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The Ice Palace
A new edition of what is commonly seen as the legendary Norwegian writer's masterpiece. Siss and Unn are new friends - so new that they have spent only one whole evening in each other's company. But so profound is that evening that when Unn inexplicably disappears Siss's world is shattered. Siss's struggle with her fidelity to the memory of her friend and Unn's fatal exploration of the strange, terrifyingly beautiful frozen waterfall that is the Ice Palace are described in prose of a lyrical economy that ranks among the most memorable achievements of modern literature. Tarjei Vesaas is regarded as one of the finest writers ever to have come out of Scandinavia - he is notable for having been nominated for the Nobel Prize three times and has been considered one of the greatest prose stylists never to have won. Nevertheless, his reputation is secure and growing all the time. Peter Owen has long considered The Ice Palace to be the greatest work ever to have come from his publishing house, which boasts seven Nobel Prize winners on its list.
192 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1963
386 people are currently reading
32260 people want to read
About the author
Tarjei Vesaas
82 books409 followersTarjei Vesaas was a Norwegian poet and novelist. Written in Nynorsk, his work is characterized by simple, terse, and symbolic prose. His stories often cover simple rural people that undergo a severe psychological drama and who according to critics are described with immense psychological insight. Commonly dealing with themes such as death, guilt, angst, and other deep and intractable human emotions, the Norwegian natural landscape is a prevalent feature in his works. His debut was in 1923 with Children of Humans (Menneskebonn), but he had his breakthrough in 1934 with The Great Cycle (Det store spelet). His mastery of the nynorsk language, landsmål (see Norwegian language), has contributed to its acceptance as a medium of world class literature.
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December 11, 2011
In such a short amount of time and in so few, yet potent, words, Vesaas delivers a chilling, metaphor-driven tale of loss set in the dense winters of Norway. You really should read this book. It is a very quick read, but it will remain with you long after you finish the last page.
Vesaas, who was a decorated poet as well as a novelist, delivers a fresh, poetic and concise prose that damn near flows off the page. The real majesty however, is in the way he crafts an environment that reads like a living, breathing character. The snowy landscapes that blanket this novel, and the Ice Palace itself, are just as important characters as the two female leads themselves as Vesaas illustrates them in layers of metaphoric beauty. Also, his ethereal imagery will make you feel like there is a savage winter storm just beyond your window regardless of the actual weather outside.
This novel reads like a long form poem as there is so much below the surface and the actual words. It is filled with symbols and metaphors that are very direct to the plot and characters and open up a much broader understanding of Siss and her tribulations. While the prose is swift and the novel is short, you would do well to slow down and really examine what Vesaas has written much as you would do with any poem. Without giving anything away, the ice palace found in the novel can be viewed on many different levels; from a symbol of several of the characters, as death, or even as the novel itself. I don’t want to go into it as not to provide spoilers but after reading this I felt cheated that I didn’t read this for a class and didn’t have an essay to formulate as I had so much to say about all of Vesaas’ hidden messages.
This is a near perfect, and very teach-able, novel. It calls up the nostalgic feeling of adolescence, dazzles you with it’s simple and direct poetry, provides food for thought, constantly keeps things fresh as the style shifts around (one chapter is just a short poem), plus it practically has its own soundtrack with the vivid cracking of ice and as it’s hard not to image a woodwind composition playing after all the talk of woodwind players in the last third of the novel. Oh, and there is some terrifying bits about walking down the road in opaque darkness. This novel is powerful and chilling (sorry, after all the descriptions of icy cold I had to include at least one 'cold' pun).
5/5
Vesaas, who was a decorated poet as well as a novelist, delivers a fresh, poetic and concise prose that damn near flows off the page. The real majesty however, is in the way he crafts an environment that reads like a living, breathing character. The snowy landscapes that blanket this novel, and the Ice Palace itself, are just as important characters as the two female leads themselves as Vesaas illustrates them in layers of metaphoric beauty. Also, his ethereal imagery will make you feel like there is a savage winter storm just beyond your window regardless of the actual weather outside.
This novel reads like a long form poem as there is so much below the surface and the actual words. It is filled with symbols and metaphors that are very direct to the plot and characters and open up a much broader understanding of Siss and her tribulations. While the prose is swift and the novel is short, you would do well to slow down and really examine what Vesaas has written much as you would do with any poem. Without giving anything away, the ice palace found in the novel can be viewed on many different levels; from a symbol of several of the characters, as death, or even as the novel itself. I don’t want to go into it as not to provide spoilers but after reading this I felt cheated that I didn’t read this for a class and didn’t have an essay to formulate as I had so much to say about all of Vesaas’ hidden messages.
