Punishment aka What Is Mine

AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT

In spring 2000, I heard a true story. It was about Ingvald Hansen, a man who had been sentenced to life in prison in 1938. Hansen was accused of raping and killing a seven-year-old girl, Mary. The story, as it was told to me over a table in a restaurant, was fascinating. There was much to indicate that the man had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

My first impulse was to investigate the case in more detail. But instead, I was inspired to create this book’s Aksel Seier, another character in another time. Hansen and Seier share a similar fate on certain crucial points, but they are of course not the same person. Everything I know about Ingvald Hansen comes from an article written by the professor of law, Anders Brathom, published in the Norwegian law journal Tidsskrift for lov og rett 2000, pp. 443 ff., and from a report in Aftenposten on Saturday, November 4, 2000. Apparently Hansen died a couple of years after a surprising and apparently unexplained release.

Those readers who take the time to read these articles will see that I have also been inspired by reality on another point: when Ingvald Hansen applied for a pardon in 1950, his case was dealt with by a young female lawyer. This woman, Anne Louise Beer, a former judge in the probate court in Oslo, is primarily responsible for reviving the interest in Ingvald Hansen’s story. She never forgot the case, even though circumstances made it impossible for her to pursue the possibility that the man had been unfairly imprisoned. According to these articles, she tried to get ahold of the case documents in the nineties. They had vanished without a trace.

I don’t know Judge Beer, and as far as I know I have never met her. Alvhild Sofienberg in this book is, like all the other characters in the book, entirely fictitious. However, Alvhild’s experience of Aksel’s case is, on several points, very similar to the experiences of Judge Beer in relation to the Ingvald Hansen case.

The way in which I have “solved” the mystery of Aksel Seier in this book is purely imagination. I have absolutely no grounds for saying anything whatsoever about what happened when Ingvald Hansen was first sentenced and then later released under peculiar circumstances.

I have had invaluable help from many people while working on this book. I would particularly like to mention my brother, Even, who gave me a frightening recipe for murder when writing his medical doctorate. Berit Reiss-Andersen is a very dear friend and wise critic. My thanks also to my editor and most important advisor, Eva Grøner, and to my Swedish publisher, Ann-Marie Skarp, for their enthusiastic and valuable support. I would also like to thank Øystein Mæland for his useful contribution. And I am particularly grateful to Line Lunde, a loyal mainstay since Blind Goddess. She told me the exciting story that was the inspiration for What Is Mine.

And finally, a big thankyou to you, Tine.

Anne Holt

Cape Cod, April 18, 2001