From behind closed eyelids Ingrid says he is a good boy, but tells him to leave because she wants to get up and she is naked. His face can’t get any redder and he stays put. Ingrid gets out of bed, slowly dresses and goes down to the cowshed with Sverre at her heels, unlike his brothers he is talkative and full of energy and cheerful, as if born to shine on both his elder and younger brother, and interpret for them, in some greater scheme; he doesn’t resemble them in appearance, either, his hair is blond while theirs is dark.

Ingrid inspects the lambs and discusses the sheep’s teats and milk with Barbro, then walks to the south of the island with her ears ringing beneath a sun which has no warmth, and here she sees that there are nests in the three Nelvy eider houses, as in all the others, this is going to be a bountiful spring.

She walks back and asks Barbro if they have ever had nests in all the houses. Barbro can’t remember and makes no attempt to try; Ingrid says at any rate she can’t.

Ingrid is eating a little more than she did before and tells Sverre not to go fishing with his brothers and to row her to Stangholmen. Arne says they haven’t been out for over a week. Ingrid says it is high time they got cracking then. Sverre’s face lights up. However, Ingrid doesn’t sit next to him on the thwart, but in the stern with her hands on her belly and she still has a ringing in her ears and is blind to the sunshine and the smooth, glittering sea which they have waited for so long that they have forgotten what they are like.

She asks if Sverre wants to go back to Finnmark, too?

He is twelve years old and he says yes.

On Stangholmen she buys Thomas and Inga’s two remaining sheep, as well as the four lambs they have just given birth to, together with two rolls of wire for the racks and their plough, which is almost new. She tells them they should spend all their money at once. Thomas says he knows, he has seen the scale of Margot’s stockroom too; his son, Atle, will soon be coming to fetch them, so they can spend the rest of their lives somewhere on the mainland Ingrid has never heard of, so it is good that he has the opportunity to shake her hand before they leave.

Ingrid shakes Inga’s hand, too.