Lars and his mother

Lars and his mother are connected in the novel through a brief but consequential account of family silence and permanent separation. When Jon returned to claim the farm, Lars remembered that his mother neither objected nor spoke up for him; years later, Lars said he had left home on his twentieth birthday and had not seen her since. He did not know whether she was alive, and had never tried to find out.

The farm and the moment of silence

Lars describes the family’s circumstances before Jon’s return as leaving him with a settled expectation of succession. Jon was away at sea, Odd was dead, and their father had fallen ill after breaking his leg and injuring his shoulder. He was taken to the hospital at Innbygda in 1948 and never came back. Lars had worked on the farm every day of his life and had never gone away on holiday; farming was the only work he knew.

When Jon came home, he announced that he was ready to take over the farm and claimed it as his right. Lars’s account places his mother’s silence at the center of that confrontation: she made no objection and did not intervene or speak in Lars’s favor. He remembered, in particular, that she did not look directly at him. The account establishes what she did not do, but gives no explanation for her silence or access to her thoughts. Its force lies in the contrast between Lars’s years of labor and the absence of support he recalls when Jon asserted his claim.

Departure and severed contact

Lars recounts the farm’s transfer before disclosing what followed in his own life. Asked what he did, he says that he left on the day of his twentieth birthday. He had not been home since—not even for five minutes. The sequence links the account of losing his place on the farm to his departure, though Lars does not explicitly state that the farm dispute was the sole reason he left.

His separation from his mother is described in equally stark terms. Lars says he has not seen her since he was twenty. When Trond asks whether she is still alive, Lars answers that he does not know and has never tried to find out. The estrangement is therefore not only a long absence of contact: it includes a deliberate refusal, or at least a sustained failure, to seek even the most basic news of her. The account does not say whether his mother tried to contact him or what became of her.

The account’s present-day telling

Lars reveals these facts while visiting Trond’s home. After helping to light the fire and sharing a meal, he explains that Jon returned from the sea and claimed the farm; when Trond asks what happened next, Lars makes a grotesque, tightly controlled grimace before saying that he left. His face briefly turns the disclosure into a physical performance, but the words that follow are plain: he left on his birthday and never went back. He then adds that he has not seen his mother since.

Trond responds with surprise and asks whether she is alive. Lars’s answer leaves the relationship suspended in uncertainty rather than resolving it through reunion, reconciliation, or confirmed bereavement. The mother remains present in the story chiefly through Lars’s memory of her averted gaze and the silence that followed, while his own account confirms that he has maintained the distance without learning what became of her.