Interview by Harriet
Lars Mytting is an award-winning Norwegian author. His surprise non-fiction bestseller Norwegian Wood has sold more than 700000 copies worldwide, and his novel The Sixteen Trees of the Somme (reviewed here) was chosen for the Riverton Hall of Fame, and won the Norwegian Booksellers Award in 2017. The three volumes of the Sister Bells Trilogy have appeared at two year intervals since 2020, starting with The Bell in the Lake and followed by The Reindeer Hunters and The Night of the Scourge. He was kind enough to find time in his busy life to answer some questions on the trilogy.
HD: Thanks so much for doing this Lars. First of all, how much of the whole trilogy had you planned when you wrote the first novel? Given how many interconnections there are, I’m thinking quite a lot?
LM: I had a basic idea of the links from 1880 to 1945, of course also how the war would affect it, but generally the story grew as I wrote, and especially in vol 1 I kept getting ideas that I put down for the two next books. Some were useable and many were rejected. Also, I do not write the story in chronological order, I keep rewriting and jumping back and forth, and then the natural order has to expand and change. Sometimes when making vols 2 and 3 I got an idea and asked myself: Did I write something in the previous books that made this impossible – often I do discover that it was easier than I thought to make it look like it had been there all the time. In hindsight there are actually just two or three things that I would have liked to add in volume one, but they are not as important to others as to me, I think.
HD: I believe I read somewhere that the novel(s) were partly based on true events. If that’s the case, could you expand on it?
LM: Not the events, really, but the historical framework is painstakingly researched. I believe that the more realistically I describe the time period, the technical developments, the historical facts, the greater chance that I can tell the story in the shadow of these events.
HD: I noticed there’s a character with your name – Clara Mytting, who freezes to death in the church. I wondered if she was invented, or whether she could be part of your own family history?
LM: At the start it was just a joke, really, and a nod to all the autobiographical fiction from other Norwegian writers. It was inspired by a story my grandmother told me, but no-one died in that sermon. When I re-read it I felt that the whole setup became quite funny and rich, it has this strange meta-effect of the author, and at the same time not the author, appearing in the text.
HD: I imagine you must have done an enormous amount of research on the past history of Norway. Has this always been a fascination for you?
LM: To be honest, I like to do the research after I have written the main story, I somehow get a better eye for the most valuable details then, and it makes the story come first, not the obligation to quote all the people I bothered during the research.
HD: One thing I came to admire very much in the novels is the way you avoid spelling things out. I’m thinking of something like the brief mention in the first novel of the woman who gives birth to a stillborn child at the same time as Astrid is having the twins. When we meet Victor in the second novel we discover that he has been told an untrue story about his birth, but the connection is left up to the reader to deduce. And there are many other similar instances. Is this a technique that you have deliberately developed?
LM: Yes, the implicit – and the events happening in the shadows – is something I think is of high value, because it challenges and lets in more of the imagination of the reader. The books I like to re-read often have this in common – a high level of implicit meaning. That said, it is can also happen that you, as a writer, become a bit shy and do not bring to the surface certain things that should be told straight and clearly. I actually rewrote 2-3 parts of the Norwegian edition because I noted that many readers seem to move towards a pessimistic interpretation when the text is cryptic, while my intention actually was to lift the heroism and the joy. The English editions are the way I want them.
HD: There’s a good deal in all the novels about people deducing or somehow knowing things about the past. Astrid has a connection with her grandmother, and Kai seems to have a connection with the Hekne sisters as well as with the Pastor who protected their secrets. Am I right to make a link between these and Astrid’s questions to Kai about the persistence of the soul after death?
LM: Yes, I am absolutely happy to have the novels read that way. I like to think of them not as a linear story with a beginning and an end, but as a circle where the ending of book three connects to the beginning of book one.
HD: Finally, what’s next for Lars Mytting? Are you working on another novel?
LM: I made a revised edition of Norwegian Wood that will be out in the UK and the US this year, but I keep working on fiction. If I do not write fiction I become restless and undomesticated.
HD: I’m sure all your readers will, like me, be looking forward very much to whatever comes next.
Harriet has also reviewed The Bell in the Lake – read her review HERE.
Harriet is a co-founder and one of the editors of Shiny, and is now longing to visit Norway.
Lars Mytting, (Maclehose Press). BUY at Blackwell’s via our affiliate links below. (Free UK+ P&P)
