1990er Jahre

The 1990er Jahre are not presented as the novel’s main setting but as a consequential past, invoked to explain how dangerous substances and extractive ambitions outlast the circumstances that first produced them. The decade’s technological boom and regulatory decisions cast long shadows over the murder investigation and Tony Leike’s history.

Ketanomin and the Afterlife of a Ban

The decade’s clearest legacy in the murder inquiry is Ketanomin. Beate Lønn explains that it was a cheap copy of Ketalar, an anesthetic that allowed patients to continue breathing without assistance. Because of its side effects, Ketanomin was banned in the European Union and Norway during the 1990er Jahre. The restriction did not make the drug disappear: it was subsequently found mostly in developing countries, where producers sold it at dumped prices. Beate points to Congo as one destination for this supply.

That history matters because Ketanomin was found in Charlotte Lolles’s and Borgny Stem-Myhre’s blood. The Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service pursued the drug as a leading investigative clue for a time, but the inquiry produced no result. The decade therefore supplies a partial explanation for the drug’s availability without resolving how it entered the murders: the ban redirects attention toward an international supply chain, while leaving the crucial link to the killer unknown.

The Mobile-Phone Boom and Congo

The 1990er Jahre also mark the beginning of Tony Leike’s attempt to make money from Congo’s mineral resources. He recalls being with his group on a contract northeast of Congo as mobile-phone production began to boom. A mine there was run by Frenchmen alongside local partners, who had children extract coltan with picks and shovels. The ore looked like ordinary rock, but could yield tantalum, a material used in phones and game consoles.

Leike saw the prospect of modernizing and properly operating the mine as a route to financial security for himself and prospective partners. That ambition did not succeed: he borrowed money, was cheated by his partners, and lost everything. He borrowed again, was defrauded again, and continued until he eventually made some money. His account ties the decade’s consumer-technology expansion to a local mining operation and to a personal history of repeated risk, debt, and loss.

A Decade Recalled Through Consequences

These two references give the 1990er Jahre a double significance. In Beate’s account, a European ban alters where a drug is sold but fails to prevent its circulation; in Leike’s, rapidly growing demand for electronic devices makes the value of an extractive resource newly visible. Neither recollection makes the decade a self-contained historical episode. Instead, both explain present conditions through consequences that have travelled across borders: Ketanomin reaches poorer markets, while the demand for tantalum draws attention to a mine where children do the digging.

The decade thus functions as a compact link between systems larger than the immediate Oslo investigation. It connects pharmaceutical regulation to the drug evidence in the murders, and consumer technology to Leike’s account of mining and financial failure. The novel leaves the investigative clue unresolved and Leike’s venture compromised, making the 1990er Jahre less a closed past than a source of unfinished consequences.