Viggo Dürer—Per-Ola Silfverberg

Viggo Dürer and Per-Ola Silfverberg are associated as collaborators in the Home of Shadows: while Viggo shared leadership with Karl Lundström, Per-Ola worked with Viggo on practical matters and on the care of children drawn into the group. Annette Lundström’s account joins the language of sacred refuge to an organized adult structure in which children were treated as initiates and their supposed happiness as something the adults managed.

Their roles in the Home of Shadows

Annette describes the Home of Shadows not as a single building but as a presence among the faithful, associated with sacred ground in Jutland and forests in Polcirkeln. In that account, Karl and Viggo led the faithful; Per-Ola and Viggo handled practical arrangements. The distinction matters: the men appear not merely as believers in a shared idea, but as adults assigned complementary roles within its operation. Annette says that they made sure the children were happy and had everything they could have wanted, presenting provision and supervision as part of the group’s work.

Her account places Per-Ola alongside Viggo in the day-to-day organization, while reserving the stated leadership role for Karl and Viggo. It does not specify every task Per-Ola performed, or establish that his responsibilities were identical to Viggo’s. The relationship is therefore defined by both partnership and difference: they shared practical responsibility, but Annette names Viggo, not Per-Ola, among the leaders.

Children and the language of care

When Sofia asks about the children’s place in the group, Annette says that Linnea, Madeleine, and the adopted children were among the initiated. Her description makes the children central to the Home of Shadows’ identity, not incidental dependants. In the same account, the adults’ practical care and the children’s initiation sit side by side. The reassuring claim that the children had what they wanted does not erase the imbalance between adults who organized their lives and children assigned a spiritual status by those adults.

The scene also supplies a contrast with a child’s experience elsewhere in the evidence. A girl spending the summer with her foster parents, Per-Ola and Charlotte, has a secret box containing money taken from a pig farmer; she describes herself as confined while adults around her are free to come and go. She notices two fair-haired visitors who seem hesitant when evenings begin, yet return after leaving. That passage establishes an atmosphere in which children’s restrictions and adults’ freedom are sharply unequal, but it does not name the visitors as Viggo or establish that they are part of the Home of Shadows. It should not be treated as direct evidence of a specific act by Viggo and Per-Ola together.

Annette’s account and Sofia’s inquiry

Sofia approaches Annette while expecting the psychiatric clinic’s orderlies to arrive shortly. She recognizes that Annette’s talk of people who slander and imprison the faithful recalls what Karl had described as a sanctuary. Rather than accepting the claim at face value, Sofia asks what the Home of Shadows is and whether it is a physical place or a state of mind. Annette’s answer supplies locations, names, and roles: Jutland and Polcirkeln; Karl and Viggo as leaders; Per-Ola and Viggo handling practical matters.

Sofia suspects that Annette’s psychosis may contain truth and may be prompting a confession. That suspicion frames the account without making every detail independently verified. Sofia also adjusts her manner to keep Annette talking: she asks who led the faithful in a breezy tone, and Annette responds by naming the men and explaining their responsibilities. The relationship between Viggo and Per-Ola thus emerges through testimony elicited in a clinical encounter, where a claim of sanctuary becomes a possible record of how adults organized children’s lives.

Significance of the partnership

The account’s sharpest implication lies in the gap between benevolent language and unequal authority. Viggo and Per-Ola are said to have ensured the children’s happiness and provided for them, yet those same children are described as initiates within a system directed by adults. Care, in this arrangement, is not separate from control: it is the practical means through which the group’s order is maintained and represented as beneficial.

The evidence supports a defined but limited conclusion about the two men. Annette places Viggo and Per-Ola together in the practical administration of the Home of Shadows and identifies children, including adopted children, as participants in its initiation structure. She does not detail the men’s individual actions toward particular children in this exchange. The relation is significant because it connects a named leadership network to the everyday organization of children’s lives, while leaving the full extent of each man’s conduct unresolved.