This is a near perfect, and very teach-able, novel. It calls up the nostalgic feeling of adolescence, dazzles you with it’s simple and direct poetry, provides food for thought, constantly keeps things fresh as the style shifts around (one chapter is just a short poem), plus it practically has its own soundtrack with the vivid cracking of ice and as it’s hard not to image a woodwind composition playing after all the talk of woodwind players in the last third of the novel. Oh, and there is some terrifying bits about walking down the road in opaque darkness. This novel is powerful and chilling (sorry, after all the descriptions of icy cold I had to include at least one 'cold' pun).
5/5
November 13, 2023
The Ice Palace depicts a quite unusual psychological climate.
Shocked by disappearance of her friend Siss experiences a deep psychological trauma…
The ice palace creates an atmosphere of icy Gothic and it literally exudes gelid charms…
So under a mental stress Siss gives a vow:
And this promise is an extremely heavy burden. It doesn’t let go.
But spring comes and ice starts melting…
Loneliness is freezing.
Shocked by disappearance of her friend Siss experiences a deep psychological trauma…
The ice construction rises above them, enigmatic, powerful, its pinnacles disappearing into the darkness and the winter cloud drift. It seems prepared to stand eternally… There is something secret here. They bring out what sorrows they may have and transfer them to this midnight play of light and suspicion of death… The men are lost in the game at the ice palace. They seem possessed, searching feverishly for something precious that has come to grief, yet involved themselves. They are tired, grave men, giving themselves over as sacrifices to an enchantment, saying: It is here. They stand at the foot of the ice walls with tense faces, ready to break into a song of mourning before the closed, compelling palace.
The ice palace creates an atmosphere of icy Gothic and it literally exudes gelid charms…
So under a mental stress Siss gives a vow:
“I promise to think about no one but you. To think about everything I know about you. To think about you at home and at school and on the way to school. To think about you all day long, and if I wake up at night.”
And this promise is an extremely heavy burden. It doesn’t let go.
But spring comes and ice starts melting…
No one can witness the fall of the ice palace. It takes place at night, after all the children are in bed.
Loneliness is freezing.
April 5, 2022
[Edited for typos 4/4/22]
I guess I will be in the minority in giving this novel a ‘3’ when it is highly rated on GR. In addition, this novel from 1963 is considered a classic of Norwegian literature. It won the Nordic Council's Literature Prize for the best novel that year. In my edition Doris Lessing wrote a blurb praising the lyrical writing.
The blurbs tell us the simple plot, but I will still say SPOILERS FOLLOW.
We know the story is focused on two 11-year-old girls before we begin reading. One girl is new to school. She has just moved to the village to live with her aunt after the death of her unmarried mother. She shuns interaction with her schoolmates, even standing by herself along a wall at recess.
The other girl has the exact opposite personality: a social leader who is looked up to and followed by everyone. The two girls eventually meet at the new girl’s house and the new girl tells the other girl that she has a secret and is afraid she will not go to heaven.
The very next day the new girl skips school and goes to see a giant ice cave formed by freezing water around a waterfall. The girl is never seen again despite days of searching.
The popular girl is devastated by the disappearance of the other girl and essentially takes on her personality as a form of grieving. She abandons her old friends and stands against the wall at recess. Her teacher, her parents and the deceased girl’s aunt all try in various ways to help her out of this depression: a kind of emotional ice palace.
I appreciated the simple lyrical writing, at times almost like poetry. The story kept my interest, but I thought it a got a bit repetitive or drawn-out and the whole story became too much like a fable. It seemed to me to stretch plausibility that one girl would become so obsessed or infatuated with the other girl after a few hours during one evening at her house (even though some odd stuff goes on). I felt I was reading a fable by Paulo Coelho, which I'm not a fan of.
The author wrote a dozen novels, almost all of which have been translated into English. He wrote in Nynorsk, a dialect of Norwegian.
A frozen waterfall in Slovakia from previews.123rf.com/images/jarino47
Norwegian Village in Lofoten Islands by Marilar Irastorza from c.stocksy.com
The author from alchetron.com
I guess I will be in the minority in giving this novel a ‘3’ when it is highly rated on GR. In addition, this novel from 1963 is considered a classic of Norwegian literature. It won the Nordic Council's Literature Prize for the best novel that year. In my edition Doris Lessing wrote a blurb praising the lyrical writing.
