“I was supposed to be off today, but they called me in for breakfast. I’m working at the museum this afternoon.” Her hand unconsciously went to her ornate silver necklace, which provided an unexpected accent to her shorts and fleece pullover top. “I like to walk every day, so this was my best chance.”
Walk, he thought. Not hike. Not climb.
She considered him. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” he assured her.
She gestured toward his bulging daypack. “You are camping?”
“Just out for the morning. I like to be prepared.”
“That is wise.” She nodded, although she didn’t appear to be carrying anything except a sling holding a water bottle. And she wasn’t wearing hiking boots, just well-worn blue athletic shoes with a white wing motif on each side.
“Say, do you know how close we are to the waterfall?” Roelke asked.
Klara’s brow wrinkled. “Not close.”
“Ah. Just wondering. Well, good hiking.”
With another friendly gap-toothed smile she resumed the climb. She stepped with quick assurance, and didn’t need to grab anything. Within moments she’d disappeared.
Roelke glanced at his watch and considered his options. He could walk for about twenty more minutes before he’d need to turn around. From what Klara had said, he evidently had no chance of finding the waterfall in that time, but according to the map another trail intersected with this one somewhere up ahead. Reaching that junction would be a feeble benchmark, but the best he could hope for. He capped his bottle, ate a couple of Chloe’s Trail Mix Cookies from his snack stash, and resumed the climb.
He hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when he heard skittering ahead of him. A fist-sized stone bounced down the trail. More rocks were plummeting behind that one, pinging off larger stones and tree trunks. Then a rock the size of an engine block cartwheeled toward him.
With a yelp Roelke stumbled sideways. He fell, landing hard and off-kilter on his right hip. He tried to roll to safety but the pack stopped him. At the last moment he curled into a tight ball, arms wrapped over his head, eyes closed tight. He felt a glancing blow against his right knee. A couple of small stones ricocheted against him and kept going. Finally the rock sounds faded away below him, and everything was still.
Well, that sucked, he grumbled silently. He opened his eyes but didn’t move for a long moment, wanting to be sure no other projectiles were barreling his way. He tested his legs—both working properly, though he’d have one hell of a bruise on his knee. He lumbered to his feet and brushed a few broken fern fronds from his jeans.
Then he squinted up the trail. He was well below treeline, but the steep path was filled with scree. What had triggered the little avalanche? Had Klara inadvertently sent something tumbling? It would be easy enough to do, but at the pace she’d been hiking, she was probably a mile away by the time it started. Was he closer to the intersecting trail than he realized? Had some other hiker dislodged the first stone? A deer? A squirrel? Had it been one of those zen things stemming from a butterfly flapping its wings on top of the mountain?
No way to know.
Well, the one thing he did know was that he needed to turn around. If he didn’t head back now, he’d likely keep Chloe waiting.
He began picking his way down the mountain. With any luck, Klara, having reached the summit or the waterfall or whatever she was hiking toward, wouldn’t overtake him again before he reached the road.
Chloe found bread, brunost, and apple juice at the village market, and bought some strawberries from a self-serve stand. “I’ve got everything we need for lunch,” she told Roelke when he returned from his hike and met her, as agreed, on the hotel porch. “Did you reach the waterfall?”
“Not even close,” he admitted. “But I didn’t want to keep you waiting.”
They found a picnic table near the dock, and she laid out her goodies. He sat down. “That cheese is brown,” he observed.
“It’s supposed to be. Try it.”
They ate strawberries and bread smeared with brown cheese, and watched ferries come and go. Clouds cast floating shadows on the mountains. Roelke told Chloe about meeting Klara on the trail. She summarized what she’d learned from Ellinor that morning, including whispers of a murder and a legendary missing hardingfele. Murder tale notwithstanding, she was pretty sure they were experiencing an absolutely perfect day. “What do you want to do this afternoon?” She reached for the almost-empty bottle of juice. “More hiking?”
Roelke considered, then shook his head. “I think not.”
“Want to join me for a tour of the open-air part of the museum?” she asked, and was inordinately pleased when he agreed.
The Hardanger Folkemuseum’s open-air exhibits were up a short but steep hill from the main building. “This would never fly in the States,” Chloe murmured, trying not to pant as they reached the summit. She zipped her jacket as a light drizzle began to fall.
She spotted perhaps a dozen tourists gathered around Klara, their tour guide. When Chloe and Roelke wandered over, Klara smiled and nodded slightly: I was expecting you two.
When everyone was ready Klara welcomed the group. “The museum was established in 1911 in Utne, right in front of the hotel, but as the collection grew more space was needed. All of the buildings here came from Hardanger …”
This property was a spectacular choice, Chloe thought. The twenty buildings restored on this high ground were presented with the fjord and mountains as backdrop. The combination of historic buildings and misty clouds was evocative.
And as Klara ushered them through the homes and outbuildings, some dating back centuries, Chloe’s imagination kicked into overdrive. Her ancestors had surely lived in similar structures. “I’m going to see if they have any job openings here,” she whispered to Roelke.
He smiled indulgently.
“No, I’m serious,” she insisted. The view alone would have done it, but hey, it was her people represented here.
