The End of the Ocean
Dedication
To Jesper, Jens, and Linus
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One: Signe
Chapter Two: David
Chapter Three: Signe
Chapter Four: David
Chapter Five: Signe
Chapter Six: David
Chapter Seven: Signe
Chapter Eight: David
Chapter Nine: Signe
Chapter Ten: David
Chapter Eleven: Signe
Chapter Twelve: David
Chapter Thirteen: Signe
Chapter Fourteen: David
Chapter Fifteen: Signe
Chapter Sixteen: David
Chapter Seventeen: Signe
Chapter Eighteen: David
Chapter Nineteen: Signe
Chapter Twenty: David
Chapter Twenty-One: Signe
Chapter Twenty-Two: David
Chapter Twenty-Three: Signe
Chapter Twenty-Four: David
Chapter Twenty-Five: Signe
Chapter Twenty-Six: David
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Signe
Chapter Twenty-Eight: David
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Signe
Chapter Thirty: David
Chapter Thirty-One: Signe
Chapter Thirty-Two: David
Chapter Thirty-Three: Signe
Chapter Thirty-Four: David
Chapter Thirty-Five: Signe
Chapter Thirty-Six: David
Acknowledgments
Translator’s Note
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
Signe
Ringfjorden, Sogn og Fjordane, Norway, 2017
Nothing stopped the water. You could follow it from the mountain to the fjord, from the snow that fell from the clouds and settled on the peaks to the mist that rose above the ocean and again became clouds.
The glacier grew every single winter. And every summer it melted, releasing drops, drops that became streams, which found their way down, driven by gravity, and the streams accumulated, becoming waterfalls, rivers.
We were two villages that shared a mountain and a glacier. We had them for as long as we could remember. One side of the mountain was a vertical wall, where the Sister Falls descended. They crashed straight down for 711 meters toward Lake Eide, a deep green body of water after which the village was named, Eidesdalen, and which provided fertile growing conditions there for animals and human beings.
Eidesdalen, Magnus’s village.
They couldn’t see the fjord in Eidesdalen; they weren’t accustomed to having the taste of salt on their lips. The salt was not carried by the wind and they could not smell the ocean. But they had their water, the water without taste, the water that made everything grow—and later Magnus said that he had never missed the ocean.
On the other side of the mountain it was milder, less harsh. Here the water accumulated in the River Breio, the salmon’s river, the water ouzels’ river, the freshwater mussels’ river. It forced its way through a crevasse in the landscape, forming this chasm with millions of drops every second, in waterfalls, in streams, and in calm, smooth stretches. When the sun shone, it became a luminous ribbon.
The River Breio continued all the way to Ringfjorden, and there, in the village at sea level, the river met with salt water. There the water from the glacier became one with the ocean.
Ringfjorden, my village.
And then they were together, the water from the glacier and the water from the ocean, until the sun absorbed the drops once more, drew them up into the air as mist, to the clouds, where they escaped the force of gravity.