Lars Mytting

18th February 2022

Lars Mytting is an author who lives and breathes Norway. He has written three novels in the past few years all featuring rural Norway at the end of the 19th and into the 20th centuries. The first, The Sixteen Trees of the Somme, was one of my books of the year in 2017. It describes a boy growing up in the Norwegian countryside who leaves his home to head first to the Shetlands and then the Somme to resolve a family mystery. The story is set in the present day but goes back to explore the linked experiences of three families – one from Norway, one from the Shetlands, and one from the Somme in the early part of the 20th century. The language and the writing (and, indeed, the translation) are quite beautiful. The second book, The Bell in the Lake, appeared in 2020, It describes events in a remote village in the Norwegian countryside in the second half of the 19th century. It was, again, one of my absolute favourite books of the year. A new pastor, with new ideas, comes to the village of Butangen. He arranges for a German engineer to move the ‘Stave’ church in the village piece by piece to Dresden – and for a modern church to be built in its place. He believes the financial gains will improve village life. The plan goes seriously wrong with death and the loss of one of the twin bells from the Church in a lake close to the village. Again, the language of the book is quite extraordinary. The Bell in the Lake is the first in trilogy of books set in Butangen. The second, The Reindeer Hunters, has just been published. It picks up twenty years after the close of The Bell in the Lake. The pastor is still a key character as Lars describes the technological revolution that is sweeping through Europe and Norway. Electricity and telephones change the life of the villagers for ever. The old Norse legends by which they have lived their lives seem increasingly irrelevant. The books is a vivid description of a village in a state of flux.

Lars’ first success, though, was not a work of fiction. Norwegian Wood was published in 2015 – and became an unlikely best seller. It is about ‘chopping, stacking, and drying wood in the Scandinavian way’. The book is one of the greatest publishing successes Scandinavia has ever seen! It is a ‘practical-lyrical’ guide on the use and lore of firewood, based on Norwegian traditions and on our modern science of stoves and renewable energy. In 2016, it received the award ‘Non Fiction Book of the Year’ by the British Book Industry. Above all else it typifies Lars’ love of things Norwegian.  He had in fact written two novels before Norwegian Wood, but it was Norwegian Wood that established him as an international best seller.

As well as being a writer, Lars is also a self-taught car mechanic Born in Favang, Norway, in 1968, he leads a quiet life near the Norwegian town of Østerdalen with his wife, two children and three English cars, He is the kind of man you’d be glad to spend an evening with, perhaps with beer in hand, settled in by the wood stove. Conversation would progress from practical matters of tools and weather to more personal thoughts, the sort of stuff that tends to surface only in front of a good fire and in good company.

Enjoy his books.

Tony for the TripFiction team

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