The Conqueror

by Jan Kjaerstad

  The way she sat, with her back to him, made Jonas think that he was being made love to backwards, and as the semen left his body, he did not feel as though he were spurting something out uncontrollably, but rather as if he were brushing something onto a background, that this was a process akin to tracing, summoning up, something: figures, patterns that lay hidden inside him.

  The Academic

  For so it is: even though life is lived forward, it is always understood backward. You turn around and behold – in awe or fear – a pattern that you are not aware of having made. Not until Jonas Wergeland killed a dragon did he understand that the following chapter was part of that story.

  Jonas developed an interest in design and ornamentation at an early age, thanks to an aunt who was a goldsmith. There were periods when he spent more time in her flat in Tøyen than he did at home. And when Aunt Laura was sitting in the workshop corner of her living room, wearing her elk-skin apron and hammering silver or gold into original and much sought-after pieces of jewellery, in a light so mystical that it made Jonas think of the smiths in Norse mythology, he sat at the big table, working with charcoal – until his patience ran out, and for the hundredth time he asked her if she wouldn’t tell him a tale of Samarkand. His aunt was always happy to tell him stories of her travels in the Middle East and Central Asia but never about Samarkand. She steadfastly refused. ‘You’ll have to go there yourself,’ was all she said. ‘The day you reach Samarkand, your life will be turned upside down.’

  In this, arguably the most important of all the rooms of his childhood, with walls covered in copper and brass and Oriental rugs, and with a scent found nowhere else in the whole of Norway but here, since his aunt prided herself on never owning a perfume that any other Norwegian woman might own, Jonas would often sit covering large, white sheets of paper with charcoal drawings or sketches for which he used soft pencils – always with the certainty at the back of his mind that it was but a short step from graphite to diamond, since both were forms of carbon, consisting of different crystalline patterns. Aunt Laura kept pulling out more books containing reproductions of works by famous artists and laying them in front of him: ‘Try copying these, Jonas, now there’s something to strive for.’ Jonas liked the feeling of the stick of charcoal on the slightly rough paper, the sight of the black particles spreading finely over the fibres of the paper – strokes which, when magnified, were revealed to be tiny, unexpected works of art in themselves; and he always felt proud if his aunt was pleased with his drawings, which is to say: if she took them into another room and fixed them. He was good at copying, much better at that than at drawing free-hand, and – apropos a certain debate in Norwegian art circles – I can tell you that Jonas Wergeland actually could draw a hand – thanks to the many attempts he had made to copy Dürer’s hands. Because when it came to drawing, Dürer was his favourite – along with Rembrandt and Ruskin. Nonetheless, and however unlikely it may sound, Jonas was soon to discover lines which he found even more entrancing, and in Norway at that.

  This tale began in the summer between fifth and sixth grades, on a day when he played the tourist in his own country, a day when Aunt Laura, in broad-brimmed hat and flowing garments – and made up like the Queen of Sheba – took him to the Viking Ship Museum on the island of Bygdøy, a visit which he had been looking forward to, since all of the museums he had seen up to this point had, generally speaking, been pretty dull affairs, with the odd high point, such as the Palaeontological Museum at Tøyen and the scary dinosaur skeleton on the stairway up to the Reptile Hall. One museum did, however, stand out: the Museum of Technology – the old one, that is, south of the city at Etterstad. And not so much because of the planes suspended from the roof, or the enormous model-railway layouts, which put even Wolfgang Michaelsen’s in the shade; the real fun lay in all the buttons you could push: on the model of a windmill, say, to set water flowing and the millwheel turning. You placed your finger on a button and a fire engine emerged and put out a fire. Amazing! One push and you saw how a turbine drove a dynamo and the light came on – an entire industrial process activated. When Jonas stood in front of those glass cases, pushing buttons, he was never as impressed by the actual demonstration – of how Norway’s power grid functioned, for example – as he was by how much was set in motion at the touch of a switch. It was the button itself, the inherent potential of the button that fascinated him.

