Twenty-Five

Solveig—August 1919

Solveig was skimming pans of milk, listening to the soft sounds of her paddle moving cream, when she heard her younger sister shout her name. She hadn’t been expecting a midweek visitor. “Amalie!” Solveig called from the doorway. “Is there some trouble at home?”

Amalie shrugged out of the pack basket she’d carried and rolled her shoulders. “I wanted to tell you that Gustav came to talk to Father a few days ago.”

“Gustav Nyhus?” Solveig asked slowly. Seven years had passed since she’d had the awkward exchange with the older man, declining his wish to marry her. Aside from murmuring God dag if she passed Gustav in the churchyard, she hadn’t spoken to him since. A year later he’d married a young Kinsarvik woman. Solveig had said prayers for her happiness, but she’d also been relieved that Gustav was no longer looking for a wife.

Amalie’s eyes clouded with concern. “Gustav’s second wife died in childbirth last month, did you know?”

“No,” Solveig said slowly. “I hadn’t heard.”

“He and Father had a long talk by the woodpile. Mother and I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but …”

“Yes, I see.” Solveig rubbed her temples. This wasn’t good.

“And I won’t be able to help here at the seter anymore,” Amalie added. “Mama has made arrangements for me to work at the Utne Inn. Hotel, I mean.”

Solveig’s eyebrows rose in surprise. The old inn was a hotel now, and busier than ever because steamships were bringing more tourists every year. But when Britta had broached the idea of Amalie working there months earlier, Svein had opposed it: “She’d mix with all sorts there. Many wouldn’t be God-fearing folk.”

Amalie turned, looking wistfully over the landscape. She was fifteen now, an ethereal beauty with fair hair and luminous blue eyes. She was still fanciful, still inclined to daydreaming. “Idle hands do the devil’s work!” Svein thundered whenever he caught her.

Now Solveig asked cautiously, “Father approved of this?”

“Not right away.” Amalie glanced over her shoulder as if fearing that Svein might be on the path behind her. “But Mother insisted you could manage alone here, and that the money I’ll earn will be useful.”

They went inside, and Solveig made rømmegrøt. The porridge was a summertime treat. While she stirred barley flour into sour cream, Amalie settled at the table with a Hardangersaum project. Solveig had no patience for the painstaking work, but Amalie had become well known for her delicate cutwork embroidery.

“How do you feel about working at the hotel?” Solveig asked. “You remember the story about Gjertrud …”

“Of course.” Amalie waved her hand. “Don’t worry. I don’t plan to let any city man have his way with me.”

Solveig was ten years older than Amalie, and at moments like this, felt even older. “It isn’t always easy to say no.”

“I’ll be fine,” Amalie assured her. “There is nothing to worry about.”

Solveig nibbled her lower lip uncertainly. “Just take care of yourself, Amalie. Please.” And she had to leave it at that.

An hour later Amalie disappeared back down the trail. Solveig leaned against the doorframe. The goats and cows were grazing nearby. A willow warbler sang its descending whistle. In truth, she thought, I like being alone. Up here, she was free. Solitude gave her the freedom to revisit her little leather book. She’d kept her writing tight and small, but the book was almost full. Here at the seter she often flipped through the pages, re-reading tales that linked her to ancestors she’d never met. Sometimes they helped her understand things about herself that defied explanation.

Best of all, at the seter she was free to play the fiddle.

The old butter churn had kept it secrets for years now. When Father climbed to the seter to mend a sagging fence or to fetch cheese and butter, he never entered the women’s workspace. Which was good, Solveig thought now, for Father must never know about the notebook, or the leather pouch holding the coins she’d set aside over the years, or the hardingfele.

Once the animals were penned that evening, Solveig tucked the fiddle case under her arm and walked to the waterfall. She settled on a rock ledge close to the pool where the plunging water collected itself before coursing on down the mountain. It was her favorite place to play.

Not that “play” is a fair word, she thought. She’d done what she could for the neglected instrument—polishing the wood with beeswax, filling the cracks with resin, gently removing clots of dried-out hide glue and adding fresh. Replacing the strings had been a taller task. She sliced pieces of a butchered sheep’s intestine and experimented with stretching, drying, and twining the threads. It took several more butcherings, several more years of solitary work, to produce workable strings. She’d taught herself to play, after a fashion. Between her ignorance and the fiddle’s defects, the results were nothing to be proud of. But she’d never given up.

That evening she played for an hour or more, trying to find a tune reflecting the rhythms of buttermaking that she’d been composing in her head. When darkness finally fell, she returned the fiddle to its case and stepped to the edge of the pool. “Thank you,” she murmured, as she always did—just in case a fossegrim was hiding beneath the torrent. The water spirit was said to be an exceptional hardingfele player, willing to teach his skill in exchange for some smoked mutton or beef tossed into the falling water. If the offering was satisfactory, the fossegrim would impart an inhuman talent to the pupil.

Solveig had never tried to summon a fossegrim. The very notion evoked her father’s thundering voice: Heresy! Evil! But someday I might, she thought defiantly. As she walked back to the cabin the sound of rushing water faded behind her.

She was almost to the door when she heard a hardingfele.

The back of her neck prickled. She froze, holding her breath, straining to hear. She didn’t recognize the melody. The rippling tune displayed a skill far beyond hers. Far beyond any music she’d ever heard.

Solveig slowly turned. Was the fiddler hidden among the shadows on the rocky slope above the seter? In the woods? Or … did the music emanate from the waterfall? Part of her wanted to run to the cabin and bolt the door. But the greater part couldn’t bear to leave the music behind.

