The memorial cross on the pine tree

The memorial cross on the pine tree commemorates a man from Oslo who was killed there by German fire in 1944. Franz put it up one winter night, making the tree a marker of wartime loss within the landscape where the timber work later takes place.

Memorial and Setting

The cross is attached to a pine tree and rooted in a specific death: its presence recalls the man killed at that spot. Its history reaches into the working landscape of the river, where the characters are clearing timber for transport toward Sweden.

Trond’s Rest Beneath the Cross

After helping move the logs, Trond grows tired and has to concentrate on each task; his knee hurts, and the strength he had hoped for does not come. When his father calls a break, most of the timber has been launched, though a few small trunks and another pile remain. Trond goes to the pine and lies in the heather beneath the cross, resting his head on one of its large roots. He falls asleep at once.

A Place Where Past and Present Meet

When Trond wakes, Jon’s mother is kneeling beside him, with a hand in his hair, and asks whether he is hungry. For an instant he imagines himself as the man commemorated by the cross, alive and looking up at her; the image then disappears. The cross thus holds together an actual wartime death and Trond’s brief, dreamlike confusion, while its roots offer him shelter during a moment of physical exhaustion.