  The journey to Bygdøy was, in itself, a milestone in Jonas’s life, since this was the end of the line for the bus from Grorud, so he had seen that name on the front of buses ever since he was tiny. It was only natural, therefore, that something big was bound to happen on the lovely summer’s day when he went all the way, so to speak; a feeling which was confirmed as soon as he found himself standing, clad in shorts and a new, gaily-patterned Hawaiian shirt like any other tourist, outside Arnstein Arneberg’s pure-white building, bathed in sunlight and surrounded by bright greenery. A cathedral and a chief’s castle in one, thought Jonas solemnly.

  Inside the stark, vaulted chamber, with the smell of rotten wood in the air, he was not so sure. Before him lay the Oseberg ship – it wasn’t all that hot really. Pretty ordinary, if you asked him. Boring even. And it was actually a lot smaller than he had expected. He pressed on, feeling let down, spotted the Gokstad ship over to the left. More boring still. Miles away from his mother’s colourful stories from the sagas. And to the right, nothing but an old wreck. What sort of thing was this to show tourists? Overgrown rowboats. How could these blackened, dried-out boards possibly have anything to do with Olav Tryggvason’s proud warship, Long Worm?

  The room straight ahead of them looked more promising, with glass cases in the centre and lining the walls. Aunt Laura had nipped off to the section where works by the Viking smiths were displayed, so Jonas wandered aimlessly around until all at once he found himself face to face with a horrific-looking creature. A thing with a fearsome, gaping maw, poised to strike. And yet it had a compelling beauty. He is rooted to the spot, stands there staring. Just as at the Museum of Technology, he feels that he has pushed a button, that some great and intricate industrial process has been set in motion, that water is gushing out, turbines kicking in – only now all this is going on inside his own body. It would not be going too far to say that Jonas Wergeland was granted his vision of life while standing before that glass case – which was not altogether unlike a television screen – that the seeds of his career, his creativity, were sown here.

  It was one of the animal-head posts from the Oseberg Ship. Jonas immediately took it to be the head of a dragon. By coincidence, of the four posts in their four separate glass cases, the one he had noticed first was the head attributed to an artist known as the Academic, and this would always be Jonas’s favourite. Because it was not so much the shape of the creature that drew the eye, as the woodcarvings: the designs covering the head itself. Jonas had seen this before. It was just like the worm ball, and the two snakes in the quarry. And not only that: he knew now where Aunt Laura had found the pattern for his mother’s lovely brooch. Jonas Wergeland stood looking at a dragon’s head in the Viking Ship Museum on the island of Bygdøy feeling that he had come home. If, that is, he was not – although he did not know it – in Samarkand.

  At first he thought the carvings were purely for decoration, but he soon began to make out figures amid the coils and swirls, and suddenly it dawned on him that a whole story was harboured within these lines; animals – or no: birds – stretched out into bands that were swept into curves and kinks and loops, at the same time intertwining and crisscrossing in such a way that they covered the whole surface. He could not have said how long he stood there with his nose pressed up against the glass, had no idea where he was, just looked, stared, tried to drink it in. It’s like being inside a piece by Bach, he thought.

  Besides which, he had been right! For years Daniel had teased him because once when he was little he had insisted that the animal on the Norwegian coat of arms had to be a dragon because
of its long, jagged tail, reptilian head and flickering tongue. ‘It’s a lion, dummy,’ Daniel had hooted. But now, confronted with the Academic’s animal-head post, Jonas knew he was right: there’s no such thing as the Norwegian Lion, but there is a Norwegian Dragon.

  By concentrating hard, running his eyes along curves and lines, he managed to detect four birds in the network, two on either side of the head – possibly because of the long necks he assumed that they were swans. Jonas took his time, separating each figure from the maze, seeing how they split and looped, interwove, interlocked, a tangle of wings, legs and bits of bodies. It was delightful, unbelievable: a dragon made up of four swans, of other creatures, that is. Like looking into the dragon’s brain, he thought.

