TUESDAY 12 DECEMBER 2017

THE CEREMONY

Haakon Holm-Vegge would certainly not be forgotten any time soon. A viewing yesterday, and today a ceremony with the lighting of candles and laying of floral wreaths beside the ditch where he had lost his life.

It was bitterly cold.

The previous evening had brought freezing rain, with a sudden drop in temperature after midnight. In the morning, Maridalsveien wound its way like a glassy, dark canal from the city up the hillside to the accident site. At the last moment someone had organized a bus equipped with tyre chains. Everyone who wanted to be included in the event was ferried from the large car park just beside Skjerven Farm. Most of them had driven there in their own cars, two of which had already come to grief on the ice at Brekke. Selma had travelled from Grünerløkka, with studded shoes on her feet and elegant boots in her bag, and she could swear that the three roses she carried would be crushed to dust at the slightest touch. The frost had already tinged the tips of the petals icing-sugar-white.

She was nearly 16,000 kroner richer than yesterday evening and felt light-hearted. Despite her lack of sleep.

There were so many people that the bus had to make two journeys. Selma arrived with the first load and unfortunately had to sit beside Sølve Bang. He was unusually quiet, which suited both Selma and the occasion. She had tried to avoid the crowd waiting at Skjerven by standing at the roadside, engrossed in her mobile phone. Her fingers grew numb, and once on board the bus she regretted having worn chic gloves instead of warm mittens.

When the second bus had emptied, she thought there must be more than a hundred people present.

Selma recognized some of Vanja and Kristina’s friends from the previous day. There were also many skiers here, and as far as she could see, significant numbers of staff from the Cross-Country Skiing Federation. Arnulf Selhus, the Finance Director, looked as if it was his own son who had died. Tears flowed in silent weeping, and he was pale as a corpse. Stian Bach, the national team doctor who had almost cost Hedda Bruun a conviction for doping, looked livelier, in an inappropriate red anorak and clumpy boots. Selma also recognized Knut Nilssen. He was the oldest and best of the national team’s physiotherapists, a taciturn loner with a taste for Eastern philosophy. He stood on the outside edge of the large group, diffident and unassuming, in company with a couple of younger colleagues who just seemed ill at ease. Bottolf Odda was also in attendance, with his burly figure and ever-prominent chin. He looked better than he had on Monday, Selma thought, and in contrast with the physiotherapists, he was making a great display of his own presence. Elise, a slight figure in floods of tears, stood with her parents and parents-in-law in the centre of the huge semicircle of people now blocking Oslo’s longest road. Vanja had her arm around her daughter-in-law, while William had apparently been safely deposited elsewhere for the occasion.