For Aurora Borealis – the northern lights – are never still. They swirl across the sky in ribbons and flashes, in arcs and loops, they curl up and meander, recede, fade almost to nothing, and then flare into life again, trembling.
You never can tell with the Aurora Borealis, the flaring lights that have taken their name from the Roman goddess of dawn – Aurora – and the Greek word for the north wind – Borealis. When the sun goes into hiding in winter, it sometimes flings particles toward the earth that collide with gases, creating flickers that can be observed near the pole. The flickers can shine quietly and scarcely move, and then suddenly there is a lightning flash, and once again they explode into chains and spirals.
You never can tell with people, either. They can lie there under their duvets, weighed down by melancholy, and suddenly flare into glimmering life.
They dress up and go out. And sparkle like any other natural phenomenon.
It was one of those nights, the evening of St Lucia’s day, in Lavangen in 1980.
The young people were wiggling and twisting on the dance floor. They wore tight trousers, some with flares. The girls were in tight tops with puffed sleeves. The boys wore shirts. The dance band on stage was playing cover versions of Smokie, Elton John and Boney M. They were from the villages scattered round the arms of the fjord that extended into the interior of the northern county of Troms. It was the annual pre-Christmas party, it was hope and expectation, it was getting drunk and messing about.
Tone came in. She was a rosy-cheeked beauty of fifteen. Right after her came Gunnar. He was a tearaway of eighteen.
Out of my league, they both thought when they saw each other in the dim lighting that night.
Tone had flicked her fringe out and over with curling tongs, just like the blonde one in Charlie’s Angels. Gunnar had a mullet hairstyle: short at the sides, long and slightly wavy at the back. She still had a bit of puppy fat, he was thin and wiry.
They lived on the shores of different fjords, she in Lavangen, he in Salangen. Tone had seen him once before. She had to go to Salangen for her dental check-ups, because there was no dentist in her village. After her appointment she generally popped into the baker’s, another amenity they did not have where she lived. There she was, standing in the window in the low, white wooden building on the sloping street down to the fjord, buying pastries. Three boys were walking past the shop. The one in the middle shone so brightly between the other two.
That’s the best-looking boy I’ve seen in my whole life, she thought.
And here he was now. The boy from the baker’s. Standing in front of her. And the band on stage was playing the Bellamy Brothers.
Of course she said yes.
A girl approached Tone on the dance floor.
‘You friend’s in the queue outside, but she hasn’t got enough money to get in.’ Tone gave a start. ‘She asked me to come and get you, so she could borrow some money.’
‘Hmm,’ mumbled Tone, but she did not go out, then or later. Just imagine if her friend were to steal the boy who was holding her round the waist right this minute.
No, now she wanted to dance.
They met as often as they could. They went to and fro by bus, or got friends to drive them. An hour each way. Once Gunnar passed his test it was easier, he would borrow his father’s car and race over to see Tone, floating home later. They celebrated the return of the sun as winter drew to a close. In April, Gunnar was sent to do his military service much further south, in Jørstadsmoen outside Lillehammer. Tone wrote long love letters. Gunnar tried his hand at poetry. He usually crumpled his attempts into a ball and threw them away, but every now and then he would send one.
A place, one night in December, two lovers stand close together, and they will always remember, they want each other for ever, ran the words on the pale blue sheet of paper.
The love of their life was what they found, in each other’s arms that day, and they wanted it always to be around, never change or fade away.
We’re the boy and girl in my poem you see, and I’m so sad when you’re not near, it’s the emptiest time of all for me, so comfort me and write to me.
Tone started at a boarding high school in Harstad, a couple of hours’ drive from Lavangen.
Yesterday I just stayed in my room crying all day. A friend from my class came in and asked what was the matter. I couldn’t talk, just showed her your picture. Then she understood, Tone wrote, and went on: You bet I was relieved to get my period on Sunday.
At the appointed time she would sit ready on the steps by the telephone box, guarding it, afraid someone would come along and want to use it just then, just as he picked up the phone at the camp two thousand kilometres away and dialled the number. The rings came once a week, at the exact same time.
Once Gunnar had completed his military service he started at the teacher training college in Tromsø. Gunnar, nineteen, almost twenty, was specialising in the new subject of Computing and Information Technology. He also took some PE teaching options, in case computers did not turn out to be the future.
Tone, now seventeen and in her last year of secondary school, moved in with him. They rented a tiny place of their own. Finally they could be together all the time.
‘Like winning the pools,’ was how Gunnar described meeting Tone. ‘Sheer luck.’
There was nothing better than her.
The happiness almost hurt.
In the dark season they hid under the duvet. They only glanced up to look when the northern lights were dancing.
As teenagers they were already dreaming of the children they would have.
Changes in the Country
The old Prime Minister was worn down by recurring migraines. The doctor had ordered him to take sick leave, to rest and get his strength back, but the modest man did not feel he could. The son of a working-class family with a strong work ethic, he was not comfortable taking time off. But he did drop hints to those closest to him about the illness that sometimes paralysed him.
Beginning in the mid-1970s, Norway’s oil income had grown vigorously, and the ailing man born in the woods by the railway lines was the first Prime Minister to make serious use of the new money. Over a long career in politics, Odvar Nordli had helped expand Norway’s generous welfare provisions and public health system. During his time as Prime Minister, from 1976 to 1981, the trade union movement consolidated its power, and people gained more time off and more money to spend during it. Under Nordli, all workers were given the right to full pay from the first day they went off sick.
The global economy, meanwhile, experienced a sharp downturn. Norway tackled the recession of the mid-1970s with a policy of its own, freezing wages and prices to keep unemployment down. Nordli was to be the last Norwegian Prime Minister with an unshakeable faith in strong state control of the economy and in the political regulation of interest rates, the property market and the financial sector. But the wind from the right in the USA and Britain was now reaching Norway. The railway worker’s son was to be one of its first victims.
Norway’s Labour Party – Arbeiderpartiet – had been running the country virtually without a break since 1935. The political mood swing in the country coincided with escalating intrigues in the party leadership. The whispering in corners became a buzz, and dissatisfaction within the party refused to be quelled.