The blurbs tell us the simple plot, but I will still say SPOILERS FOLLOW.
We know the story is focused on two 11-year-old girls before we begin reading. One girl is new to school. She has just moved to the village to live with her aunt after the death of her unmarried mother. She shuns interaction with her schoolmates, even standing by herself along a wall at recess.
The other girl has the exact opposite personality: a social leader who is looked up to and followed by everyone. The two girls eventually meet at the new girl’s house and the new girl tells the other girl that she has a secret and is afraid she will not go to heaven.
The very next day the new girl skips school and goes to see a giant ice cave formed by freezing water around a waterfall. The girl is never seen again despite days of searching.
The popular girl is devastated by the disappearance of the other girl and essentially takes on her personality as a form of grieving. She abandons her old friends and stands against the wall at recess. Her teacher, her parents and the deceased girl’s aunt all try in various ways to help her out of this depression: a kind of emotional ice palace.
I appreciated the simple lyrical writing, at times almost like poetry. The story kept my interest, but I thought it a got a bit repetitive or drawn-out and the whole story became too much like a fable. It seemed to me to stretch plausibility that one girl would become so obsessed or infatuated with the other girl after a few hours during one evening at her house (even though some odd stuff goes on). I felt I was reading a fable by Paulo Coelho, which I'm not a fan of.
The author wrote a dozen novels, almost all of which have been translated into English. He wrote in Nynorsk, a dialect of Norwegian.
A frozen waterfall in Slovakia from previews.123rf.com/images/jarino47
Norwegian Village in Lofoten Islands by Marilar Irastorza from c.stocksy.com
The author from alchetron.com
September 22, 2024
3 "at times hypnotic, at times beautiful but mostly stilted" stars !!
I glanced and saw many five star ratings for this book. I ask myself "What have I missed? What have I misunderstood?"
I decide that this book simply did not resonate deeply for me.
I loved the descriptions of the changing of the season in a small Scandinavian town and the use of the frozen waterfall as something monstrous, profound, beautiful but inanimate. This is the way I felt about the book as well. Inanimate.....too cold to allow near my warm heart. I was not moved nor did I believe what is happening. I did not believe in the thought processes of Siss. I did not believe in her grieving. It was lovely art-house but not flesh and blood emotional processing. I did not believe in the children. I did not believe in the adults. I did not believe in the thinking or the dialogue. I did not in the end, believe in this book or the author's vision.
The only thing I believed in was the landscape and the hugeness of the waterfall.
Strangely, this was enough and had to be enough. In this landscape, survival is key.
I walked through this Nordic exhibition, nodded briefly, somewhat appreciatively and will move on to something that is deeper and more meaningful to me. In other words, I wanted to penetrate the Ice and move deeper but simply could not.
I glanced and saw many five star ratings for this book. I ask myself "What have I missed? What have I misunderstood?"
I decide that this book simply did not resonate deeply for me.
I loved the descriptions of the changing of the season in a small Scandinavian town and the use of the frozen waterfall as something monstrous, profound, beautiful but inanimate. This is the way I felt about the book as well. Inanimate.....too cold to allow near my warm heart. I was not moved nor did I believe what is happening. I did not believe in the thought processes of Siss. I did not believe in her grieving. It was lovely art-house but not flesh and blood emotional processing. I did not believe in the children. I did not believe in the adults. I did not believe in the thinking or the dialogue. I did not in the end, believe in this book or the author's vision.
The only thing I believed in was the landscape and the hugeness of the waterfall.
Strangely, this was enough and had to be enough. In this landscape, survival is key.
I walked through this Nordic exhibition, nodded briefly, somewhat appreciatively and will move on to something that is deeper and more meaningful to me. In other words, I wanted to penetrate the Ice and move deeper but simply could not.
July 23, 2013
“Promise in deepest snow from Siss to Unn:
I promise to think about no one but you.”
Sometimes, only a gleaming glance is enough.
Siss and Unn, two eleven-year old girls living in an isolated, rural community somewhere in Scandinavia, need only a single evening together to forge an uncommon friendship that will change their lives irreparably.
When four eyes full of gleams and radiance beneath their lashes, filling the looking glass, shine into each other, words become redundant. A disturbing meeting, charged with powerful silences and unsaid secrets, unites the girls beyond humane nature in an unbreakable bond, frozen in time.
