen and Norway than Prillar Guri!’ Viktor declared after pouring generous measures for everyone from the aquavit bottle. And in case you still haven’t got the point, Professor, you should know that Viktor Harlem was by far the most important person in Jonas Wergeland’s life; no other person had anything like such a fundamental effect on Jonas. Once, when Jonas was a little boy staying on Hvaler, his grandfather had been in the blue kitchen sharpening a knife with a practised hand, drawing it up and down the steel. ‘That’s the sort of friend you ought to choose for yourself,’ he told Jonas, holding up the knife sharpener, ‘a friend who can hone you.’ Such a friend was Viktor Harlem.