Søs Hole

Søs Hole is Harry Hole’s younger sister and his most unconditional admirer, a relationship that makes her absence from his life feel consequential even when she is not in the scene. Harry cannot bring himself to call her because he does not want her to see him as he is. When they do reconnect, her direct affection and practical concern unsettle the roles the siblings have occupied: she insists that she is grown enough to look after him, while Harry begins, at last, to act as her brother rather than retreat from her attention.

Identity and Family Background

Søs is described as a young woman with Down syndrome, which she herself characterizes as only a tiny trace. That description is set beside Harry’s impression that she manages life much better than he does. The comparison belongs to his judgment of himself as much as to any account of her abilities: he sees her as someone who meets the world more capably, even though he is the brother who has repeatedly faced danger and hardship.

Their father, Olav Hole, remembers Søs as loving and kind, and Harry as willful. The contrast does not make the siblings opposites so much as give their closeness different forms. Harry’s stubbornness tends toward solitary endurance; Søs’s qualities are associated with warmth and attention to other people. Olav’s recollections place both children within a family that has watched them closely, even when Harry made it difficult to approach him.

Harry’s Withdrawal and Søs’s Concern

When Harry has not yet called Søs, the narration dwells on the reason: he does not want to appear before the person whose admiration matters most to him. He fears disappointing her. The hesitation is more than a missed courtesy. It shows how his isolation can reach even toward someone he loves, and how the very importance of Søs’s affection makes him reluctant to expose himself to it when he feels diminished.

Olav tells Harry that Søs has already visited. On learning that her brother has returned, she says that she must now take care of him because she is the grown-up and he is the little one. Her playful reversal gives a new shape to the familiar sibling bond: she is not merely the person Harry hopes to protect from disappointment, but someone who sees his vulnerability and claims the right to care for him. Harry answers that she is wise, accepting the joke without rejecting its tenderness.

Reconnection and Shared Care

When Harry finally telephones, Søs answers in a solemn, formal voice that makes him smile. Once she recognizes him, she cries out his name twice. She already knows he is home because their father told her, and she asks why Harry waited to call. Harry admits that he was not ready, then says that now he is fully present. Søs replies that she is always fully present. The exchange sets his tentative return against her steady availability: he has to announce that he is ready, while she presents her presence as a given.

Harry invites her to lunch in the city before they visit their father, and she accepts enthusiastically. She notices that Harry sounds happy and asks whether it is because of Rakel, whom she has spoken with the previous day. She has also heard that Olav is ill and has been asking after him. Her questions connect the siblings’ private relationship to the wider circle of people Harry cares about. When a noise interrupts their conversation, Søs asks what it was; Harry explains that a packet of crispbread has fallen to the floor, then returns to asking what Rakel wanted to know about their father.

Later, Harry collects Søs in a car made available to him by Mikael Bellman, and they go to the hospital. Harry translates what she cannot understand when they speak with the doctor, and she cries a little. They then visit Olav, who has been moved to another room. Søs presses his hand and repeatedly whispers his name, as if trying to wake him gently. The scene gives physical form to the care she had earlier promised Harry: beside their father, she remains close, attentive, and unwilling to let her affection go unspoken.

Narrative Role and Significance

Søs’s appearances reveal Harry’s vulnerability through the particular relationships he is most reluctant to risk. He can refuse a work call outright, but the unanswered call to his sister weighs on him for a different reason: he does not want to disappoint someone whose regard is freely given. His eventual admission that he was not ready to speak makes the reunion an act of emotional return, not simply a resumption of contact.

Her insistence that she is grown and Harry is small reverses the expected direction of sibling protection without diminishing his love for her. The subsequent hospital visit extends that reversal into action: Harry helps her understand the doctor, while she holds their father’s hand and tries to wake him. Søs is thus both a source of reassurance for Harry and a person with her own agency within the family. Her presence links his guarded return to the care he shares with her, and turns a brother’s delayed call into a renewed connection between the siblings.