Hoping to find an envelope with my name on it, I go to the shelf of photographs above the stove and lift a frame. My face from two years ago beams out at me. I recognise the long blonde hair, skinny arms and freckles, but it’s like looking at a stranger – and not just because of the matching pair of eyes. In the picture I’m wearing a white bikini and shading my face from the sun: a tanned and happy fifteen-year-old on holiday, without a care in the world. I check behind the frame – no hidden letter – then put the past back where it belongs.

Next to my picture is a photo of Mormor, laughing at something off-camera. She looks flushed, as if she’s been dancing. Her long blonde hair hangs in plaits and she’s wearing her bunad, a traditional Norwegian costume, embroidered with flowers. I lift the frame and run my finger across her face. You can tell from her cheekbones that she must have been stunning in her youth. Even in her seventies she radiated beauty and warmth.

As I put the picture back, three old photos drop out. Black and white, each one shows a different woman, all with long blonde hair. One is posed stiffly at a spinning wheel, scowling. Her wavy hair is parted in the centre, there are dark circles under her eyes and her childlike mouth is pursed. Despite the scowl, you can see the family resemblance to Mormor. Another shows a tiny old woman wearing a cloak of dark feathers. She sits in the branches of a tree, her eyes as black and shiny as a bird’s. In the third, a woman hunches over a steaming cauldron, bundles of wool on the ground.

I’m sure I’ve seen these women before, and then I realise. The photos show the women from Mormor’s tales: my great-grandmother Karina who muttered spells at the spinning wheel, Gerd who stitched a cloak of feathers so that she could fly, and vain Trine with her cauldron of dyed wool. But they were just fairy tales. They can’t be true.

Mormor would never tell me what the women in my family had really been like. When I asked, she would laugh and say I already knew their stories. Once I asked her about her life as a child. I could sense her excitement as she described how her mother, my great-grandmother Karina, had taught her to stitch as soon as she was old enough to hold a needle. Mormor handed me a half-done embroidery and several lengths of thread, but then Mum came in and the air turned to ice.

I examine the painting above the stove. There are so many shades of light and dark in the sky, Mum has captured the bay perfectly. She hasn’t painted anything for so long, I’d forgotten how talented she is.