God’s love for those on the coast is not as great as for those on the mainland and in the towns; for protracted periods He forgets them completely, and they forget Him; they might recite a short prayer before eating and heave a sigh over coffee, but when for once He is in a generous mood, they are in no doubt as to where they should direct their thanks. Not that Ingrid folds her hands and raises her eyes to heaven, but now at last she knows, like a cascade of light in total darkness, that if there has been no meaning to anything in the terrible year she has been through, some meaning has now emerged, a flash of hope from a crystalline sky, and she doesn’t let the child out of her sight, doesn’t miss a single sound or movement, whether Ingrid is asleep or awake, no matter what the time of day the light shines equally brightly in every nook and cranny, despite autumn being well on the way.

Barbro wants to know what she was doing in the færing when the baby was due. Ingrid does, too. Barbro shows her how to breastfeed and tie a nappy so that it is more comfortable for the baby than when Ingrid does it. Ingrid leaves it to her, and Jadviga nods her approval. Barbro is magnificent. She has also started to sing every day now, at Jadviga’s request, because of the child and the grass that will grow in the five black-soil gardens in the years to come, because of the son who will soon be returning home, but it also has something to do with Ingrid no longer being half of herself, and it doesn’t matter that the child cries, especially at night, it is the roar of the morrow that jars in their ears.

~

Daniel is paid, he divides the sum between himself and the others according to a formula that gives him considerably more than them, and leaves with the horses and the tools on the new cargo boat, which Ingrid spent her last eider-down money hiring. Both the man leaving and those who remain wave, and their sorrow cannot prevent a temporary peace falling over the island, a peace which is now only disturbed by the continuing homesickness of the Finnmark lads, or at least Arne, a few passing showers and an eagle landing on a rock near the sheep.

So it is time to sort matters out.

They take the key – Ingrid with the baby strapped to her body with one of her mother’s thick, flowery shawls, Barbro in her church dress, which she dons even on the most ordinary of days. They open the Lofoten boat shed and drag the three chests into the daylight and view them with critical eyes, they are so old and battered that what once must have been paint on them is now a trail of dust.