There is nothing childlike in this deceivingly simple tale, nothing soft or tender. The spell-binding description of a perpetually glacial scenery, where twigs weep iced drops and icicles melt in pools of tears, is as distressingly beautiful as it is ruthless and brutally cold, devoid of life.
The concise, lyrical narrative evokes the Japanese haiku style, where the misleading simplicity of the text is in fact overflowing with symbolism and metaphors worthy of close reading, making of this brief novel a gem in form of a prose poem.
It is precisely in this sombre setting, full of darkness lurking in recondite corners, reinforced with this sharp writing style, where the main character of the novel is presented: The eerie giant structure formed by a frozen waterfall up in the lake, called The Ice Palace. Either sanctuary or mausoleum, it arises as the eternally snow covered bridge that defies death, guilt and angst, linking Siss and Unn forever. There’s only one thing to ask in exchange for this everlasting token of friendship: A promise. Siss must never forget.
The pieces are all set for the magic to start. Siss, the popular leader of her peers at school and the beloved daughter of a well-off family, begins the journey with no return to become Unn, the introverted, mysterious girl, who leads an isolated life with her aunt, wrapped up in an irresistible and unsettling aura. Two gleaming faces in a mirror become one in a radiant moment, memory and dreams are fused into an impossible reality and Unn becomes Siss and Siss becomes Unn, scorching twin souls emerge amidst the implacable coldness of their existence, producing a miracle. Or a curse. For this world is made for the living, and that is a lesson Siss will have to learn if she wants to break free from a heavy burden which is drowning her in the mesmerizing but already thawing chambers of The Ice Palace.
This is a sublime piece of art which masterfully portrays the intensity of new discovered feelings peaking at an early age and the necessity to merge the opposing forces involved in the process of growing up to become a whole being, and also to accept emptiness and loss as facets of life, even if that means getting rid of a part of oneself.
The shattered ice might melt and cease to be, but the power of memory can bring back frozen images of icicles and shiny drops of water dancing together in the flood of light that the dilated pupil caught in a blinding and timeless moment.
“‘It’s not right for you to go on as you as you are. It’s not like you. You’re a different person.’Don’t answer. It’s not meant to be answered. But it’s like the gleaming of stars in a well. And no explanation.”
I promise to think about no one but you.”
Sometimes, only a gleaming glance is enough.
Siss and Unn, two eleven-year old girls living in an isolated, rural community somewhere in Scandinavia, need only a single evening together to forge an uncommon friendship that will change their lives irreparably.
When four eyes full of gleams and radiance beneath their lashes, filling the looking glass, shine into each other, words become redundant. A disturbing meeting, charged with powerful silences and unsaid secrets, unites the girls beyond humane nature in an unbreakable bond, frozen in time.
There is nothing childlike in this deceivingly simple tale, nothing soft or tender. The spell-binding description of a perpetually glacial scenery, where twigs weep iced drops and icicles melt in pools of tears, is as distressingly beautiful as it is ruthless and brutally cold, devoid of life.
The concise, lyrical narrative evokes the Japanese haiku style, where the misleading simplicity of the text is in fact overflowing with symbolism and metaphors worthy of close reading, making of this brief novel a gem in form of a prose poem.
It is precisely in this sombre setting, full of darkness lurking in recondite corners, reinforced with this sharp writing style, where the main character of the novel is presented: The eerie giant structure formed by a frozen waterfall up in the lake, called The Ice Palace. Either sanctuary or mausoleum, it arises as the eternally snow covered bridge that defies death, guilt and angst, linking Siss and Unn forever. There’s only one thing to ask in exchange for this everlasting token of friendship: A promise. Siss must never forget.
The pieces are all set for the magic to start. Siss, the popular leader of her peers at school and the beloved daughter of a well-off family, begins the journey with no return to become Unn, the introverted, mysterious girl, who leads an isolated life with her aunt, wrapped up in an irresistible and unsettling aura. Two gleaming faces in a mirror become one in a radiant moment, memory and dreams are fused into an impossible reality and Unn becomes Siss and Siss becomes Unn, scorching twin souls emerge amidst the implacable coldness of their existence, producing a miracle. Or a curse. For this world is made for the living, and that is a lesson Siss will have to learn if she wants to break free from a heavy burden which is drowning her in the mesmerizing but already thawing chambers of The Ice Palace.
