The Bell in the Lake

This story was really intriguing and drew me in. The opening was very different - all about the history of the bells and how they came to be. It then leapt forwards in time to another era but this was fine - it meant that the reader really got to know the area and the reasons for the bells. I enjoyed the story and felt like it was very atmospheric - set in Norway there was plenty of description about the area which really set the scene.

I found it really interesting as it touches upon what legends are built on and made me think about our own local 'legends'.

It was very moving and beautifully written, the kind of book which you don't come across very often.

Apparently this is the first of a translated trilogy by Norwegian author, Lars Mytting, yet this marvellous historical novel already feels epic in scope, richly descriptive and so detailed when it comes to the Stave churches and their history. A young headstrong woman, Astrid Hekne, feels a deep inner urge to see and experience life and knowledge beyond her tiny remote village of Butangen as she turns down local suitors for her hand. In a Norwegian landscape of treacherous mountains, endless fjords and seething rivers, Astrid's fate plays out against her family history, her intimate connection with the past, and the local church with its mystical Sister Bells. The bells commemorated the long dead conjoined twins, Halfrid and Gunhild Heckne, donated to the local church by her family, steeped in folklore, myth and legend, the bells ring by themselves in times of danger. Astrid's family has declined economically, working their fingers to the bone on the farm, struggling to eat, but are still honoured by locals.

It is 188o, it is a bitterly cold and freezing winter as the bells herald the coming of dark times. The young pastor, Kai Schweigaard, has sold the stave church with its pagan decorative carvings to the Saxon royal family, where it will be resurrected in Dresden. Promising German architect student, Gerhard Schonauer, arrives, tasked with making detailed pictures of the church and organising the entire moving project. Astrid feels a connection develop between the outsider pastor, Kai, a man overwhelmed by his duties, exhausted by the numerous funerals that have to be conducted, frustrated by the old, dark, desperately cold church where the elderly Klara froze to death at the New Year Mass. Kai too is drawn to Astrid, but he is engaged to a more suitable woman, and he frets that Astrid will not fit into his social circles and the expectations of a pastor's wife, she does not even know how to make it appear that her good ideas come from the man! Astrid becomes closer to the new outsider, Gerhard, certain he loves her, drawing her along with pictures of their future together in the modern city of Dresden but harsh knocks in life are to befall him.

This is wonderfully moving historical fiction, of the history of stave churches, of a woman ahead of her time, willing to question whether she wants to be a wife at all, of the challenge of the ancient versus the modern, of the old religion and Christianity, of remote village life where women face rigid social and economic expectations and the promise and lure of modern advancements in Dresden. Kai's decision to sell the stave church and the sister bells to finance a new, warmer, more modern church has far more repercussions than he could have possibly foreseen. Too late, he begins to comprehend that it is a living, consecrated monument that has kept dark forces away from the people, a community that still believes in the old ways, the old gods, the folklore and legends of the region. This is a beautifully written novel, with exquisite characterisation, especially the feisty Astrid and her unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Mytting dropped me right into a 19th century Norway and made me feel as if I was living in that time, in that landscape and encountering all of his characters. He is an astonishingly good storyteller and I cannot recommend this highly enough. Many thanks to Quercus for an ARC.

A stranger comes to this place, to carry out a plan to renew and replace, except this is a community which has a great deal invested in the past of Nordic myth, and they are to replace the church. The stranger is a talented student architect who is also a foreigner, an outsider. The pastor too has come from outside the village, and they both find a magnetic draw to a young woman who is not shy of voicing her opinions.
This is a beautifully written tale of love and longing, of people who don’t quite fit where they have landed, and of progress, beauty and devotion in a setting of rural hardship and a cold frozen landscape.