Blades

April, 1939

There had never been a winter like this, not in anyone’s memory. It had started early last year, snow already thick in November, and still on the ground in April. Normally, Bergen only had a few days, maybe some weeks of snow; the rain washed everything away. This year, it wouldn’t leave, like a disease, piled up by the sides of roads, frozen over footpaths. Occasionally, it melted, then refroze, with cars slipping all over the road. Salt was scarce, and couldn’t be wasted on the highways. She had refused to be driven in these conditions, but her paints had run low, and without them she couldn’t complete her work. She longed for better weather.

Last year, April had been flowers, birds chirping, saplings growing. They had driven out to Lindås, to work on her rose garden, a gift she shared with her fiancée, Carl Johan. They would grow tall, curved buds exploding in colour, perfect pinks and radiant reds, luxuriant in the sunshine. They had also planted cherry trees, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, even a plum tree. All that was dead now, trees immodestly bare. The roses wouldn’t survive this winter. It wasn’t meant to be this cold.

Although knowing what she would see, she joined her fiancée on his trip out there. Preparations were underway to build a new cabin, and this extended winter was a considerable hitch in their plans. Construction should have been well on its way by now. Lafting was complex work. The logs needed to be levelled, and then fitted into one another, in perfect slots. No other construction was as strong, or as refined. But with this snow, they couldn’t even lay the foundations, let alone start building. Still, there was always other work to be done on the property.

The drive out was awful, and took twice as long as normal. The rain drove down in sheets, obscuring everything. They chose to stay in the car for the ferry ride between the peninsula, and the islands where Lindås was nestled, tucked into the fjord. Very few cars were making the trip across, most people choosing to stay indoors in this awful weather. In the protected harbour, which didn’t freeze over winter, the ferry ran less often during low season, but kept a regular schedule. All this would come to change.

When they arrived, they saw that much of the snow had melted, ice crunching under their feet as they walked down the hill. They had left the car by the road, not wanting to risk it getting stuck driving back up the steep property, which fronted the fjord. She examined the garden, or where it had once lay, on the border between the two properties. Her roses were dead, having suffered an awful winter, but the tree saplings were taller now, and perhaps, even perhaps, some small buds were coming to life. The illusion of spring! Soon forgotten. She walked to the water’s edge. Blistering cold winds whipped loose snow over the fjord, still frozen solid. When the sun came out, the ice in the fjord would move, cracking in eerie, high pitched echoes, bouncing off the hills and the islands. Lindås was both spooky and serene, and later she hoped, far enough from the city to be forgotten.

October, 1939

Summer came and went, a few weeks of warmth bound with rain, shelved into a year of crawling cold. Their local buekorps barely had any days to practise, marching the streets, plodding through the persistent downpours, raindrops flying from drumsticks as each beat slammed water into the air.

When they could get the radio to work, it only crackled with bad news. Strange happenings in Europe, and beyond. The rumours of war had become reality, nations invaded, sides taken. Norway was, naturally, neutral, a shipping country with much to gain from supplying both sides. A cynical view, perhaps. Still, in the scheme of things, the nation of three million was nothing in the numbers that other nations fought, murdered, shipped off to war; utterly trivial. Which lent an air of safety, even. Surely they’d stay forgotten. Surely the Third Reich wouldn’t come.

April, 1940

Silence. The radio was on, and nothing. Carl Johan fiddled with the knobs, changing stations, but no one was broadcasting anything. NRK, the national broadcaster, was ominously quiet. Had the day come?

They left the radio on, hoping for some change, continuing with the evening’s work. Fear was all well and good, but there are clothes to be folded, maps to be sorted, shipments to be quantified, and she preferred to continue with the illusion of normalcy, even if feeling very unsettled. They were startled when a voice reached out. “Oslo, Vidkun Quisling, Den norske regjerings nye sjef, en erklæring til norske folk.” That can’t be right. Johan Nygaardsvold is prime minister. Vidkun Quisling is but some alternate party member. “Norske kvinner og norske menn. Jeg skal gjenta den erklaring som jeg leste klokka halv åtte.” Norwegian women and Norwegian men. I will repeat a message I read at half past seven? There was no broadcast at half past seven. She exchanges a frown with Carl Johan, discarding her work. “Proklamasjon til det norske folk. Etter at England hadde brutt norske neutralitet…” England destroyed Norway’s neutrality? He went on to say that the English have mined some areas of Norwegian territorial waters with no opposition of the government of Nygaardsvold. “Why…?” she started to say, but was hushed by her fiancee, now hovering over the radio.