A man in a Baltimore Orioles ball cap asked about maintenance. “We take our responsibility seriously,” Klara said, pointing at a pile of replacement roof slates. “That’s our next project. And the turf systems on the older buildings are replaced regularly.” She led them to a small log structure where grasses grew over a layer of birchbark to form a solid roof. “This is my favorite building. It’s the oldest one we have, dating back to sometime between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The style, with an open hearth in the center of the room, is called årestove. Let’s go inside.”
The door opened into a small anteroom, where an unusually low second door led on to the main room. Chloe was the last to step inside—and immediately felt something like an electric charge shoot through her. A barrage of emotions quivered in the air, hitting her with a force she’d never experienced. Sensate fragments whirled around her—joy, despair, grief, hope, fear. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
“Chloe?” Roelke gripped her arm and tugged her back outside. “Are you all right? What happened?”
She leaned over, hands on knees. The sensations faded, but it took a moment to regain her equilibrium. Finally, not wanting Roelke to call the Norwegian equivalent of 911, she straightened. “I’m okay,” she muttered. “It was just that … geez, I’ve never picked up on something so strong before.”
“What was it? Good? Bad? Scary?”
“Well, that’s the strange part.” She was still trying to figure out where to slot the experience in her growing collection. “In all the other old buildings I just sensed the usual vague muddle of emotions. Like background noise, easily tuned out. Here, it was still a muddle, but everything was really strong.” She stared at him, more unnerved that she wanted to admit. “My ‘gift’”—she fingered air quotes to make clear it didn’t always feel like one—“has gone haywire since we got here. I’m fine in o
ur hotel room as long as I don’t stand at the window. Now this.”
Roelke frowned. “Let’s just go back down.”
Chloe sucked in her lip, looking from him to the log home. “No, I want to stay.”
He looked distinctly unconvinced. She settled the matter by bracing herself and going back inside.
The mélange whacked her again, but she’d expected it. She forced herself to take in the antechamber, sussing out its use for temporary storage or a place for wood chopping in bad weather.
Then she bent low and stepped into the main room. It was dim, and the only decoration was a row of geometric patterns chalked on the walls. The tour group was seated on low benches built against three of the walls. Chloe and Roelke settled quietly. Her sternum quivered with the intensity of perceived emotions, but she willed herself to stay calm.
“… the only window in the house was probably added in the eighteen hundreds,” Klara was saying, pointing to the eastern wall. “It replaced the original wooden hatch. In the old days, people believed that a dead person’s soul would try to return to the house where it had lived, using the entrance where it last emerged. So bodies were removed through the hatch, which was kept closed at all other times. That way the soul couldn’t return.”
I’m glad I stuck it out, Chloe thought. She’d never heard of that custom before.
A man asked about the chalk decoration. “It’s called kroting,” Klara explained. “The designs were applied with a liquid chalk made from local minerals. Very few examples remain, all here in western Norway. Some designs may have been decorative, but others were intended to protect the home.”
Chloe imagined living through a dark, cold winter in this dark, sooty room. Firelight flickered against the walls. Wind whistled through cracks, and sleety snow beat against the lone window. The air smelled of smoke and unwashed bodies. Somehow she understood that the designs brought comfort.
A red-haired lady waved a lime green umbrella to get Klara’s attention. “The door into this room is unusually low,” she observed. “Was that to discourage evil spirits, or because people were shorter back then?”
“Actually, there are other reasons for the low door,” Klara said. “It minimized heat loss. It was also a safety feature. If someone attacked the family, they’d be forced to bend low coming through the door, and …” She pantomimed striking a vicious blow to the back of an intruder’s head.
Chloe exchanged a sideways glance with Roelke: Yikes.
Klara returned to more prosaic details. “This type of single-room dwelling, with an earthen floor and raised central hearth like this one, was once common in rural Norway. By the nineteenth century, most rural Norwegians lived in homes with chimneys and windows, but not everyone could afford those luxuries. This home was never updated. The smoke hole in the ceiling is a bit off center so rain didn’t drip down into the fire. Imagine all the smoke swirling about! And imagine how bitterly cold this room must have been in the winter.”
“It’s unbelievable that people actually lived like this,” a man muttered dismissively, as if farm folk seven hundred years earlier had a whole lot of choices. Chloe was tempted to say so but remembered just in time that she was not a museum representative.
But Klara had heard the comment as well. She did not observe that her ancestors’ fortitude warranted respect, not derision, as Chloe would have done. “I’d like to share with you a different aspect to life in the old days on the fjord,” she said instead. “Music has always been incredibly important to Hardanger people. This is a lullaby that local women have sung to their babies for hundreds of years.”
She began to sing. The lullaby, offered in a clear soprano voice, was hauntingly beautiful … and familiar. Chloe closed her eyes, taking it in. Had Amalie Sveinsdatter sung this to baby Marit? Perhaps the lullaby was somehow imprinted in Mom, Chloe thought, and got passed down to me.
The group applauded when Klara finished. She nodded modestly in acknowledgment. “That concludes the tour. Your bus driver is waiting in the parking lot down the hill.”
