Fjellfolk

One winter’s day in the 90’s, as Katrine lies in a tent on the plain with her daughter Frida beside her, she sees her husband leave. She and her daughter never see him again. For Katrine, Fredrik’s disappearance is the beginning of a downward spiral, including prescription drug and alcohol abuse. She has turbulent relationships with men, while her body gradually wastes away and her daughter is left more and more to raise herself.

Many years later, Frida is pregnant, and the father is in a long-term relationship with someone else. Frida, having been strongly impacted by her difficult upbringing with an unstable mother, lives her life as though her own child didn’t exist. Then she begins walking the dog of the solitary Edvard, a man in love, and Frida and Edvard gradually come together in something that can be called, if not friendship, perhaps a kind of mutual trust.

Mountain Folk is a powerful tale about the encounter between the human and a violent, overwhelming nature. About living with open wounds, and the inability to find your way in the world you live in and fulfil your expected roles—as a woman, man, mother, spouse, and daughter.

Ellen Emmerentze Jervell (b. 1990) is a journalist, and has worked four years for the Wall Street Journal. She spent her childhood years in Vollen and Berlin.