Ljan

Ljan is a railway-side point of passage in the narrator’s life: a place where family history converges with the journeys between home, Oslo, and Sweden. Its station stands beside the fjord below the family’s home, and its slopes and platforms recur in memories of both reunion and departure.

Setting and Routes

Ljan lies within a landscape of steep roads, hills, and the fjord. Nielsenbakken rises from Ljan Station toward the family home; the narrator later cycles down it, past the station, and onward toward central Oslo. The same place is also the starting point for a local train journey, linking the neighbourhood to the wider railway network.

A Return After the War

In late June 1945, the narrator and his sister watched from an upstairs window as their father slowly climbed Nielsenbakken on his way home from Sweden. He had been away for eight months, and the family had heard nothing from him until two days before his return. Wearing a worn grey suit and carrying a grey sack, he came up from Ljan Station without an apparent limp or visible wound. His wife ran down the road to meet him; the children followed, but the narrator hung back by the letter box. There, his father met his gaze and answered his slight nod with a faint smile. The encounter made Ljan’s road the setting for a private understanding between father and son, set apart from the family’s open display of relief.

Departure and Recollection

Later, the narrator rides his father’s bicycle down Nielsenbakken, past Ljan Station, and toward Oslo. The bicycle gives him a freedom and range he values; his journey continues to Østbane Station, where he waits for trains arriving by way of Elverum. Ljan therefore belongs to a repeated route rather than a single remembered scene: it marks the passage from the home landscape toward the city and the railway journeys he watches for.

On another trip, the narrator and his mother take the local train from Ljan to travel to Karlstad. The platform is exposed to a violent wind beneath a low grey sky, and the narrator watches a woman’s hat blow above the railway line while nearby pine trees bend in the gusts. Sitting opposite his mother on the train, he looks out toward the Glomma and falls asleep. This departure makes Ljan a threshold between the familiar fjord-side home and a journey into Sweden, while the recollection of the train ride also turns the river and the route into part of the narrator’s inner landscape.