The Cabin in the Mountains
Page 26
‘No. What happened?’
‘His office in the philosophy department was in Niels Treschows building, the tall building at the back of the campus, next to the tram lines. One day he left his keys in there and locked himself out. But it was summer, and his window was open, so he climbed out of the window of the office next door to his and in through his own window, picked up his keys and let himself out. It was on the eighth floor. Dagbladet heard about it and sent a photographer and a journalist up to Blindern. They offered him money to do it again but he wouldn’t and they left.
‘A few minutes later two more journalists turned up, this time from VG. How exactly did you do it, Professor? they asked him. For some reason he changed his mind. I did it like this, he said, and he climbed out the window and did the whole thing all over again. So VG got their pictures for nothing. Another time him and Jens Bjørneboe – you know, the writer – arranged this practical joke where Bjørneboe got on the metro at the station before Majorstuen and Næss got on at Majorstuen. As soon as he boarded Næss began complaining loudly about the heat and asked whether anyone happened to have a glass of water on them. Of course, says Bjørneboe, and pulls a glass of water from his inside pocket. I’ll swap you this for a spanner. So Næss pulls a spanner out of his inside pocket and hands it to Bjørneboe, who gives him the glass of water. Then they both go back to their seats – still pretending to be complete strangers – and get off at different stations. Why are you interested in Arne Næss? Are you writing about him?’
I told him I was thinking about writing something about Norwegian mountaineers who were also philosophers, or Norwegian philosophers who were also mountaineers.
‘You should say something about Peter Wessel Zapffe. I always slightly preferred him to Næss. Just as a character. He was more melancholic, but very funny.’
‘Was he one of your teachers?’
‘No, he wasn’t attached to the department. But he wrote some textbooks. I don’t think he ever had a proper job. He studied law and practised up in Tromsø, where he came from, for a couple of years. But he gave it up, it wasn’t for him. He’s the only law student in Norwegian history who wrote his exam paper on the principles of judicial precedence in rhyming verse.’
‘Did he pass?’
‘Yes. He got laud. It’s the highest mark you can get.’
I mentioned something I thought I remembered about Zapffe from a book I read years ago, about Salomon August Andrée, the Swedish balloonist who set off for the North Pole in 1897 with two companions and disappeared. They were not heard of again until 1930, when two fishermen came across what was left of them on the remote Arctic island of Kvitøya; hadn’t Zapffe been the official photographer with the party that sailed to Kvitøya to pick up the remains of the three dead balloonists?
‘Yes, he was a photographer too. And a humorous writer – his book Vett og uvett (Wit and half-wit) is a classic of north Norwegian humour. Om det tragiske (On the Tragic), a version of his doctoral thesis, is a classic of a different kind in Norwegian literature. He was a cartoonist. Satirist. And philosopher, of course.’
‘Where did he stand on Deep Ecology?’
‘I suppose you’d have to call him a fundamentalist. He was an Anti-Natalist. He believed it would have been better for us never to have been born. All this searching for ultimate meaning, all the agonising over ethics, to him it wasn’t impressive, he viewed it more as a sort of malfunctioning of the brain. He believed that human consciousness, having solved the basic problems of comfort and survival, had developed into a grotesque and useless luxury. That there’s no meaning anywhere. Like patrons at a theatre, we come, we sit awhile, and we go. Bringing children into the world, he said, that’s like carrying wood into a burning house.’
‘Sounds bleak,’ I said.
‘Well yes. But if you believe there’s no meaning in life and no point in wasting time looking for one, I suppose it brought a sense of relief. I remember reading a memoir by someone who knew him when he was very old – he lived to be ninety-one. She was young, very idealistic, she liked to have deep talks with him about the meaning of life. Once he was telling her about how life is like rowing alone in a small boat on the open sea. You have no idea where you are, and no lighthouse blinking anywhere to guide you. She lost patience with him. “You’re old,” she told him. “You’ll die soon. But I’m young and my life is only just beginning. The picture you paint is so bleak.” Zapffe was quiet for a long time. Then he said to her, “Well, while you’re rowing the boat, there’s no need to mope about it. You can sing, for example. And open a tin of pineapples.”
Eskil gave a little laugh.
‘What was your question again?’ he said.
‘About Deep Ecology. Where did Zapffe stand on Deep Ecology?’
‘He was so deep he was subterranean. He thought that marking footpaths the way DNT do it was wrong. He even thought it was wrong to put up little varder. Du, hva heter det forresten på engelsk, varder?’
‘It means cairns in English.’
‘He even thought it was wrong to raise little cairns to mark the way. Logical enough, I suppose, if you don’t believe there even is a way to mark.’
From the corner of my eye I saw my wife gesturing to me that the food was ready. And swearing once more that we would soon get together and resume our Saturday afternoons at Herr Nilsen, even if we had to wait until the spring, Eskil and I ended our conversation. Putting the phone back down on the table, I had an odd thought: that in a voyage without lighthouses we end up providing our own. Maybe, without my knowing it, my youthful obsession with a novel had actually been a kind of lighthouse to me.
I poured another glass of rosé for Nina, helped myself to another Heineken from the fridge and sat down at the table. Before doing anything else I raised a glass to her and thanked her for the meal, and for a number of other things as well. Then I asked her what she thought of Zapffe’s idea that even something as simple as building cairns might be the wrong way to go about life. It seemed interesting to me, possibly a bit extreme, and I was curious to hear what she had to say about it.
* The spelling is modernised in newer editions to En Jegers Erindringer.
† Later, as Camilla Collett, Camilla Wergeland would write Amtmandens Døtre (The District Governor’s Daughters), one of the classics of early modern Norwegian literature.
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About the author
ROBERT FERGUSON has lived in Norway since 1983. His books include Scandinavians: In Search of the Soul of the North; The Hammer and The Cross: A New History of the Vikings, and biographies of Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun and Henry Miller. He has translated numerous books by Norwegian writers into English, including Norwegian Wood by Lars Mytting, which won the Bookseller prize for Non-Fiction Book of the Year in 2016.
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