Culture, Nordhordland | Lifelong relationship with Nordhordland
– Most readers I meet, think it’s fun, when they can recognize themselves in places in my books. This is how it is with people I meet from Nordhordland, says author Gunnar Staalesen.
For over 40 years he has used Nordhordland as a location. In the new novel «2020: Post festum», the 74-year-old author has used Alversund as a crime scene. The book is the fourth in his popular chronicle that begins physical days in the year 1900.
One of the main characters, Tarald Nesbø, is there when the terrorist attack on Utøya takes place on July 22, 2011. This is far from the first time the popular author uses Nordhordland location in the books. Private investigator Varg Veum has regularly taken the trip north. Already in the third Varg Veum book, “Sleeping Beauty slept for a hundred years” (1980), Veum is on Radøy to conduct an investigation. In the novel, the private investigator searches for a girl who has ended up in the drug and prostitution environment in Copenhagen, but it turns out to be much more complicated as a result of the disappearance.
Was a Boy Scout at Manger
– I often use places where I already have ours. Some friends had a cabin on Radøy, and I had been there and visited them there, while there was still a ferry connection between Salhus and Frekhaug. That is why the ferry trip plays a certain role in the book, in addition to the fact that I invent a wood warehouse in a town on the island, completely free according to my own imagination, comments Staalesen, who has had a good relationship with Nordhordland for well over 50 years.
– Nordhordland was a city Bergen often visited. Personally, I had neither a family with a background from there nor a cabin out there growing up, but I remember with joy that I was at a scout camp on Manger a couple of times in the early 1960s. Over the years, I have been on both school and library visits in the area, and I was there recently in connection with the very last trip with Bokbåten, Staalesen said.
Landhandelen på Feste
In a number of other crime novels vitjar and Veum Nordhordaland. Both in “Big Sister” and “Where roses never die” there is some action from the area, and in the latest Veum novel, “Outside are the dogs”, (2018), Veum stops by Frekhaug to investigate.
“We shall inherit the wind” from 2010 is, however, the Veum novel with the most action from Nordhordland. Interestingly, the title is inspired by Solomon’s proverb in the Bible, which says, “He who gets his house in trouble shall inherit the wind, and the fool will be a slave to the wise.”
– It can be carried out both in Gulen and on the Lindå peninsula, Staalesen says.
– For example, in a landscape where it could be natural to set up wind turbines, and the choice falls on Gulen. In addition, for example, has a cabin at Feste and knew the area there well, so then I put parts of the action yours, if still on the other side of Radsundet. I must, as always, report that in the books all persons are fictional, the same applies to cabins and houses, but the cities I try to separate as authentically as possible. It should nevertheless be mentioned that the country dealer at Feste probably has a living model, but he also has no dramatic place in the action. In this context, he is probably more like an extra to count, says Staalesen, who has brought with him a curious journalist from Nordhordland in the same book.
– Personally, I have no experience as a journalist in Nordhordland, but I know many journalists and know how they work, so that particular person was not so difficult to create.
Signed books in Knarvik
«2020: Post festum», like the other three in his epic chronicle («1900. Morgenrød» (1997), «1950. High Noon» (1998), «1999. Aftensang» (2000)) has sold very well.
– I know nothing about specific sales figures for this year’s book, «2020. Post festum », but notes e.g. that it has been on the publishers’ association’s bestseller list every week since it came out in November, and that means that it is among the five to ten most rare fiction books in Norway in that period. I have to say I am very happy with that. The impression from the signing at Knarvik Senter in the beginning of December indicates then and great interest in the local population.