The Reindeer Hunters

September 1, 2022
The Reindeer Hunters is the second novel in Mytting's trilogy, following The Bell in the Lake (2020), set in the Norwegian village of Butangen in the early 1900s. Pastor Kai Schweigaard is haunted by the past; he was responsible for the loss of the village's ancient stave church and its sister bells cast in the 1600s in memory of two famous weavers, conjoined twin sisters. These twins created the Hekne Weave, a tapestry depicting Skr�p�natta, the end of days. While Schweigaard searches for the Weave and what it might portend, Jehans, a Hekne and son of Schweigaard's lost love, struggles to make his way. Butangen lingers in the grip of feudalism, but change is inevitable. This novel explores themes of modernization and identity on various levels: national (Norway's separation from its union with Sweden), familial, and religious (Norse myth and Christianity). The world Mytting creates is immersive, including descriptions of reindeer hunting and the feel of a scythe on a whetstone. The result is a fascinating story with centuries-old echoes, their muted peal resonating like the separated sister bells.

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October 15, 2022
A sprawling novel about a small Norwegian village and a young man pursuing his fate. When Mytting's latest novel begins, it is 1903. Jehans Hekne is an orphan. He never knew his parents, whose story drove The Bell in the Lake (2020), the first installment in what Mytting has configured as a trilogy. Jehans grows up in the same small Norwegian village as his mother, and Pastor Kai Schweigaard, whom readers of the first book will remember, takes a special interest in his upbringing. Schweigaard is preoccupied by a search for a missing tapestry woven centuries ago by Jehans' ancestors Halfrid and Gunhild, conjoined twins who became extraordinarily talented weavers. Meanwhile, Jehans meets a mysteriously familiar British hunter in the woods and, at the same time, deepens a rift with the uncle who keeps him locked in a kind of indentured servitude. The plot of this second leg of Mytting's trilogy isn't nearly as taut as the first--indeed, it grows baggy and unwieldy as the book goes on, eventually stretching to encompass World War I and the 1918 influenza epidemic. Nor are the characters nearly as well developed as their predecessors: In the first book, Jehans' mother, Astrid, was a force to be reckoned with; in the second, Jehans himself remains undeveloped and unknowable. Mytting is most successful in his depictions of cloistered, claustrophobic Norwegian communities and their spiritual and cultural traditions, from hunting reindeer to churning butter and weaving. There are moments of beauty in the book--a scene in which Jehans buys a rifle is particularly moving--but neither the characters nor the storyline ever get their feet off the ground. The second installment in Mytting's trilogy doesn't quite carry the power and charm of the first.

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