No one had qualifications like he had. The skier who became a world famous author before he had reached the age of twenty, was to receive 5,000,000 kroner divided into five annual instalments for undertaking the task. He pretended to hesitate, but had made up his mind as soon as he realized what they meant by 5,000,000. The money was for him. As remuneration. A fee, no less, 1,000,000 per year and all expenses paid. The payments arrived on the twelfth of every month.

The original deadline had expired last summer.

The picture editor had completed his work. The dust cover was clinched: the skier from the rock carvings at Tro, evidence of the sport’s Norwegian origins from approximately 5,000 years ago. The motif had been used before, both as the starting point for the icons of the Lillehammer Winter Olympics and on a postage stamp issued during the Skiing World Championships in Oslo in 1966.

Embossing and foil. Clothbound spine and corners. Silver edges in the same tones as the spot gloss on the rock carvings. To top off the exclusivity, ribbon bookmarks in silver. With tassels.

No expense had been spared. Everything was ready.

Apart from the text.

When the manuscript should have been delivered, Sølve had simply extended the deadline by sending chapter headings and a table of contents, together with three disconnected extracts. The structure was plausible, the texts well written. As the new deadline approached in October, Sølve Bang was let in on a business decision so secret he could hardly sleep that night at the thought that he had been entrusted with such a secret. Statoil was to change its name. Neither the state nor oil was any longer considered particularly representative of the colossal company. A bit too 1970, it had been decided. Reactionary. On the other hand, Equinor pointed crystal-clear towards something greater and better, a name that, according to the firm’s senior management, both said something about where the oil giant came from and where it was headed.

OK, Sølve had thought, rather at a loss since the new name mainly aroused associations with horses, but the change of name involved a glorious postponement of his personal contribution. The book would now be launched two days before the Winter Olympic Games, on 7 February 2018. The same day as public disclosure of the company’s new name.

The absolutely final deadline for delivery of the manuscript was fixed for Christmas Eve. The unusually short time span between submission and publication, especially for a deluxe edition of this type, would make it a close call, but it would work.

If only he could meet the very last, and very final, deadline.

The book was estimated at around 600,000 characters. In an ordinary novel, without illustrations, this would be the equivalent of 400 pages. Since Cross-Country Skiing in Norway – Historic Tracks into the Future would be published in large format, but also be fully illustrated, it was reckoned that the final result would be around 500 pages in length.