2002

In the novel, 2002 is a precise historical marker for the Nyiragongo Volcano’s last eruption. The date gives a real temporal anchor to the volcanic landscape encountered by Harry Hole, and to the lava-buried building in which he later speaks with Eddie van Boorst; it should not be confused with the separately dated November movements in the murder investigation, whose year is not specified in these passages.

The Date and the Volcano

A text message sent to Harry Hole identifies the Nyiragongo Volcano as lying in Congo-Kinshasa near Görna City and says its last eruption was in 2002. It also notes the volcano’s open lava lake. The information arrives as a compact message rather than as a narrated historical account, turning the date into a clue that Harry can connect with what he has seen. On reading the place name Görna, he associates it with the African torture instruments mentioned earlier in connection with Herman Kluit.

A Disaster Preserved in the Building

Eddie van Boorst describes a lava flow that crossed the centre of the area and swept away his villa beside Lake Kivu. The wooden houses burned; his concrete house survived, but was left partly buried under lava. A door that once opened onto the street had been replaced after van Boorst bought the property, and the building’s windows and doors faced away from the Nyiragongo Volcano. He says eruptions had sent lava into the area before and could recur every ten to twenty years.

Van Boorst dates the destructive eruption to three years before the conversation, while Harry’s message names 2002 as the volcano’s last eruption. The passages connect the date to the disaster that altered the house, although they do not state the conversation’s calendar year. The surviving concrete structure makes the eruption legible as more than a past date: its effects remain built into the setting Harry enters.

Distinguishing the Investigation’s Dates

Elsewhere, the murder investigation uses specific November dates without establishing that they fall in 2002. Adele Vetlesen bought a train ticket from Drammen to Ustaoset for November 7, the same date Borgny Stem-Myhre had bought a ticket to Ustaoset from Kongsberg. Investigators also find that Iska Peller’s account was charged on November 20 for two beds in each of four mountain huts. These dates help trace journeys and connections, but the text does not equate them with the volcanic chronology.

The distinction matters because the novel places several clocks alongside one another: the eruption’s explicitly named year, the relative interval of three years in van Boorst’s recollection, and the investigation’s day-and-month clues. Only the first is fixed here to 2002. The year therefore anchors the history of the damaged landscape without supplying an unstated calendar year for the murder trail.