This is a sublime piece of art which masterfully portrays the intensity of new discovered feelings peaking at an early age and the necessity to merge the opposing forces involved in the process of growing up to become a whole being, and also to accept emptiness and loss as facets of life, even if that means getting rid of a part of oneself.
The shattered ice might melt and cease to be, but the power of memory can bring back frozen images of icicles and shiny drops of water dancing together in the flood of light that the dilated pupil caught in a blinding and timeless moment.
“‘It’s not right for you to go on as you as you are. It’s not like you. You’re a different person.’Don’t answer. It’s not meant to be answered. But it’s like the gleaming of stars in a well. And no explanation.”
April 15, 2018
Sometimes, when you lose someone, the loss is so bewildering and heavy, you have to decide whether to break off a part of yourself in letting them go, or be pulled under with them.
It takes courage and experience to take the limb, or aortic chamber, and snap it off, knowing the shards of ice will splinter and wound. Knowing, each time you try to wiggle that finger or listen to the incomplete thud of your heartbeat, you will painfully remember what is missing.
It seems almost easier to become heavy with cemented boots. To allow icy water to numb, and then, oddly warm, slip down with surprising ease to the bottom of your grief.
It is a decision an 11 year old shouldn't have to make, but that is the cruel heart of this story. Siss and Unn have a new, intense friendship that is inexplicably, almost magically, binding. Through the frozen caverns of this narrative, much is subtle and unsaid in sparse prose that is at once minimalist and full of life's truth. When Unn, a mysterious girl who has recently gone through the traumatic death of her mother, disappears, Siss has the perplexing responsibility of being one of the only people in the world who 'knew' her. The burden of Unn's memory threatens tragedy with each crack in the fjord's ice, a dangerous potential looming precariously close to a girl who is ill-prepared.
The ice palace is a real place in this story, but is also symbolic with its cold rooms that drip freezing tears, its glittering beauty that seduces a troubled girl with hypnotic pull. It represents death in its lifeless grandeur. If you back up a bit, it represents even the book itself. Careful where you stand. It might be alluring, but it's slippery, and it's melting.
I was entranced by the palace. I walked in, full of wonder just like an 11 year old girl, totally unprepared for this feeling - I'm home. Could it be that this Norwegian author penned this in 1963, just for me? With exquisite tension, wintery darkness, and stark naked language, Tarjei Vesaas has created a chilling masterpiece. Dare you enter? Make sure you bundle up first...
It takes courage and experience to take the limb, or aortic chamber, and snap it off, knowing the shards of ice will splinter and wound. Knowing, each time you try to wiggle that finger or listen to the incomplete thud of your heartbeat, you will painfully remember what is missing.
It seems almost easier to become heavy with cemented boots. To allow icy water to numb, and then, oddly warm, slip down with surprising ease to the bottom of your grief.
It is a decision an 11 year old shouldn't have to make, but that is the cruel heart of this story. Siss and Unn have a new, intense friendship that is inexplicably, almost magically, binding. Through the frozen caverns of this narrative, much is subtle and unsaid in sparse prose that is at once minimalist and full of life's truth. When Unn, a mysterious girl who has recently gone through the traumatic death of her mother, disappears, Siss has the perplexing responsibility of being one of the only people in the world who 'knew' her. The burden of Unn's memory threatens tragedy with each crack in the fjord's ice, a dangerous potential looming precariously close to a girl who is ill-prepared.
The ice palace is a real place in this story, but is also symbolic with its cold rooms that drip freezing tears, its glittering beauty that seduces a troubled girl with hypnotic pull. It represents death in its lifeless grandeur. If you back up a bit, it represents even the book itself. Careful where you stand. It might be alluring, but it's slippery, and it's melting.
I was entranced by the palace. I walked in, full of wonder just like an 11 year old girl, totally unprepared for this feeling - I'm home. Could it be that this Norwegian author penned this in 1963, just for me? With exquisite tension, wintery darkness, and stark naked language, Tarjei Vesaas has created a chilling masterpiece. Dare you enter? Make sure you bundle up first...
January 16, 2018
We have a significant amount of snow on the ground for the first time in four years. With this influx of winter weather, it is comforting to read books about snow and colder climates. I have seen a number of goodreads friends review Tarjei Vesaas' definitive book the Ice Palace. In need of a foreign prize award winner for classics bingo, I decided to read his masterpiece for myself. Short in length, this novella is poignant in its prose as Vesaas writes of grieving and survivors guilt' in this harrowing coming of age tale.
