Page 67 of Entwined in Norway

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Erik took the document wallet out of his backpack and carefully pulled out a tattered brown envelope. The spidery writing on the front had faded and was in Norwegian, so he’d never deciphered what it said. He placed it on the table between him and Ida.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. ‘I think I know what this is.’ She pushed her chair back and went into the hallway, where she rummaged through a drawer in the sideboard and brought back a torn piece of paper. ‘Is it the other side of this?’ She laid it carefully on the table.

Erik didn’t need to scrutinise it to know that it was the other half of the piece of paper in the envelope. He nodded.

‘This is why you came here? To claim this…’

‘Inheritance.’ He said it quietly, fully expecting a strong reaction from Ida. And at this point, he wouldn’t blame her for thinking the worst of him.

Ida took his envelope, extracted the contents, and placed the two pieces of paper side by side. The torn edges aligned exactly, and suddenly, the words that had been thousands of miles apart for decades were reunited. If it hadn’t been for the circumstances, it was something to celebrate.

‘Can you read it for me?’

Ida looked at him, and he could see heartbreak and betrayal in her eyes.

His own heart cracked a little seeing her like that. He was falling in love with her, and for him, this whole timber forest inheritance had nothing to do with that.

‘It says: Each man who is in possession of either part of this letter is the owner of half of the timber forest of Strandgården. This is the wish of both families. Then it’s dated the fourteenth of April 1951 and is signed by a Larsen and an Olsen. But you’re not an Olsen.’

‘My mother’s family are Olsens.’

‘And this is why you came here? To take half of my brother’s land and ruin his business?’

That was why he’d come here, apart from the ruining of the business. He would never want to do that. Ida’s wrath made it easier to remember how he’d felt about this before.

‘Of course not. I came to find out if the legacy really existed. It was like a quest. Something to cling to after my accident.’

‘This piece of paper is hardly likely to be legally binding after all these years.’

‘I’ve taken legal advice that suggests it is.’ He didn’t say that to throw down the gauntlet, just to let her know what the position was for both of them. ‘In Norway there’s no requirement to register land. It’s been in your family since this agreement was made so it’s simple.’

‘It’s not simple, Erik. It’s going to take everything Mats has worked for and ruin it.’

‘That isn’t what I want anymore. Maybe I wanted the legacy when I first got here, I’m not going to lie to you and say that isn’t why I came. But now, I would never take anything from Mats or you. It’s not about that anymore.’

‘I think you should leave.’

‘Ida, please.’ He couldn’t believe it had come to this so quickly. All his worst fears realised.

She stood up, and thinking she might be about to whip her half of the letter away, he took a picture on his phone.

‘I’ll take my half of the letter.’ He knew the lengths Ida would go to protect her family, and he wouldn’t put it past her to destroy the whole thing. But he immediately regretted saying that when he saw her face crumple.

‘You think I would destroy it?’

‘I don’t know, Ida. I know you love your family, so I guess I would understand if you felt like that.’

‘I knew there was something like this that would make these past two weeks too good to be true. And here it is.’ She handed him his half of the letter.

He turned and left before either of them could say anything else. Whether there was any coming back from this with Ida, he wasn’t sure, but he knew he couldn’t give up on this. It’s why he came here. Falling in love was a bonus, but not something he should forsake finding out the truth about his family’s legacy for.

It was more than a legacy, it was family folklore. The tale of how his great-grandfather Olsen had come to Canada from Norway with this gift from the Larsen family in return for him saving the life of his friend, their patriarch, in the Second World War. He travelled to Canada, always intending to return to Norway and mill the timber once it was mature enough, and life had got in the way. The story had always fascinated Erik, so in the gruelling first weeks of his recovery, when his mother had been desperately making suggestions of things he might have to look forward to when he recovered, this had been the one thing she’d thrown into the mix that struck a chord with him.

Now, he stood outside the Larsen house, wondering how he was going to get back to the island when his kayak was on there. In the end, he decided he had no option but to take a taxi into Bergen and hope he didn’t have to wait too long for the shuttle boat to take him back to Lysgården.

It took around an hour before he was disembarking at the jetty on the island. Mats was there with a grim look on his face and his arms folded.