Einherjer Farm is a working farm and the home of a community whose members connect its name to Norse mythology and their military past. Carl Mørck and Assad reach it by a punishing dirt road, pass a striking symbolic entrance, and are received by Gro and her husband, Bue. The contrast between the farm’s ordinary buildings and its charged threshold makes the place a revealing setting for the investigators’ encounter with people linked to Søren Mølgård’s memories of Bornholm.

Setting and Entrance

The approach tests the worn-out police car: deep, rain-filled tire tracks make the drive a rough journey, and Assad’s jaw bounces with every jolt. Along the tracks stand monoliths carved with runes and painted with Celtic and Norse symbols. Before the investigators meet anyone, the landscape presents the farm as an entrance into a world set apart from ordinary public life.

The farm itself undercuts that first impression. It has the traditional four wings of an agricultural property, but no Viking gates, oak timbers, or other grand Norse architecture. The sign above the gate supplies the decisive clue to its identity: it reads “Einherjer Farm.” The symbolic approach and unremarkable buildings coexist, making the community’s chosen name more conspicuous than the architecture around it.

Name and Community

Gro explains the name through the einherjer of Valhalla, warriors who defend the gods against the jötnar. She regards it as fitting because the people at the farm have either served as soldiers or been married to soldiers at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. The name thus links Norse warrior imagery to a modern community defined, in Gro’s account, by military service and its effects on families.

Gro introduces herself while welcoming Carl and Assad and tells them that the Holistic Garden Center called ahead. Her husband, Bue, is on his way. When he appears, his farmer’s clothing—not Viking costume—further emphasizes the gap between the farm’s mythic associations and its everyday physical reality. He is presented as the leader of the community’s blótlaug, but his appearance is practical rather than theatrical: Kansas overalls and green Wellington boots, alongside a thin beard braid and large tattoos that extend from his arms to his neck.

The Investigators’ Visit

After Carl and Assad explain their business, Bue says he does not personally know the man they are asking about. He has, however, heard Søren Mølgård talk about his time on Bornholm, as much as Søren’s tired mind can manage. Bue understands that the period was interesting and says he would have liked to be part of it had he been old enough. The farm consequently serves as a point of contact with a past that reaches beyond its grounds, but the information available there is limited and secondhand.

The investigators are led across the yard and through a gate to the other side of the farm’s four wings. They then meet Søren in his small, low-ceilinged living room, where the smell of hashish adds to his discomfort. Introduced by Bue as investigators from Copenhagen Police Headquarters, they make Søren glance around as if checking for drugs. Carl dryly observes that Søren smokes chillums, bringing the unspoken concern into the conversation. The visit turns the farm from an evocative threshold into a practical setting for police questioning, where the community’s past and present meet under the pressure of an investigation.