Chloe waited until the tour group had straggled from the building before approaching Klara. “That was amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your talent with us.”
“My pleasure. Do you have any questions about the tour, or this building?”
“Probably.” Chloe spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “But your song knocked everything else from my mind.”
Klara laughed. “Well, you know where to find me. If I’m not here, grab me at the hotel.” She fastened her coat and stepped outside.
Chloe wanted to linger, but Roelke tapped his wristwatch. “Didn’t you say you were due to meet that grad student at three o’clock? It’s ten till.”
They descended to the formal museum building. In the gift shop, Klara was already engaged in an intimate conversation with a tall young man. “I believe that’s the grad student working with Ellinor,” Chloe murmured.
Klara noticed them and said something to her companion. He stroked her cheek with his thumb and kissed her. Then he bounded over to meet Chloe and Roelke, hand outstretched. “I’m Torstein Landvik. I’m excited that you’re here!” His accent was a little thicker than his girlfriend’s, but his English was flawless. Beneath a thick shock of dark hair, his gaze was an intense blue.
Oh my, Chloe thought. No wonder Klara seemed besotted.
They moved into Ellinor’s office. Once introductions were complete, Torstein plunged right in. “Tell me how I can be helpful.” He wore jeans, but also a reproduction linen shirt, and he wore a ring that looked as if had been hand-forged.
“I’m curious about your fieldwork.” Chloe pulled out her notebook and pen. “I understand you’re studying regional folk dance? Bygdedanser?”
Torstein nodded vigorously. “Some of the historical dances are endangered. For example, Springars are the oldest surviving couple dances. They were performed as early as the 1600s, with choreography specific to particular valleys or communities. But many disappeared when new dances, polkas and Reinlendars and such, became popular during the last century. We must document those that are left.”
“They are important heirlooms,” Chloe agreed.
“But it’s impossible, of course, to study dance without studying music too. Do you know the Halling?”
Chloe flashed to her high school days, watching Kent Andreasson perform the challenging dance. “I do.”
“The Halling must have an experienced fiddler. So much athleticism is demanded of the men! The fiddler must urge them on. And considering that the men were often trying to show off for the women watching … well.” He grinned. “Who knows how many engagements took place because a fiddler helped a man meet the challenge?” He abruptly turned to Roelke. “Is that how you won Chloe’s heart?”
“I’m afraid not,” Roelke said blandly. “I do not dance.”
Chloe sent him a reassuring glance: You had your own ways of winning my heart. A crooked smile quirked his mouth.
“No matter.” Torstein shrugged. “I’ve also been studying Rammeslatter, and—”
Chloe held up one hand. “That’s a term I don’t know.”
“It’s the name given to tunes with a hypnotic quality. Stories tell of fiddlers so skilled that they played dancers into a trance. Even themselves. Such men would play until most of the dancers had collapsed, and someone pulled the fiddle away from his hands. It still happens today—at least for the fiddler, who emerges bone-weary, with no memories of the music played.”
Chloe felt her eyebrows rise. “Seriously?”
“It has not happened to me,” Torstein said sadly. “But I aspire to such heights. Well.” He shoved to his feet, as if sitting still any longer was impossible. “Tomorrow afternoon I’m scheduled to interview an elderly dancer. Would you like to join me?”
“Of course!”
Torstein grinned. “And did
Ellinor tell you I’ve planned a musical evening to welcome you to Utne? Nothing big or fancy—we just put up a few posters around the village. Eight o’clock in the open-air area. You can come?” His hopeful gaze suggested that nothing was more important than her attendance.
“That sounds great.”
“I need to see to some final arrangements, so I’ll see you then.” Torstein beamed at them and departed with an air of barely suppressed exuberance.
“Wow.” Chloe blinked.
Ellinor had watched the exchange in what appeared to be amused silence. “He’s a force of nature. He’s passionate about local folklore, and carefully documents every detail he gathers. He’s really made inroads with some of the elders who haven’t felt comfortable sharing before.” She tented her fingers beneath her chin. “Collectors appeared in Hardanger as early as the 1850s, determined to document what they called ‘pure peasant culture.’ Unfortunately, most were lofty academics who didn’t find much success. Torstein’s saving dances that would otherwise be lost.”
“I look forward to working with him.” Chloe slipped her notebook into her daypack and stood. “Will we see you this evening?”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Ellinor assured her.
When Chloe and Roelke passed back from the office area into the gift shop, Klara was on duty behind the counter. Chloe paused to thank her again for singing the lullaby. “That house is now my favorite as well,” she told the younger woman. “By the way, did the farm it came from have a name?”
“It did,” Klara said. “It was called Høiegård.”
Nine
Torhild—June 1854
Torhild arched her back, stretching out the kinks that came from cutting the first grass crop with a sickle. She and her mother Lisbet had climbed above the seter—the small isolated farm where they summered their cow and goats—which was high above Høiegård, so they were very high indeed. A golden eagle soared overhead. Far below, the fjord sparkled a deep blue. Several waterfalls plunged down the mountain face on the far side. Although snow still capped the peaks, it was Midsummer.
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