Øystein

Øystein is one of Harry Hole’s oldest friends, a figure whose importance emerges through shared memories rather than a separate account of his life. He belongs to the same youthful history as Harry and Holzschuh, and later appears beside Harry at a moment of family grief. His recollections connect adolescent mischief, uneven loyalties, and the example set by Olav Hole; in the present, his plainspoken companionship helps Harry face what remains to be done.

Identity and Early Friendship

Harry’s story of the Ekeberg Restaurant, Harry and Kaja’s meeting place, takes him and Kaja Solness back to the 1980s, when the building had fallen into disrepair and its dance hall drew young people willing to make an evening of a rough night out. At seventeen, Harry, Øystein, and Holzschuh ventured there after spending time near the German bunkers in Nordstrand, waiting for adolescence to pass. They were admitted despite giving a false age, though the venue’s financial troubles meant that strict age checks were hardly the point. The episode places Øystein inside Harry’s formative circle: a companion in the awkward passage from childhood, remembered through the places they dared to enter together.

The club’s music and its regular attraction give Harry’s recollection its particular shape. The band was poor, but it played Nights in White Satin; the young men returned their attention to the imposing woman they nicknamed the Killer Queen. Harry describes the memory to Kaja with affectionate comic exaggeration, and her laughter turns it into a shared story in the present. Øystein is not the teller in this scene, but his presence among the three boys makes the anecdote evidence of a past that remains available to Harry: not an idealized youth, but one held together by common dares, bad entertainment, and the stories friends can still revive.

Bellman and Truls Berntsen

A separate account of childhood reveals the unequal friendship between Mikael Bellman and Truls Berntsen, who had known each other since they were twelve. Their first encounter took place on a large construction site in Manglerud that was due to be blasted. Bellman caught Truls trying to burn a dead rat and showed him a more dangerous prank involving a stick of dynamite. Truls followed Bellman from then on, whenever Bellman allowed it. This recollection is not a direct account of Øystein’s own actions, but it places him in the boys’ shared history: on Sundays, Bellman sometimes took Truls to watch Julie and Te-Ve race motorcycles beneath the highway bridge at Ryenkreuz, heading toward Bryn. On especially good days, Truls was also invited to eat at Bellman’s home while his mother worked a night shift.

The story distinguishes the boys’ strengths and the terms of their attachment. Bellman excelled at school and at managing other people, while Truls could endure the beatings Bellman avoided when older boys turned on him. Truls accepted this role and hoped for Bellman’s approval afterward. Their bond could look intimate from the outside, but it was also sharply unequal: Bellman set its conditions, and Truls rarely objected when Bellman used him as the butt of a joke. Truls’s father even described Bellman’s visits as Jesus coming to collect his disciple. The image captures both Truls’s devotion and the way the friendship had acquired a familiar, almost ritual pattern.

Truls did once confront Bellman, when Bellman insulted Truls’s father by associating him with the drinkers from the Kadok Factory. Truls rose and approached him with clenched fists; Bellman ducked, laughed, and treated the challenge as a joke before apologizing. In the end, Truls was the one who apologized. This episode shows how deeply the childhood hierarchy persisted: even a moment of anger did not produce a lasting reversal. Set beside Øystein’s place in the boys’ recollections, it broadens the portrait of the social world around Harry, where friendship could offer belonging while also demanding submission.

A Friend in Harry’s Present

Øystein remains close enough to Harry to collect him and give him a ride when asked. Eighteen minutes after Harry requests a lift to the restaurant, Øystein’s car is outside Harry’s house. Their teasing on the drive conveys the familiarity of a friendship in which neither needs to pretend that the other’s habits are unknown. Øystein jokes about Harry’s drinking and needles him about dinner with a colleague; Harry answers that he and Kaja are colleagues. Their banter does not erase the seriousness of Harry’s circumstances, but it shows a durable ease: Øystein can challenge him without turning the exchange into a formal confrontation.

That ease takes on a different register after Harry leaves his sister, Søs, at her small apartment by Sognsvann. He drives through the city without initially recognizing where he is going, then realizes he is heading toward the German bunkers. Øystein arrives ten minutes after Harry calls, parks his taxi beside Harry’s car, turns up the music, and climbs up to sit beside him on the wall. The two listen to Joy Division, including Transmission. Øystein has long been drawn to singers who died young, a small but distinctive preference that shapes the scene’s atmosphere without turning it into a speech about grief.

Harry tells Øystein that his father is in a coma and asks for a cigarette. Øystein regrets that he never managed to speak with Olav Hole after the illness began; Harry points out that he would not have done so even if the illness had lasted longer. The reply is blunt, but Harry laughs, and Øystein watches him as if unsure whether laughter is permissible while a father is dying. Their exchange holds discomfort and intimacy together: neither offers easy consolation, and the awkwardness itself becomes part of their companionship.

Olav Hole’s Inheritance

When Øystein proposes a small drinking session and offers to call Holzschuh, Harry refuses and says he has to work. Øystein challenges the choice with humor, but Harry then urges him to visit the old man while he is still alive. Øystein’s first response is that hospitals upset him and that Olav may no longer be aware of visitors. Harry clarifies that the suggestion was less for Olav than for Øystein himself. The distinction changes the force of the invitation: it is not merely a duty toward a dying man, but a chance for Øystein to acknowledge what that man has meant to him.

Øystein accepts the point. He tells Harry that the little upbringing he received came from Harry’s father, while disparaging his own father by comparison, and agrees to visit the next day. His admission gives Olav’s influence a reach beyond his own family. It also explains why Harry’s request matters: the father who had quietly taken pride in Harry’s courage had offered another boy a model of care. Øystein’s response is not elaborate, but the promise to go marks a concrete change from avoidance to action.

The scene also sets Øystein’s practical loyalty against Harry’s inward crisis. After their conversation, Harry’s attention seems impaired; the narrative shifts to a man restrained beside an iron stove, disoriented and convinced that the time for revenge has come. Øystein is not identified as the person in that later scene, and the two moments should not be conflated. His significance here is narrower and more human: he stays with Harry, speaks plainly about Olav, and accepts a reason to visit the man who helped shape him. Through Øystein, friendship becomes a channel by which a parent’s influence continues beyond the family that first received it.