Anna Sofie disappears in the woods after setting out to look for her daughter, Agnes Knudsdatter. Recounted by Jorgen Knudsen to Apollo Kagwa, the event is a family history shaped by a stark absence: Anna Sofie went into the woods and never came back, while what she found there remains uncertain.

Background and Disappearance

Jorgen links Anna Sofie’s disappearance to the difficulty Nils faced in asking a mother to hand over her own child. Anna Sofie, he says, broke under the strain and vanished into the woods to search for Agnes. His account establishes the search and her failure to return, but does not say whether she found her daughter.

Apollo’s Theory and Jorgen’s Response

Apollo proposes that Anna Sofie found Agnes and fled because her husband could not be trusted. Jorgen answers with a thin smile: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” The response refuses to confirm Apollo’s hopeful reconstruction. Anna Sofie’s disappearance remains unresolved, and the possibility that she escaped with Agnes belongs to Apollo’s conjecture, not to any established account of what happened.

Place in the Recounted History

Jorgen tells the story while giving Apollo what the narration presents as a kind of education in a horrific history. The account turns Anna Sofie’s absence into part of that history without making her fate knowable: Apollo’s imagined escape offers a possibility, but Jorgen’s reply leaves the search’s outcome open.