Karsten Sundelin

Karsten Sundelin is Lily’s husband and Margrete’s father, a man whose confidence in the life he has built is shattered when an intruder attacks his baby. He responds first as a protector, then as someone increasingly unable to contain his rage or repair his family. The attack leaves him measuring himself against a duty he believes he failed, while fear and resentment change the household around him.

Identity and Domestic Life

Before the attack, Karsten appears within a domestic scene Lily has carefully prepared for his return. She has made quiche, set the table with old china, opened white napkins in the glasses, and switched on the lights; Karsten arrives in a red Honda SUV carrying newspapers and envelopes. He looks through the oven glass and tells her the food looks delicious. The scene gives their marriage an ordinary, considered surface: Lily hopes he will recognize her efforts, while Karsten’s arrival is part of the evening’s familiar routine.

That domestic order is important to the life Karsten later feels has been broken. The danger comes not from within the expected rhythms of the home but from outside: someone emerges from the forest and reaches Margrete’s pram while Lily is elsewhere. The suddenness of the attack turns a place associated with family care into a source of lasting unease.

The Attack and the Protector’s Anger

When Lily discovers Margrete covered in blood, she collapses in terror. Karsten runs around the house, sees Lily on the ground and the blood on the baby, then reaches the pram in a few strides and lifts Margrete against his chest. He orders Lily to get the car. When she cannot immediately act, he shouts again, and his roar finally drives her to the garage and back into the house for the keys. He gets into the car holding Margrete and examines her beneath her clothes. In the crisis, his urgency is practical and physical: he takes the child into his arms, presses Lily to move, and tries to determine the extent of the harm.

His response does not end when the immediate emergency passes. As Lily straightens Margrete’s pink blanket, Karsten describes what he would do if he caught the attacker: tear off his arms and legs, treating him as less than an insect. Lily does not answer. She sees something evil not only in the intruder who came out of the woods but in the rage now growing in her husband. The contrast marks a change in Karsten: the instinct that made him act quickly to protect Margrete is also becoming a fantasy of punishment that frightens Lily.

Fear, Revenge, and a Changed Home

Several weeks later, Karsten wakes at half past three in the morning and realizes Lily is not beside him. Margrete’s cot, which the couple have brought into their bedroom, is empty too. He finds them together on the sofa in the unlit lounge, where Lily is holding the sleeping child. In the thin grey light, he watches them and understands that fear has taken root in Lily and stolen the peace of mind they once took for granted. He senses the attack as an unfamiliar presence in the house, a vague shadow between them, as though something had entered their lives and continued to intrude without words. His conclusion that they cannot live this way registers both the damage and his inability to make it disappear.

Karsten’s anger also takes the form of a broader argument about justice. When Lily suggests that the attacker may be the same man responsible for other incidents and wonders what terrible experience could have made him act this way, Karsten writes in a newspaper puzzle and thinks that refusing revenge leaves wrongs uncorrected. He questions why the authorities should be responsible for vengeance and why criminals should retain rights and respect. The thought reveals a widening split between Lily’s attempt to imagine a cause for the man’s actions and Karsten’s insistence on punishment. His attention to the puzzle, an ordinary newspaper pastime, sits beside thoughts that are anything but ordinary: the familiar daily life continues, but it no longer contains his anger.

Marriage and Self-Reckoning

As time passes, Karsten considers the choices that made his family. He remembers being attracted to Lily’s French roots and the sound of her speaking French, as well as her petite beauty and graceful movement. He describes their marriage as a natural consequence of having been together a long time and being adults, but also recalls that he was lonely and that parents and friends could see his sorrow. His memories hold affection and need together: he was drawn to Lily, yet he also entered marriage as someone looking for companionship.

He then turns those questions toward Margrete’s future. He wonders whether he and Lily properly considered having a child, and whether her later struggles, at fifteen, thirty, or forty, would be his responsibility. His thoughts do not settle into a clear answer; they lead instead to the question of how he might escape the burden of the life he has helped create. This self-examination makes his crisis more than anger at an attacker. He is also reconsidering the foundations of his marriage and fatherhood, and whether he can bear the responsibilities that once seemed like a natural progression.

The months since the attack have altered his conduct and his feelings. He has become more fiery; his walk and gestures are testier and jagged, and he slams doors harder. At times, especially after a few beers, he admits to himself that he no longer loves Lily and has begun to dislike her. Her femininity, fear, and vulnerability have become difficult for him to endure. The admission is followed by despair because he wonders whether he, rather than the stranger alone, has failed his family. He believes he could not protect them and sees the intruder as having blasted his relationship with Lily apart.

Their physical closeness makes the estrangement plain. At night, with Margrete between them in bed, Karsten sometimes reaches carefully to touch Lily’s shoulder or hair, repeating a gesture that had once been habitual. Lily responds with an involuntary shudder, as though his touch irritates her. She has established new rules, and he struggles to understand them. The bed still places the three of them together, but the child between her parents no longer signifies uncomplicated intimacy; even a tentative touch meets a boundary he cannot read.

Separation and a Shared Grievance

The marriage eventually gives way to separation. By the time Karsten encounters Bjørn Schillinger at a petrol station near Bjerkås, Lily has moved out with Margrete to live with her parents. Karsten says he is exhausted and that their lives have fallen apart, with nothing he can do about it. The family’s physical separation confirms the isolation he had been sensing in the house, while his account shows that he experiences the loss as something done to him as well as something he has been unable to prevent.

The meeting is described as a chance encounter, but the men recognize a common ground immediately: both are bitter and hungry for revenge. Schillinger complains that someone has been playing with people’s lives and evading capture, and says he fears losing everything. Karsten answers with the collapse of his own household and asks whether Schillinger has a good lawyer. Their exchange joins personal devastation to a grievance over the community’s threats, giving Karsten a companion in anger. It does not resolve his family’s suffering; it places him beside another man whose desire for revenge may reinforce, rather than restrain, the punitive outlook Karsten has developed since the attack.