Siss is eleven years old and the most popular girl in her school. An only child, she is also the center of her parents' attention. One day her feelings toward everyone around her change when a new girl named Unn joins Siss' class at school. A lonely girl by nature, Unn is ignored by everyone in the class, except Siss. The girls decide to meet at Unn's house after school on one darkening autumn evening and commence on an electric friendship. Unn reveals to Siss that her mother died of an illness six months earlier and that even at eleven years old she does not know who her father is. Coping with these feelings swirling inside of her, Unn has yet to openly discuss her station in life with anyone, that is except for Siss. Despite being the leader of everyone at school, Siss is at heart lonely as well. It seems divinely ordained that the two girls have been brought together, and now they share a deep secret that not even Unn's Aunt or Siss' parents are privileged to know. Together, the girls appear to be on the cusp of navigating through their teenage years without much angst.
This powerful friendship ends before it has a chance to begin. The next morning, Unn decides to navigate an ice palace on her way to school. In Norway, ice is as thick as stone and little is capable of penetrating through it. It is inside of this ice palace structure unspoiled by nature that Unn is able to meditate on her feelings about her mother, her father, her new friendship with Siss, and her inherent loneliness. Almost by design, Unn falls through the ice and drowns. Siss' new friendship is not meant to be and, through a despondent winter, she grieves in her solitude. In addition to the ice structure, Siss has erected an almost impenetrable barrier around herself that not even her parents are able to crack. Coping with her own survivors' guilt while being on the cusp of adolescence, Siss is unable to strike a balance between preserving Unn's memory and moving on with her own life.
Vesaas has created a harrowing story through his exquisite prose and use of an ice palace as both a character and a metaphor for Siss' boundaries in sharing her feelings with others. I read the English version translated by Elizabeth Rokkan and she has done a magical job in preserving the prose in translation. Versaas' novella is an ode to his native country of Norway and much of the land that has been unspoiled by development. In addition to the ice palace that is both sparkling yet deadly, Versaas describes native birds and plants who sound like a woodwind section to an orchestra. The sounds of the Norwegian countryside enhance the beauty of this novel that is otherwise harrowing and borders on the metaphysical thoughts of an adolescent girl.
Tarjei Versaas was a runner up for the 1964 Nobel Prize for his work on this hauntingly beautiful novel. When I think of an ice palace, the first thing that comes to mind is Elsa's creation in the Disney version of Hans Christen Andersen's Elsa the Snow Queen. Elsa's construction designed as a boundary between herself and the world, and Versaas' ice palace is similar both physically and emotionally. His prose in describing the ice is chilling yet full of beauty, which is the image I see with the untarnished snow on the ground before me. I had never read one of Versaas' novels before, and The Ice Palace is a poignant introduction to his work, which also includes the 1952 award winning The Winds. An ode to Norwegian nature and adolescent friendship, Versaas' work is one that will stay with me for a long while.
4+ stars
Siss is eleven years old and the most popular girl in her school. An only child, she is also the center of her parents' attention. One day her feelings toward everyone around her change when a new girl named Unn joins Siss' class at school. A lonely girl by nature, Unn is ignored by everyone in the class, except Siss. The girls decide to meet at Unn's house after school on one darkening autumn evening and commence on an electric friendship. Unn reveals to Siss that her mother died of an illness six months earlier and that even at eleven years old she does not know who her father is. Coping with these feelings swirling inside of her, Unn has yet to openly discuss her station in life with anyone, that is except for Siss. Despite being the leader of everyone at school, Siss is at heart lonely as well. It seems divinely ordained that the two girls have been brought together, and now they share a deep secret that not even Unn's Aunt or Siss' parents are privileged to know. Together, the girls appear to be on the cusp of navigating through their teenage years without much angst.
This powerful friendship ends before it has a chance to begin. The next morning, Unn decides to navigate an ice palace on her way to school. In Norway, ice is as thick as stone and little is capable of penetrating through it. It is inside of this ice palace structure unspoiled by nature that Unn is able to meditate on her feelings about her mother, her father, her new friendship with Siss, and her inherent loneliness. Almost by design, Unn falls through the ice and drowns. Siss' new friendship is not meant to be and, through a despondent winter, she grieves in her solitude. In addition to the ice structure, Siss has erected an almost impenetrable barrier around herself that not even her parents are able to crack. Coping with her own survivors' guilt while being on the cusp of adolescence, Siss is unable to strike a balance between preserving Unn's memory and moving on with her own life.