  Jonas stands transfixed in front of the glass case, a boy with slicked-back hair, wearing shorts and a new Hawaiian shirt, a tourist in his own country, oblivious to the sounds of feet round about him, the murmuring voices, guides speaking all sorts of different languages. What were the Viking ships, compared to this! Instinctively he understands that one could sail much further with the aid of these patterns – their significance – than on the ship itself. That they are more than just a tracery of ribbons, they are a way of thinking, something terribly concentrated. Looking at the carvings on the dragon’s head Jonas felt rather like he had done the first time he saw a microchip.

  Aunt Laura had noticed how taken he had been with the head, so the next time Jonas came to see her she brought out a book, not from the bookcase containing her art books, but from the exquisitely carved chest – and placed it in front of him. ‘Maybe you should try to copy some of the drawings in this,’ she said, not knowing what forces she was awakening. Because this book happened to be the third volume in the Norwegian state’s magnificent series on the Oseberg ship, and when Jonas asked why these books were kept in the chest normally reserved for rare travel journals, she replied: ‘Because these too are about a journey. The most important journey of them all. To the kingdom of the dead.’

  There were two Haakons in Jonas Wergeland’s life. His father and Haakon Shetelig. The one worked with traceries of notes, the other with traceries in wood. Haakon Shetelig was an archaeologist and next to Gabriel Gustafson the most important person involved in the unearthing of the Oseberg ship. He was also co-editor of the work describing this national treasure and author of the third volume, which presented a detailed study of the woodcarvings. And while Jonas was sitting drawing, trying to reproduce the designs pictured in this book, Aunt Laura recounted, in simple terms, some of what Shetelig had written, about the animal ornamentation generally and about how it had been developed into a distinctive Nordic style, most strikingly perhaps in the earlier posts, carved with the so-called gripping beasts. Even though Jonas did not understand all of it, he would always remember one statement: ‘This style of carving,’ his aunt said, ‘is one of Scandinavia’s few contributions to art history.’

  Jonas sat amid all the brass and the Oriental rugs, patiently copying the inimitable illustrations in Shetelig’s book, mainly those of the figures from the Academic’s dragon head, including some fold-out spreads which gave a clearer idea of the composition – in other pictures individual figures from an animal pattern had been separated, or rather disentangled, from one another. What an edifying experience. Jonas felt as though he were drawing the dream that had haunted him for so many years. That he was turning something abstract into something concrete. Sometimes he had to colour in the different creatures to make them easier to see, much as his big brother Daniel would later do with the interwoven source texts in the Old Testament. And it was these studies, this painstaking copying, which taught Jonas one of his most crucial lessons, one which was to have a bearing, not least, on his work with television: that Norwegians do in fact have something to contribute to world civilization. Even if imitation seems to be the mark of Norwegian art, it may be that if one goes on copying and recopying these copies, in the end it will suddenly give birth to something unique and original – something new. As if one’s appendix had unexpectedly turned into a womb, to anticipate an idea with which Jonas would later become acquainted.

  That summer’s day on Bygdøy also endowed him with a passion for woodcarving – which fitted very well since, after the rather namby-pamby handwork of fifth grade they were now to have proper woodwork classes. And it is no exaggeration to say that Jonas displayed the most extraordinary aptitude for and, above all, delight in only one subject: woodwork. It seemed that even at this point he knew what his life’s work would be, no matter which profession he chose: just once to carve a figure like the Academic’s, the perfect dragon head.

  As early as the autumn of sixth grade he made a start on his first head, with the woodwork teacher’s blessing, since Jonas had completed the obligatory chopping boards and bowls, shelves and bats in double-quick time. The teacher, a keen fiddle-maker, even allowed Jonas to stay behind after school on those afternoons when he was working on his instruments.

  Sometimes, especially at the start when he often made a wrong cut or wasn’t sure how best to proceed, Jonas also took the bus out to Bygdøy alone, to see Sverre G. Sundbye, the Museum of Antiquities’ resident woodcarver: which is to say, not only did he have his workshop there, round the back of the Viking Ship Museum, he did actually live there. Luckily for Jonas, just at that time Sundbye was working on a copy of an animal-head post, the one known as ‘the Carolingian post’ – the finished result is, by the way, on display in the depository of the Antiquities collection at the Museum of History. Jonas and Sundbye became firm friends. The elderly woodcarver, who was otherwise known to be a bit of a loner, had nothing against having a little disciple and gladly taught him some tricks of the trade, as well as giving Jonas tips on tools and types of wood – and, above all else, on the greatest challenge of woodcarving: ‘The hardest part,’ Sundbye said, ‘is the actual composition of the design, to be able to visualize the lines, the links between one part and another, the hidden connections, if you like.’ In other words, it was here at the woodcarver’s bench in the basement of the Viking Ship Museum that Jonas Wergeland began his apprenticeship as a television producer.