Finally the tune ended, leaving only the breeze sighing through the trees. Perhaps it’s natt frieri, she thought. Night courting. But … night courting usually took place in late fall or winter, when farmworkers had more time. And she didn’t know anyone who might be inclined to climb up here at this hour.

“Hello?” Her voice sounded harsh in the sudden stillness. No one answered.

I’m not ready to leave the seter, Solveig thought three weeks later, even though summer was coming to an end at the high farm. Moss flowing over rocky ledges was already mottled red and orange. Chanterelles clustered yellow beneath the conifers, and she’d spotted patches of gold emerging among the birch groves at lower elevations.

She’d wandered into the woods that morning, looking for leaves and slender twigs and nuts to save for winter fodder. But clouds hid the mountain peaks this drizzly morning, and a damp chill was creeping through her wool cloak. If she didn’t head back to the cabin, she’d soon be wet through.

After checking the animals she paused, head cocked, but heard nothing. Perhaps tonight, she thought hopefully. She’d stopped feeling spooked about the intermittent and mysterious evening serenades. Whoever was playing the hardingfele was so skilled that—

“Solveig!”

Whirling, she saw her father, Svein, marching toward the cabin from the lower trail. Even worse, Gustav was with him.

She struggled to compose herself as the men approached. “I didn’t expect visitors today,” she said.

“I’m ready to rig up the hay wire.” Svein’s eyes were narrow, inscrutable. “Gustav offered to help.”

Solveig suspected that something other than kindness had motivated this trip. “You’ve both had a climb. I’ll get you something to eat.” She laid out flatbread and butter, cheese and sour milk, and oatmeal mush served with lingonberry jam.

Svein peppered Solveig with questions over the meal: Are the animals fit? Is milk production starting to slack? How many tubs of butter are set aside? Is the coffee gone? Solveig answered calmly, but couldn’t stop thinking about the old churn in the corner. What would Father do if he knew she’d taught herself to play the devil’s instrument? She kept her left hand curled in her lap, afraid he’d notice the tiny calluses marking each fingertip.

Gustav didn’t speak until she started clearing the table. “That was good.” He looked as if he wanted to say more, but he did not. His face seemed thinner than she remembered, his eyes more hooded.

He’s lonely, Solveig realized—reluctantly, because she didn’t want to understand that about him. Perhaps he’d truly cared for his young wife, and deeply grieved her death. Perhaps he was eager to marry again because he couldn’t face the coming winter alone. She felt sorry for him.

Still, that didn’t mean she wanted to marry him. “I’ll send some jam with you,” she promised. A bachelor fisherman was unlikely to have much fruit put by.

Solveig scoured and scalded her wooden buckets in the cleansing sunshine while her father and Gustav worked on the hay wire. Svein had been working for years on his rig, hauling heavy coils of wire to precarious ledges, building the wooden framework. The stout cable ran from their main farm up to the seter. Instead of sledding hay down in the winter, he’d now attach bundles of hay to the wire with long, supple osier branches. Once released, the bundle would whip down the mountain with terrifying speed—allowing Svein to fill the barn before snow fell.

By mid-afternoon, Father announced the task complete. “We’ll try it out another day,” he said. Then he looked at Gustav. “I’ll wait at woods’ edge.” Father slung the sack of foraged fodder over one shoulder, nodded at his daughter, and walked away.

This was the moment Solveig had been dreading.

In the awkward silence Gustav shifted his weight from foot to foot. “My wife died in childbirth last month.”

“I was very sorry to hear that.”

“A man needs a wife,” he said simply. “You have not yet married, even after all these years. And your father wants to see you wed.”

She didn’t need the reminder. If she told Gustav she didn’t want to marry him, would Father beat her again? I won’t be caught by surprise this time, she vowed silently, clenching her fists in her apron. I will not …

Gustav turned and walked away.

Solveig watched uneasily as he joined her father. Even across the meadow Father’s gaze sent a chip of ice down her backbone. Then he turned and the two men disappeared down the trail.

Her shoulders sagged. She’d been unable to make her feelings clear to Gustav. How had he interpreted her silence? With a heavy sigh, she went back inside.

That evening Solveig paced the room, arms crossed. Finally she brought out her leather pouch and counted the kroner. She loved the seter, and she’d been reluctant to leave her mother and Amalie, but perhaps it was time to leave Høiegård altogether. She had enough money to travel to Bergen. Finding work as a maid or cook’s helper wasn’t appealing, but being on her own was. And in the city she could attend dances and concerts.

Once darkness fell over the mountain, she walked to the waterfall with a lantern and wooden club. The fine rain had ceased. She listened hopefully, but heard only the sound of falling water and a distant owl’s call.

Since springtime, when snowmelt roared over the rocks, the river’s flow had gradually slackened. Earlier that week she’d repaired the small dam built from stones below the fall every autumn. Now she put the lantern on a rock at the pool’s edge, hoping the light would lure a trout or perch to the shallows. Kneeling, she picked up her club. She’d never perfected the skill of snatching fish with her bare hands.

Against the steady rush of water the plaintive chords of a hardingfele slipped through the night. Solveig forgot about fish. The fiddler must be quite close.

She put the club down as the melody strings and drones became more clear. Tonight’s tune felt sad. Was the fiddler lamenting summer’s end as she was? She got to her feet slowly. Turning, she stared into the darkness. Her heart beat too quickly.

The fiddler stepped from the trees, stopping just short of the lantern. Solveig held her breath. After the last quivering chord died away, he lowered the bow. In the dim light the stranger appeared to have dark hair, a narrow build. He was about her age, or perhaps a few years older. Finally she licked her lips and said, “Who are you?”