Vesaas has created a harrowing story through his exquisite prose and use of an ice palace as both a character and a metaphor for Siss' boundaries in sharing her feelings with others. I read the English version translated by Elizabeth Rokkan and she has done a magical job in preserving the prose in translation. Versaas' novella is an ode to his native country of Norway and much of the land that has been unspoiled by development. In addition to the ice palace that is both sparkling yet deadly, Versaas describes native birds and plants who sound like a woodwind section to an orchestra. The sounds of the Norwegian countryside enhance the beauty of this novel that is otherwise harrowing and borders on the metaphysical thoughts of an adolescent girl.
Tarjei Versaas was a runner up for the 1964 Nobel Prize for his work on this hauntingly beautiful novel. When I think of an ice palace, the first thing that comes to mind is Elsa's creation in the Disney version of Hans Christen Andersen's Elsa the Snow Queen. Elsa's construction designed as a boundary between herself and the world, and Versaas' ice palace is similar both physically and emotionally. His prose in describing the ice is chilling yet full of beauty, which is the image I see with the untarnished snow on the ground before me. I had never read one of Versaas' novels before, and The Ice Palace is a poignant introduction to his work, which also includes the 1952 award winning The Winds. An ode to Norwegian nature and adolescent friendship, Versaas' work is one that will stay with me for a long while.
4+ stars
October 21, 2015
When a few dotted lines can cuff my heart into a promise and bind my palms over it in sombre armory, keep me lain in its pristine shadows for hours and yet freeze the time in crystalline imagery, I beam at the prospect: the prospect of living in that promise; that promise which lights up with the chandeliers of frosty realizations hanging from the ceiling of dreams and a sea of incomplete chances freezing my being.
A life is made of promises; some made to self, some to others. And like a diffident fuel, it comes into play when life derails to reserve. Aren’t all the promises tested at the brink of uncertainty? Aren’t all the promises repainted at the threshold of patience? Aren’t all the promises questioned at the gates of survival?
What do Siss* and Unn**, all of eleven, seal during their first (and only) conversation, on a chilly evening within the warm confines of a small wooden room, occasionally interfered by murmuring winter winds and distracting snowflakes? An unspoken promise: a promise that outgrows their initial inhibitions in school, their hushed blossoming of mutual admiration, their trepid steps towards each other, their solitary evening of joint reflections, their singular moment of shocking adolescence, their crimson welcome of next day sun, their sub-consciously chosen divergent paths, their uninitiated severance of hearts and their union over terminated breath.
A life being led under the cold sky of a lost one may occasionally ruffle up with the day breeze of sunny developments but the night brings it back into the icy fold; the ice, after all, is indicative of pain, without which there is no happiness. Kites suspended from bruised threads alone, can extend a supportive landing to another, without feeling intimidated. One grows more in pain than in joy. One lives more in absence than in presence. One sings more in dreams than in reality.
Vesaas might have viewed life as gossamer of renewed promises but never without one; much like the Ice Palace that stood subdued in summer, embracing dissolution but tirelessly raising its head again in winter without exception. Vesaas must have experienced the tingling calmness that a battered palm transfers upon touching a healthy skin; much like how a tumultuous, windy evening of tight-lipped conversation can be the analgesic for months of revitalizing discoveries. Vesaas must have witnessed a beautiful painting becoming priceless with a careless but feisty stroke of brush; much like the reinstating zephyr of souls, that with or without their presence, turn daily life, aromatic.
I have been engulfed in the ephemeral presence of few people who never returned; but their touch stands frozen in my heart. No infernos of absence and no flames of silence can melt away their existence. But they do melt; melt within the searching glow of my fogged eyes. And seep a little more into me; filling the reservoirs with more potency to keep the promise. Yes, the promise.
----
In Norse,
*Siss is an abbreviation for Sissel, which is translated as "without sight".
**Unn is translated as "the one who is loved" yet it can be read as the prefix un-loved as in abandoned.
Note: This Article throws an interesting angle of 'metaphysical detective fiction' to this novel and sets some cells to work.
A life is made of promises; some made to self, some to others. And like a diffident fuel, it comes into play when life derails to reserve. Aren’t all the promises tested at the brink of uncertainty? Aren’t all the promises repainted at the threshold of patience? Aren’t all the promises questioned at the gates of survival?
