The letter sent by his father from Elverum

The letter sent by his father from Elverum is the document that turns his father’s prolonged absence into a stated decision: he will not come home. It also offers Trond’s mother a practical means of claiming the money from their summer timber work, a promise that the family’s journey to Karlstad reveals to be worth far less than expected.

The letter and its message

Late in autumn, the letter arrived postmarked Elverum. The envelope bore Trond’s mother’s name and the family’s address on Nielsenbakken; inside, the notepaper was headed with all three family members’ names and their shared surname. The short message thanked them for the time they had spent together and recalled it with happiness, but said that circumstances had changed and the father would not be returning.

Alongside that announcement came an authorization for Trond’s mother to withdraw money from a bank in Karlstad, Sweden. The sum was due for the timber father and Trond had felled that summer and sent downriver. Father had already written to the bank, and the enclosed document allowed the mother to collect the funds if she travelled to Karlstad and proved her identity. The letter therefore carried both a personal severance and a practical arrangement for the household left behind.

Its careful inclusion of all three names contrasts with its emotional distance. The message ended without a special greeting to Trond, who had expected that their shared summer might have earned him one. The omission makes the letter’s form matter as much as its news: it recognizes the family collectively while leaving the son’s particular attachment unanswered.

The journey to Karlstad

The letter’s authorization set the next events in motion. Trond’s mother borrowed money from Uncle Amund, whose twin brother, Uncle Arne, had been shot by the Gestapo while trying to escape from a police station in 1943. She used the loan to buy tickets on the Stockholm train to Karlstad. Trond went with her while his sister stayed at home; his sister called the arrangement typical, though Trond considered the choice his mother’s, not his.

The trip followed a route Trond had studied: from Østbane Station along the Glomma to Kongsvinger, then south across the Swedish border through Charlottenberg and Arvika toward Karlstad, beside Lake Vänern. The journey took place under a low autumn sky and in strong wind, a marked contrast with the summer in which the timber had been cut and floated. In Karlstad, Trond waited outside the bank while his mother presented the authorization. He was cold and tense; she was inside for almost half an hour, carrying out a task made harder by her shyness about speaking Norwegian.

What the bank revealed

The bank did have an account and gave Trond’s mother the money in it. The total was only 150 Swedish kroner. She wondered whether that could really be the value of the timber, while Trond understood that the proceeds should have been about ten times greater. The amount exposed the gap between the promise in the letter and what the summer’s work had actually produced.

The loss had a material cause. Franz had been frank that the log-running operation was not being conducted as Trond’s father wanted and was a desperate undertaking; he had joined in because he was the father’s friend and knew how desperate he was. Father and Trond had freed one jam in the rapids before Trond had to go home, but that had not been enough. After the rainstorms, the river fell quickly toward its normal July level. The logs overturned and jammed in great tangles, lodged against stony banks, or sank in the shallows. Only a tenth reached the sawmill in time, accounting for the paltry payment.

Significance

The letter makes the father’s departure explicit, but does not explain it beyond saying that times had changed and nothing could be done. Its authorization lets the family act on the remaining practical consequence of the summer, while the 150-kroner payment shows how little that work yielded. The discrepancy is not simply a disappointing sum: it connects the failed timber venture to the father’s desperation, the unfinished work Trond shared with him, and the finality of a message that offers no promise of return.

For Trond, the letter also records a difference between collective recognition and personal acknowledgment. His mother is named on the envelope, all three family members appear inside, and the money is directed to her; yet no special greeting reaches the son who had expected one. The document closes a practical account only in part, while leaving the emotional meaning of the summer and his father’s absence unresolved.