Stavanger becomes the focus of a fast-moving search when Harry Hole and Kaja Solness travel there to locate someone who has stopped responding. The city’s role is defined less by a broad portrait of its streets than by the journey’s precise timetable, a house in Väland, and the discovery that turns the search into a new crime-scene encounter.

Chapter and Setting

Stavanger is named as the setting of Part III, Chapter 24. The narrative gives the location a practical urgency: Harry has a number associated with Stavanger, but repeated calls bring no answer. The city is thus first encountered as a destination that must be reached before the silence around the person they seek can be understood.

The chapter’s geography is specific but compressed. Harry and Kaja fly from Oslo to Sola, then continue by taxi to a white wooden house in Väland. As they arrive, Harry takes in the mild, damp air of Vestlandet and prepares himself for what he expects to find. Rather than pausing for a panoramic description, the scene makes the city legible through travel, weather, and the approach to a particular address.

The Search in Stavanger

Harry makes four unsuccessful attempts to reach the person at the Stavanger number. He tries again at Oslo Airport and once more after landing at Sola. During the journey from the terminal toward a taxi, Kaja reaches the person’s employer and learns that they have not appeared at work at the usual time. The lack of response now has a concrete consequence: the search moves from phone calls to a visit in person.

At 8:16 a.m., Harry and Kaja reach the house in Väland. They try the nameplate on the middle of three doorbells, then, after receiving no response, ring the lower one. An elderly woman opens the door. Kaja takes the lead, identifies them as police, and asks whether anyone is home in the unresponsive upstairs apartment. The exchange makes the house—not an abstract citywide search—the immediate center of the Stavanger sequence.

Discovery and Police Territory

The encounter at the house ends with the elderly woman identifying Elias Skog. Her distressed recognition changes the meaning of Harry and Kaja’s arrival: the unanswered calls and missed work have led them to a discovery rather than a routine interview. The narrative does not turn Stavanger into a complete crime-scene survey; it uses this intimate threshold, with a neighbor opening the door and naming the man, to bring the investigation into a new phase.

Stavanger also marks a jurisdictional boundary. A commissioner identified as Colbjornsen emphasizes that Harry is a detective from the Oslo police, and asks why Oslo police have come to Stavanger. Harry answers lightly, invoking the air and mountain scenery rather than explaining the investigation. Beneath the exchange lies the practical conflict over who has authority to act: the city is both the place where the search leads and the territory in which Harry’s presence must be accounted for. The following chapter is titled Territory, carrying that tension beyond the initial discovery.