  As a grown man, when he moved in to the Villa Wergeland, taking over the house from his mother, one of the first things he did was to install a woodwork bench in one of the smaller rooms and put up a cupboard in which to keep his tools, including a collection of almost fifty different wood gouges – as well as some old ‘Acorn’ iron chisels which Sundbye had given him. This became his most fruitful pastime, to stand in this workshop with a piece of birch-wood or – when he became adept enough – maple or pear-wood in his hand, holding it up to the light, like another Michelangelo with a chunk of stone, to see whether it might contain the perfect dragon head: to stand there hour after hour, cutting away at the wood; for the fifth or sixth or seventh time in his life trying to reproduce the Academic’s masterpiece, to bring it still closer to perfection. And as he was carving, following a pattern which he now knew almost by heart, it was as if he were pulling back the skin from the dragon’s head to disclose the structure underneath, the veins, the nerves; and he could make believe that these interlacing bands constituted the very essence of the dragon. Inside that hideous, snarling creature there dwells something beautiful, he always thought. The swans betray the fact that the dragon’s thoughts are soaring.

  Although Jonas Wergeland never completed any university or college course, and although he was an artist within his own field, he thought of himself as an academic – an academic in the special sense of the word as it pertained to the Oseberg ship. Jonas Wergeland had no wish to give lectures; he wished to carve his pictures into people’s heads.

  The Empress

  On the Friday evening when, as part of its celebrated venture Thinking Big, NRK screened the programme on Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway’s and Scandinavia’s first female prime minister, Jonas Wergeland was strolling along Bygdøy Allé, unconsciously humming the chorus of Jens Book Jen
ssen’s old favourite ‘When the Chestnuts Blossom on Bygdøy Allé’ because it happened to be just that time, and the chestnuts were in full bloom. Jonas had been to the Gimle Cinema to see a film starring Diane Keaton, had almost had the cinema to himself, and it was only as he was cutting across Solli plass that it occurred to him how few cars there were on the road, how few people at all: as if, while he had been sitting, all-unsuspecting, in the cinema, the city had been struck by some terrible catastrophe and only he and a handful of others had survived. Jonas Wergeland carried on down Drammensveien, then pulled up short, sensing that he was being watched; he turned and almost jumped out of his skin. He was staring straight into the face of another person. Or at least he thought it was that of another person. It took him several seconds to realize that he was standing face to face with himself. It always took him a while to recognize his own features on the television; it was as if the medium changed him, gave him a new identity. Jonas stood there watching close-ups of himself, the one constant in the series, alternating with close-ups of the prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland – as she was played, with great authority and uncanny accuracy, by Ella Strand, that is. It was a weird moment: Jonas Wergeland stopped in his tracks and held captive – or even, why not: seduced – by his own gaze. Suddenly he understood why the city seemed deserted: just at that moment the large majority of Norwegians were sitting at home in front of their TV screens, watching his programme.

  Jonas went on standing in front of that shop window on Solli plass, could not tear himself away from his own opus on Gro Harlem Brundtland, in which the key scene – to many people’s surprise – took place in a Chinese home. Jonas had racked his brains for months before, with the deadline approaching for this, the last programme in the series, he figured out how to present a personage as overexposed as Gro Harlem Brundtland; everything fell into place when he got wind of an incident in China which, more or less indirectly, said more than anything else about this exceptionally strong-willed and ambitious Norwegian woman and her standing, one might almost say her clout and her reputation; the name Harlem Brundtland which, in the world at large had some of the same ring of quality and dynamism to it as Harley-Davidson.