The Valkyrie Song

9

It was comforting to be back. In Norway. In Oslo. In this light. Strange but comforting.

The clouds had dispersed from the sky and the ever-optimistic Oslo cafe owners had placed aluminium tables and chairs, and the occasional strategically placed patio heater, outside on the streets.

Birta Henningsen sat at a pavement cafe, drinking her coffee and watching, from behind her sunglasses, the ice-blue Oslotrikken tramcars passing up and down the street under a matching ice-blue sky lightly streaked with wisps of white cloud. The February sun that shone on Oslo did so brightly if without any real warmth. But that suited Birta perfectly: she belonged in this climate, in this light, this clean, cool air; in this environment. Birta had, of course, spent time in the Mediterranean and other beautiful parts of the world, mainly through her work, but there she had always felt conspicuous: foreign. And Birta did not like to feel conspicuous.

It was here, in the North, that she felt at home.

Birta had eaten a light meal and now the coffee restored some of her energy. It had been a long drive from Stockholm — seven hours — and the day before she had driven all the way from Copenhagen, crossing the Oresund Bridge. She would drive back to Stockholm afterwards. She found her thoughts drifting to the meeting arranged for later in the day. It was an important one. One of the most important of her career. She had prepared well for it: she found that she performed better, was less nervous, if she had concluded all her research and preparation well in advance and simply relaxed immediately before.

There was a mother with two children three tables away. Birta watched them. The mother would have been roughly the same age, shared Birta’s colouring and was dressed in typical Oslo chic. Expensive but restrained. And warm. But, unlike Birta, there was something not entirely contained about the young mother: a vague sense of chaos. Birta recognised it as the consequence of motherhood; that a substantial fraction of the woman’s life was no longer hers to control and Birta wondered what that must feel like.

She turned back to watch the trams and the passers-by. She had never had children. She had never divided herself. And she never would. She had chosen career and herself above all else. And now she sat under the pale Norwegian sky, watching the trams pass and glancing over at the woman and her two children and felt a vague ache in her chest.

This was futile. Sentimental wandering. She was annoyed with her own self-indulgence since she’d arrived. Like the trip to Holmenkollen.

Birta had not planned to visit Holmenkollen, but she had felt the need as soon as she had approached Oslo. She had driven overnight and had approached the city along the Mosseveien highway that ran along the shore, as the day had broken painfully beautiful in deep red and purple-blue silk over the Oslofjord. She had parked in a municipal car park on the outskirts of the city and had taken the T-Bane train to Holmenkollen and mingled with the handful of off-season tourists at the ski centre. Like the tourists, she had looked out over the city from the top of the ski jump. But it had been the circuit around the centre, the one used for the biathlon, that she had come to see. One more time. It had been a pointless exercise and so unlike her. And now she sat in the centre of Oslo surrendering to pangs of jealousy as she watched a woman fuss over her children.

This was not what she was here for. She was in Oslo on business, not to sightsee or for indulgent self-reflection. She paid in cash for her coffee and left without another glance at the woman and her children.

The sun was already low and the long Nordic winter night would come soon. It would be dark. Time for her meeting.