Spar

Spar is a small but consequential local shop near Lake Skarve: it supplies a community whose other businesses have disappeared, and its everyday stock becomes material to Konrad Sejer’s investigation. The store’s shelves hold both clues and uncertainties, from an animal postcard that suggests where a prankster might live to frozen ox blood whose recent sale Sejer tries to establish.

Setting and Community Role

Spar stands near the waterfront, reached by turning right at Bjerkås Centre; its conspicuous flags make it easy to spot. Karsten Sundelin describes it as the area’s one-stop shop, carrying food alongside medicine and a few toys. There is no bookshop nearby, so residents must drive to the shopping centre close to Kirkeby for that kind of purchase. Spar’s range is modest, but its breadth matters in a place where a grocery store has become one of the few remaining services.

The store also serves people beyond its immediate neighborhood. Residents of the Askeland housing estate used to shop at a Joker, but after that store closed they began using Spar. Some increasingly travel to Kirkeby instead, where the selection is better. The shift gives Spar a practical role as a shared local resource while showing the limits of what the shop can provide.

A Community in Decline

Karsten recalls a time when the area had a bakery, hairdresser, café, and bank. Those businesses closed one after another, leaving a grocery and petrol station, with a small bar beside the petrol station. Spar belongs to this reduced commercial landscape: it helps residents obtain everyday necessities, but its continued presence does not reverse the broader loss of local services. The contrast between the former range of businesses and the present few makes the shop a measure of the community’s contraction as well as a place of trade.

The Postcard Rack

During an earlier visit, Sejer wanders through Spar carrying a warm aluminium bag of food. At the checkout he finds a rack of postcards among the shop’s ordinary goods: pictures of kittens, puppies, and horses, as well as small packs of thank-you notes and birthday cards. One card shows a lynx and identifies the subject as a Norwegian mammal photographed by Gøran Jansson. The picture catches Sejer’s attention because he is pursuing a wolverine postcard connected to the investigation.

The rack turns a routine shop visit into a line of inquiry. Sejer asks whether the cashier has other animal cards and then specifically asks about one featuring a wolverine. The young cashier, Britt, does not recognize the animal or recall such a card. Sejer pays seven kroner and sixty øre for the lynx postcard, but the purchase provides no confirmation that the wolverine card was sold there. Even so, the discovery changes how he regards the shop: he considers that the person he is seeking might live in Bjerkås or Askeland and might shop at this Spar. The possibility remains an investigative inference, not proof of the person’s identity or whereabouts.

As he returns to the car, Sejer gives one of his meatballs to Frank and looks through three newspapers. Their headlines report a blood-soaked baby found in a garden and a grotesque joke in Bjerketun. The juxtaposition places Spar within the ordinary circulation of the news as well as the investigation: it is a stop for food and shopping, but also a point from which Sejer follows developments in the community’s prank campaign.

Ox Blood and a Sales Inquiry

On another visit, Sejer and Jacob Skarre stop at Spar for something to drink and browse the aisles. At the freezer, Skarre picks up packages and puts them back. Sejer notices a frozen square of blood priced at thirty-two kroner and asks who buys it. A stocky man in a white apron explains that it is ox blood and that the shop sells very little. He ordered ten litres in the spring; by his estimate, only two litres had been sold. He nevertheless defends keeping it in the selection, arguing that blood is healthy and tastes good, while customers’ preconceptions make them reluctant to try it. Skarre suggests that farmers’ wives might use it to make blood pudding.

Sejer carries the package to the fresh-meat counter to ask about its sales, then takes it to the checkout and finds Britt again. He tells her not to scan it, because he wants to know whether she remembers a similar package being sold recently. She reads the label and shakes her head. Her response does not establish that no purchase occurred; it records only that she does not remember one. The episode shows Sejer using the shop’s stock and staff as a way to test a concrete possibility, while the low sales volume makes the frozen blood an unusual product rather than an obvious trace. Spar’s role in the investigation therefore rests not on certainty, but on the questions its ordinary inventory allows Sejer to ask.