In the centuries that followed the church was neither altered nor plundered. Just as the villagers’ character avoided dilution by strangers, so this hidden medieval masterpiece remained untouched by fads or fashion. The decorations were not wiped away when the Reformation stripped God’s houses bare, and Pietism never set its claws into the furniture and fixtures. The eight dragon heads continued to snarl towards the sky, and the outer walkway and walls released the fragrance of centuries of thorough tarring.

This spellbinding gem took my breath away and I ventured with some question to the bestselling Norwegian author Lars Mytting. His answers will be live on 3/31/21 at mysteryandsuspense.com A seven-hundred-year-old stave church is being deconstructed in Norway. This is not just a wooden church, but an intricately built artefact with decoratively painted timber walls. Why would you risk the process of transporting this precious cargo to Germany? So this is not a novel with much moping -- and its three main characters understand that quite well, taking charge when necessary and doing what needs be done; most impressively, Mytting allows even that to often not be nearly enough. An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored. Meaning and nuance get lost in translation, or so the theory goes, but in this instance, I question the veracity of that opinion since the prose is so powerfully immersive and sensorial. Deborah Dawkin’s flowing translation subtly captures local dialects with a lightness of touch that feels utterly natural.I also loved learning about the Norwegian attitude toward the poor and citizens with special needs. How the poor are taken in and taken care of, and those with special needs are almost revered as being closer to god or the spirits. It turns out also that the men very much had their eyes on the storied bells -- and Astrid's clever plan is undone in a (soon much regretted) moment of pique.

Het boek laat je nadenken over durf hebben en de voorbijgaande aard van geluk. Daarnaast vond ik de harde, aan de seizoenen gebonden maar snel moderniserende wereld van Butangen zeer goed weergegeven; op mij kwam het over alsof Mytting veel onderzoek gedaan heeft. De romance(s) waren wat minder sterk, vooral omdat het best lang duurde voordat ik als lezer een beeld had van Gerhard. En historische fictie wordt zeker niet mijn favoriete genre, ik vond het tempo vrij laag ondanks de korte hoofdstukken. Maar al met al verraste de Zusterklokken me positief en rond ik de 3,5 sterren die ik dit boek zou willen geven overtuigd naar boven af. The concluding one is by far the shortest, itself divided only into three chapters and zipping rapidly along. A mesmerising book:original lyrical style, strong characters, authenticity and mysticism, self-sacrifice, duty and humanity.Which of the main characters do you relate to most, if any of them? Which of their attributes and behaviors, if any, do you see in yourself? Door Gerhard opent de deur naar de wijde wereld voor Astrid zich nog verder, en herkent ze in hem de liefde voor hun eigen kunstzinnige eeuwenoude kerk, die toch het beste tot haar recht komt op die gure, door onbarmhartige natuur omgeven, plek waar ze staat. Voor Astrid kruist haar vastberadenheid om de Zusterklokken, de erfenis van haar familiegeslacht, in het dorp te houden echter haar liefdespad op de meest ongenadige wijze die je je voor mogelijk houdt. I engaged with the dilemma Astrid faces when people start coming to her village from the great world outside, curious to leave the small life offered by the village, yearning to travel, yet determined to stay true to her roots. And there you have the book’s central theme - how to provide for a congregation’s comfort and well-being without compromising their respect for the past, do the old ways have to give way to the new or can they coexist? Great atmosphere and characterisation, I could empathise with the main characters, even though they have such different motivations, and came to care for them enough to hope things worked out for them all. The ending is left open to an extent and that suited me well too. Just my kind of book, set in the far north - in this case rural Norway at the end of the 19th century - steeped in historical detail, tinged with local legend, and the village’s accommodation of both the old and the new beliefs rang true. I hadn’t heard of stave churches before but just one look at the cover had me researching them and it was fascinating. Much of what is related here is inspired by real events or local stories and Lars Mytting has done a terrific job weaving them into a whole for this novel.

Each character was challenged many times in this story. Clearly to me Astrid's challenge was her pregnancy & impending birth. Gerhard, who loved Astrid, was challenged by his professional life & leaving her to do his ... - marganna Each of the three main characters is relatively young, on the cusp of adult life -- in the form of family and career -- and torn by the choices that seem open to them; the fates he has in store for them are more daring than many a novelist would have risked -- but it's worth it, in helping keep the story from becoming too simply mawkish.The book is set in the 1880s. Kai Schweigaard is the new pastor in the village. He is energetic and forward thinking, and determined to replace the old cold and leaking church with a modern structure. But there is no money to build it… He conceives the idea of selling the church piece by piece to the royal house of Saxony in Dresden – to be rebuilt in the city as an indication of their concern for the historic and beautiful. The price to be paid is some five times the scrap value of the church. Gerhard Schönauer, an architectural student from Dresden, is sent to supervise the dismantlement and labelling of the church prior to its transportation. The village in question is Butangen in Southern Norway. It is a real place with real history. It is famed for its Stave (timber frame) church – originally built in 1270 and rebuilt in 1631. It fell into disrepair, and was finally restored to something like its original glory in 1921. The church had twin bells – legend has it that these were cast at the behest of their father after the death of Siamese twin girls in the 16th Century. The girls lived joined together from the hip downwards for many years and wove intricate works of art with their four hands. They then died on the same day. When the bells ring by themselves, it is said to warn of a coming disaster. A legend from Lars Mytting's Norwegian hometown tells of two centuries-old church bells that, like conjoined twins, were never meant to be separated. Inspired by that story and by the real-life move of a stave church from Norway to what is now Poland (see Beyond the Book), he embarked on a set of three novels in which history and myth mingle to determine the future of the isolated village of Butangen. "Change came slowly," Mytting writes. "The village was twenty years behind its neighboring villages, which were thirty years behind Norway's towns and cities, which were fifty years behind the rest of Europe."

Schweigaard is engaged, but Butangen is no place for his fiancée; he can only think of marrying her once he has a more comfortable position.

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The Bell in the Lake" by Lars Mytting is the first historical novel in a planned trilogy. To Astrid, Pastor Kai Schweigaard personified the comfortable old ways and traditions in an unchanging community while Gerhard Schonauer painted a picture of a colorful new life in Dresden. I enjoyed the descriptive passages denoting the history of Stave Churches. Highly recommended. The priest and the young German artist are two of the main figures in the novel; the third is feisty Astrid Hekne, a descendent of Eirik. Kai, de stadse dominee, is zeer ambitieus en status gevoelig, modern en idealistisch. De auteur kenschetst hem trefzeker: “Weer werd hij geconfronteerd met wat hij de vervelendste kant van zijn beroep vond: wanneer het geestelijke het moest afleggen tegen het praktische.”