April 2022 – The Reindeer Hunters by Lars Mytting – NORWAY, NORTHUMBERLAND, DRESDEN

11th April 2022

The  Reindeer Hunters by Lars Mytting, family saga set in Norway, Northumberland and Dresden. Translated by Deborah Dawkin.

So. Lars Mytting. Do you know his books? If not, then now is the chance to rectify the situation because he is a wonderful, master storyteller. And once you are convinced, then there are books waiting for your appreciation and you can find them all here Technically, this follows on from The Bell in the Lake (set in Butangen, Norway) but can be read as a stand alone.

Lars Mytting is one of my absolute favourite authors. I read his first novel, The Sixteen Trees of the Somme, in 2017 – and it became one of my books of the year. Then in 2020, the second novel The Bell In the Lake was one of my favourites of that year also.

The Bell in the Lake is the first of a trilogy set largely in Butangen, a small village in rural Norway. The Reindeer Hunters is the second book in that trilogy – and is every bit as good a read as the first. It picks up 22 years after The Bell in the Lake closes. One key character, Kai Schweigaard the pastor of Butangen, overlaps both books. Outside the new church in Butangen, he still cares for Astrid Hekne’s grave. The village’s overworked priest is tormented by his old betrayal, which led to death and to the separation of two powerful church bells cast in memory of two long gone sisters in Astrid’s family. Kai is set on finding an ancient tapestry made by the sisters – the Hekne Weave – in the hope that it will reveal how he can remedy his iniquities. Readers of The Bell in the Lake will remember that he had an unfulfilled love for Astrid who died when giving birth to twins fathered by the German engineer who dismantled the stave church in the village. He then transported it to Dresden to be rebuilt there. One of the twins, Jehans, is another major character in The Reindeer Hunters, He and his girl friend, then wife, grow as the story progresses. Much of the book, though, focuses on the relationship between Jehans and Victor, a young Englishman whom he encounters on a reindeer hunt in the mountains.

The Reindeer Hunters is set at a very interesting time as Europe heads towards the Great War and as rapid technological change is happening. Electricity and the telephone come to Butangen – changing the village way of life forever. Aeroplanes are invented. As much as anything else, The Reindeer Hunters is a story of how much a village can change in a very short time period. Of how the old Norse myths by which the villagers lived become increasingly irrelevant.

As was The Bell in the Lake, The Reindeer Hunters is excellently translated by Deborah Dawkin. She brings to English the brilliance of Mytting’s prose.

A book (and an author) that I would highly recommend.

Tony for the TripFiction team

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