A few fish as well have appeared on the rack where the P.O.W. uniforms hung in the winter. The three Skarsvåg brothers have put them there, and Ingrid can feel how this everyday sight has superimposed itself upon the old one without erasing it, this too is a clock, a passing of time, which points forwards, and might go her way.

The brothers come to the island at the beginning of March and are accommodated in the Swedes’ quay house. They have their own stove, eat all their meals in the main house and inherit their clothes from the male population that is no longer there. But even though they have grown up beside an even wilder sea than the one Ingrid and Barbro have access to, they are both carpenters and children and need time to familiarise themselves with boats and fishing gear and everything else that sets Barrøy apart from what they know. They have good sea legs, learn quickly and never feel the cold.

At the start Ingrid is with them to say where the nets should be, and the lines, which Barbro teaches them to mend and bait. And Arne, the one with the dead eye, knows how to squeeze the utmost out of his two younger brothers, telling them that if they can stick it out, one day he will take them back to Hammerfest.

Both Sverre and Helmer consider their home to be Skarsvåg, Hammerfest is only where their parents are buried.

Yes, but do they remember Skarsvåg at all?

Of course they do.

How well, though?

Arne refreshes their memories, of neighbours and relatives and steep, black mountains that are green at the bottom in the summer time. But he still thinks his words arouse insufficient interest, so he glances across at Ingrid, who says they can stay on Barrøy for as long as they like, now she is going to follow Margot’s advice and spend the rest of her money on a pile of planks that have lain behind the trading post for a number of years, pending an extension out towards the canning factory, an extension which will never come to anything, knowing the foreman. He has said no to her request twice, but Ingrid knows that one day he is going to say yes, and that this day is fast approaching – she will rebuild the houses in Karvika, convert the ruins into homes, banish the fear and superstition and finally write the letter to her cousin Lars in Lofoten asking him to return, the letter that should have been written so long ago that she has forgotten where her resistance came from, the type of forgetfulness that even an Eric Falc can appreciate, Ingrid is beginning to take risks, which is also one aspect of losing control.

~