Vidkun Quisling claimed that the German government would back Norwegian sovereignty, life, and property, but that the former government hadn’t given a proper response to this offer. He continued to criticise the government for giving the Norwegian military an order to oppose the German military forces. He then announced that the previous government has fled after jeopardising the country’s faith. “It is the right and the duty of my party, Nasjonal Samling, to take over.” Vidkun declared himself leader of the government, as well as foreign minister. He announced all the new ministers in the government, as they listened in a daze. They could hear an echo along the street, it sounded like everyone with a radio in Bergen was tuning in to this horror. He then ordered the military to only follow the lead of this new government. To defy this order meant ultimate personal responsibility. Apart from that, all countrymen will be treated justly and fairly. Her jaw wouldn’t close. Her chest was tight. So the day had come. It was time to flee.

The next day, the roads were chaos. Everyone was out, telling everyone what they’d heard, although they’d all heard the same thing. Some loudly announced their support for Vidkun Quisling, saying it was about time Norway took the right side, but they were decidedly in the minority. Most muttered to one another, in shock, and with that Norwegian patience, made impervious by long winters, and unreliable summers. Norway was a shipping country, some reasoned. There would be use to us yet, and anyway, we are too small to be important. Just three million people. She wanted to believe them.

They drove out to Lindås the next day. This winter hadn’t been as bad, and the snow was gone. Time to build. In these uncertain times, there were labourers eager for work, and Carl Johan naturally needed only a few, he would do the bulk of the lafting. She wanted to start clearing the garden, starting afresh. New roses, new trees, trimming the old.

September, 1940

The building of the cabin took longer than expected, months drawn out, as supplies came and went, unpredictable from day to next. Finally, it was finished. “Our refuge.” He told her, and smiled. The sun had burnt the lines into his face, and he looked much older, like he’d aged years in that summer. She knew her reflection was the same, lines etching and deepening. The stress of the puppet government, of livelihoods threatened, of towing some line as rumours of shelling from the Allied forces bounced from household to household. She was ambivalent about leaving Bergen. But the quiet of the fjord drew her in, peace and silence, lapping waves against the rocks. Not like the chaos of downtown. Eventually, she agreed to move.

January, 1941

New Year’s Eve had been a muted affair. Hard to celebrate the year ahead, when what loomed was so foreign, so uncertain. The German occupation was mild, life seemed like normal. From her friends living up in the mountains, in Sogn, she had received word that the German soldiers had closed the local school, using the building as a holiday house, happily drinking and dancing until late. Their festivities would echo through the mountains, keeping the locals wide awake, unwelcome guests who might never leave. Most people she knew seemed safe, but there was an undercurrent there. Torrid, dark, untold violence, fear. Norwegians seemed muted. They even wore dull colours, as if the Germans would react to clothing, like snorting bulls drawn to a matador. Everything seemed unpredictable. They were back at Lindås now, although he frequented the city, Carl Johan still had business dealings, even in this climate of uncertainty. She had deemed to stay behind, and so was alone at the cabin, when it happened. When she saw them. Images burned into her mind, images that would never leave.

The fjord was frozen, again, twice in two years, a very unusual event. Some people speculated acts of god, or other, but she thought the weather was fitting. Who needs sunshine? At first, it was just a moving dot on the horizon. She happened to glance up out the window, when she saw it. The mind captures motion, and her eyes fixed on the point, struggling to focus. She had been painting red petals on a vase, her latest project, and her vision was slow to focus so far. More dots came. Something was on the ice.

She froze. She knew her cabin would be visible, eventually, from whatever was coming. Was it animals? But no animals had ever crossed here. The deer abounded in the forest, of course, but never made it to the many islands. It’s not as if they liked to swim. More of it was coming. More of…them? The mass was growing, and moving towards her, but past the rocks jutting out of the sea, between her and the first island, still over five hundred meters away. It couldn’t be a boat, why crack through this ice? There was nothing here. Fishing season was over. Then the sound started to reach her. She had never dared to test the ice, as it seldom froze, but here was a mass, braver than she’d ever seen. She didn’t want to draw attention, but desperately wanted to know more. She fumbled for the binoculars that Carl Johan so loved for spotting fowl. She drew them to her eyes, and focused. As they came closer, she saw the olive green, the black of heavy coats, but it was the helmets that made her stop. She knew those. She knew who they were. They weren’t one of her own. The Germans had come, to Lindås, to her refuge. The Germans had come on ice skates.