The Bell in the Lake

Lars Mytting, Deborah Dawkin (translator)

Travel back in time to an isolated Norwegian village in 1879. This historical fiction is draped in a supernatural veil, weaving together the legend of conjoined twins, magical bells, a mystical church, and a tempestuous love triangle.

The story begins with the tale of the Hekne sisters — Halfrid and Gunhild — conjoined twins known far and wide for their weaving skills, including a tapestry depicting the day of judgment. After the sisters’ deaths, twin bells were cast in their memory, and a lock of each girl’s hair was mixed into the silver of the bells. It’s said the bells would ring on their own to warn of approaching evil.

Generations later, we meet our heroine Astrid, a descendant of the sisters and a dreamer, hungry to explore what lies beyond her provincial life.

Then two distinctly different men arrive in the village: a new pastor with modern ideas but murky motivations and a German architect and artist from big-city Dresden. Both bring a bit of the outside to Astrid’s small world; both have plans that revolve around the village’s twin bells and historical stave church.

In the fictional world of this novel, the stave church is the center of village life, and in real-life history, these remarkable churches played a significant role. Made entirely from wood and slathered with a protective coat of black tar, the churches were spiky paeans to piety. They combined Christian crosses with ancient pagan symbols like dragons’ heads and serpents to ward off evil spirits and bring congregants closer to God.

The village church and the bells are dear to Astrid’s heart. But the newly-arrived strong-willed pastor and idealistic city boy become alluring distractions. (Hello, love triangle!) There are plenty of lingering gazes and smoldering stolen moments — until Astrid learns of the secret deal between the two men to remove the beloved bells and dismantle the church. Astrid’s ardor is cooled, and she channels all her passion into stopping them.

Author Lars Mytting deftly tells a historically accurate story with a luscious Gothic sensibility. He and translator Deborah Dawkin vividly evoke the physical and emotional brutality of rural village life — and the painful, arduous march toward a modernity ruled less by superstition and more by science.

Pssst… This book is the first in a planned trilogy; the books can be read in any order. The second book The Reindeer Hunters is also available now. It’s set in the same village and focuses on the tapestry woven by the twin sisters.

It seemed beyond belief, to the young Astrid, that there were beasts of burden in this world that needed no rest at night, and she often imagined herself on this train, and never tired of this one thought: that real life was happening elsewhere, that everyday life was just a delay. But she had no idea where she wanted to go, these dreams were just a ladder that went up and up and ended in thin air. Her thoughts transported her to different places every day, and the only thing she knew was that she was searching for something, and that whatever it was, it was not in the village. As each day approached evening it brought her a sense of loss, for nothing new ever happened here. And as she fell asleep, a grain of sorrow would land in her mind, and she knew that these grains would add up, and in a few years make her like other girls, heavy and old before her time. — Lars Mytting

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