Sverre Skarning

Sverre Skarning is a sheep farmer introduced through a prank that leaves one of his animals orange. He treats the incident with humor, but not as harmless: the spray irritates the sheep’s eyes, and the prankster leaves the farm gates open, scattering the flock and creating a danger on the road. His response is practical and unruffled, yet his attachment to the animals surfaces in the novel’s contrast between public suspicion of farmers’ motives and his own insistence that he loves his sheep.

Identity and First Impressions

Skarning is described as short and stout, with large boots, a plug of tobacco in his mouth, apple-red cheeks, and trousers held up by braces that appear to be homemade. He seems healthy and strong, though his walk across the farmyard is heavy and swaying. The details make him a vivid, earthy presence during the police visit, but his manner is not simply gruff: he finds it funny that the police have stopped by over a sheep and welcomes them to stay for coffee.

An earlier newspaper scene complicates the familiar picture of the grieving Norwegian sheep farmer. A professor argues that such displays of grief are often about economic loss and that farmers can perform affection to secure public sympathy and larger state subsidies. The photograph under discussion shows Skarning, who claims to love all his sheep, including the black ones. The woman reading the paper cannot settle whether to accept the professor’s criticism, but the image of Skarning close to a sheep lifts her mood. The novel thus introduces him through competing frames: farmer as calculated public actor, and farmer as a person whose contact with an animal appears genuinely tender.

The Orange Sheep and Its Consequences

When Hannes Bosch confirms that a sheep has been attacked with spray paint, he wonders whether a sheep tagger is responsible. Looking through binoculars, he notices that the bright color resembles the kind used by the Highway Department to mark roads, including paint that glows in the dark. Theo Bosch observes that the other sheep continue eating as if nothing has happened. The animal’s conspicuous color is therefore both a striking prank and an interruption that the flock itself seems to ignore.

When Sejer and Skarre visit, Skarning explains that the sheep is in the barn with runny eyes after exposure to chemicals from a spray can. He has saved its wool in a plastic bag so the police can send it to a laboratory for analysis. His readiness to preserve evidence sits alongside his laughter: he reassures himself that at least the meat has not been spoiled, and later jokes about the animal’s appearance. Once shorn, the sheep still has orange ears and a tail. Skarning says the color will eventually wear off, pats the animal on the rump, and closes the stall gate after leaving it.

The paint is not the only damage. The prankster has left all the gates open, allowing sheep to wander about. Skarning has to take a trailer to round them up, with help from a neighbor, and stresses the risk of sheep on the road and the possibility of accidents. His anger is directed less at the sheep’s altered appearance than at the culprit’s failure to consider what could happen. The episode gives his humor a practical limit: he can laugh at the orange animal, but recognizes that the open gates have endangered both the flock and road users.

A Farmhouse Clue

Skarning’s household also becomes relevant to Sejer’s effort to identify the person terrorizing local residents. In reviewing accounts from witnesses, Sejer recalls speaking with Skarning’s young wife, who described a boy who came to buy a tray of eggs. The visitor rode a moped or small motorcycle, though she could not tell which. He spoke with her for a while; she remembered a light, pleasant voice and a sympathetic manner. Her account contributes to Sejer’s developing picture of a young suspect who could win people’s trust, and places the apparently ordinary business of selling eggs within the wider investigation.

The account belongs to the police’s gathering of impressions, not to a direct identification by Skarning. Sejer combines it with other recollections, including Gunilla Mørk’s account and Lily Sundelin’s memory of a young man in a hospital hallway, to form a tentative description. Skarning’s importance here is modest but concrete: his farm is one of the places where investigators can learn about a visitor, and his wife’s attention to the boy’s voice and demeanor supplies detail that a bare report of an egg purchase would not.

Blame, Trust, and the Household Divide

Later, Skarning discusses the incidents with Nihmet Skarning, his Syrian wife. She sees the suspected prankster as someone who has been involved in so many strange acts that he is now being blamed for one thing after another. In her view, he should turn himself in; if he does not, the community will develop its own theories. Her words register how repeated pranks have made suspicion contagious, so that a reputation can become evidence in the eyes of neighbors even before every allegation is established.

Skarning, by contrast, defends Bjørn Schillinger against claims of sabotage connected with the dogs. He points to Schillinger’s long experience with dogs and describes him as considerate: when training with the wagon in summer, he brakes for people walking on Glenna, and in winter he lets skiers pass. He insists that Schillinger is meticulous, that the dogs are his life, and that he would never forget to close a gate. His defense is grounded in observed habits and care, not merely in a general appeal to friendship.

Nihmet does not share his favorable view. She dislikes Schillinger, criticizes his aggressive driving in his Land Cruiser, and calls attention to his crude manner and wild look. The couple’s disagreement leaves Skarning’s faith in Schillinger beside Nihmet’s suspicion, without resolving which judgment is right. Across the sheep prank and the later dispute, Skarning is consistently attentive to conduct and consequences: the open gates matter because animals could reach the road, while Schillinger’s familiar care for dogs makes negligence seem impossible to him. His good humor does not erase his seriousness about responsibility; it coexists with a firm, personal sense of who is and is not capable of carelessness.