Konrad Sejer and Matteus’s Grandfather-Grandson Bond

Konrad Sejer and Matteus’s Grandfather-Grandson Bond is defined less by frequent shared scenes than by the space Matteus occupies in Sejer’s thoughts. Sejer follows his grandson’s ballet ambitions with pride and apprehension, and the relationship exposes both the depth of his care and the limits of his confidence in a world that may judge Matteus by his race before his ability.

Identity and Family Background

Matteus is the eighteen-year-old son of Sejer’s daughter, Ingrid. Adopted from Somalia, he came to Norway at four and grew into a promising dancer at the Opera ballet school. Sejer’s knowledge of his grandson’s history is concrete: at his desk, he looks at a map of the world and places a finger on Somalia, shown in yellow. The gesture connects Matteus’s origins to the life he has made in Norway, without suggesting that one cancels out the other.

Sejer describes Matteus’s physique with evident admiration, noting his strength and coffee-coloured muscles. His pride is not abstract affection alone: he sees a young person developing a demanding skill and moving toward a consequential opportunity. Yet the inspector’s attention also carries worry. Matteus had been a loner at school and had found it difficult, and Sejer fears that a new achievement might bring a different form of exclusion rather than simple recognition.

The Swan Lake Audition

The immediate focus of Sejer’s thoughts is a competition at the ballet school. One pupil will be chosen to make a guest appearance on the Opera’s main stage in April. Matteus is to audition on October 10 for Siegfried, the prince in Swan Lake. Sejer understands that the role matters intensely to him and that many strong dancers are competing. He hopes Matteus will succeed, but cannot keep the opportunity separate from the possibility that the decision-makers may not imagine a Black dancer as the prince.

That fear comes out as a question about whether they will choose a Black prince. When Jacob Skarre asks him to name roles that seem unavailable to Black performers, Sejer offers Robin Hood and Peter Pan. Skarre turns the concern back on him: Sejer is worried about other people’s prejudice, but has himself made a prejudiced assumption. Sejer looks at his younger colleague apologetically. His response matters to the bond because he does not defend the assumption as harmless or insist that his worry excuses it. He acknowledges the challenge, even though he admits that the thought has troubled him for years.

Pride, Protection, and Blind Spots

Sejer’s anxiety grows from his memory of Matteus’s difficult experience at school and his fear that the ballet world may repeat the rejection he imagines in other settings. In his mind, the audition is at once a test of dancing and a test of whether an institution can see beyond the conventional image of a prince. That protectiveness is affectionate, but it also risks placing the burden of anticipated prejudice on Matteus before the audition has happened. Skarre’s intervention reveals that Sejer’s wish to defend his grandson does not prevent him from carrying the very assumptions he fears will harm him.

Later, Sejer returns to the possibility of a Black Siegfried while sitting at home with Frank. Images from televised performances of Swan Lake pass through his thoughts: small ballerinas in feathers, light movement, plaintive music, and the prince Matteus might become. He reaches a firmer conclusion than he had at the office: if Matteus is good enough, he will get the part. Sejer frames this as justice, while recognizing that justice belongs to a privileged part of the world and comes at a price. He places the dancer’s opportunity alongside the consequences people face for serious wrongdoing, then insists, in his own estimation, that Matteus is an exceptional dancer—strong, daring, and gifted. The thought shows pride becoming a counterweight to his earlier fear, though it does not establish what the audition’s result will be.

Everyday Concern and Narrative Significance

Sejer’s attachment also appears in a brief family visit with Ingrid. When she announces dramatically that Matteus has pulled a thigh muscle, Sejer is startled and immediately asks whether it is serious, when it happened, and whether he fell. Ingrid explains that it happened the previous day during rehearsal, while he was doing the splits. The exchange gives his investment a practical, bodily dimension: he is not concerned only with the prestige of the role, but reacts at once to the possibility that an injury could affect his grandson.

The novel does not resolve the audition in these scenes, nor does it present the bond through a long conversation between grandfather and grandson. Instead, it makes Sejer’s attention the evidence: he remembers the date, the role, the competition, Matteus’s history at school, and the possible injury. His concern is tender but not infallible. By allowing Skarre to expose the prejudice inside Sejer’s protective fear, the narrative presents affection not as automatic wisdom, but as a relationship in which care must remain open to correction. Matteus’s ambition gives Sejer hope; his own reflections show him trying to trust ability and fairness without pretending that racial barriers cannot exist.