What do Siss* and Unn**, all of eleven, seal during their first (and only) conversation, on a chilly evening within the warm confines of a small wooden room, occasionally interfered by murmuring winter winds and distracting snowflakes? An unspoken promise: a promise that outgrows their initial inhibitions in school, their hushed blossoming of mutual admiration, their trepid steps towards each other, their solitary evening of joint reflections, their singular moment of shocking adolescence, their crimson welcome of next day sun, their sub-consciously chosen divergent paths, their uninitiated severance of hearts and their union over terminated breath.
A life being led under the cold sky of a lost one may occasionally ruffle up with the day breeze of sunny developments but the night brings it back into the icy fold; the ice, after all, is indicative of pain, without which there is no happiness. Kites suspended from bruised threads alone, can extend a supportive landing to another, without feeling intimidated. One grows more in pain than in joy. One lives more in absence than in presence. One sings more in dreams than in reality.
Vesaas might have viewed life as gossamer of renewed promises but never without one; much like the Ice Palace that stood subdued in summer, embracing dissolution but tirelessly raising its head again in winter without exception. Vesaas must have experienced the tingling calmness that a battered palm transfers upon touching a healthy skin; much like how a tumultuous, windy evening of tight-lipped conversation can be the analgesic for months of revitalizing discoveries. Vesaas must have witnessed a beautiful painting becoming priceless with a careless but feisty stroke of brush; much like the reinstating zephyr of souls, that with or without their presence, turn daily life, aromatic.
I have been engulfed in the ephemeral presence of few people who never returned; but their touch stands frozen in my heart. No infernos of absence and no flames of silence can melt away their existence. But they do melt; melt within the searching glow of my fogged eyes. And seep a little more into me; filling the reservoirs with more potency to keep the promise. Yes, the promise.
----
In Norse,
*Siss is an abbreviation for Sissel, which is translated as "without sight".
**Unn is translated as "the one who is loved" yet it can be read as the prefix un-loved as in abandoned.
Note: This Article throws an interesting angle of 'metaphysical detective fiction' to this novel and sets some cells to work.
September 20, 2018
A wonderfully cathartic read for anyone who, like me, has been forced to sit through Frozen one too many times. Like a bleak Scandi rewrite, this also features a lonely girl who makes her way to a magical palace of ice in the wilderness, except that here, instead of belting out a jaunty power-ballad, she succumbs satisfyingly to hypothermia. What's that, Elsa? Oh, the cold does bother you, after all? Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you stripped down to a minidress and started harmonising.
Anyway, the two girls herein, Elsa and An—er, I mean Siss and Unn—are not sisters, but rather friends in a remote community in rural Norway. In fact they have only just met, but in Vesaas's crystalline, delicate prose their relationship is charged from the very first with intense unspoken meaning. Siss can feel Unn's gaze on her in the schoolroom as a ‘sweet tingling in her body’; when they go to Unn's house, Unn locks the door and makes them both undress. There is something sexual about their relationship, but it is the ununderstood sexuality of one of Freud's case studies – for the girls are only eleven years old. Unn has a terrible secret, one which (she thinks) means she will not go to heaven.
The ice palace of the title is a natural structure that has built up around a half-frozen waterfall in the woods outside the village. The passages describing Unn's exploration of this eerie place are among the most extraordinary and poetic in the book – indeed the poetry so weighs on the prose that eventually one chapter is completely overtaken:
Tarjei Vesaas is sometimes described as a modernist, but at moments in this novel – which is as stark and bare as a tree in midwinter – he seems more like a symbolist. Small elements of the natural world are freighted with enormous coded significance, and much is left unsaid: we never find out what Unn's great secret was, nor is the girls' mutual attraction ever really explained. Yet the prose itself is appealingly clear and straightforward, an effect that must have been heightened in the original by the fact that Vesaas wrote, unusually, in Nynorsk, instead of the traditional literary dialect of Bokmål. The contemporary English translation from Elizabeth Rokkan reads entirely naturally, I thought, and gives you a very clear idea of why Vesaas is considered such a giant of Norwegian letters.
Unn never comes back from her trip to the ice palace, and for Siss it becomes a symbol of the danger and awe of the frightening natural world – a symbol to which she knows she must eventually journey herself. What follows is by turns mysterious and touching, as Vesaas finds his own way to explain – ironically – how to ‘let it go’, but this time completely unburdened by clichés, heavy-handedness, or musical snowmen.
Anyway, the two girls herein, Elsa and An—er, I mean Siss and Unn—are not sisters, but rather friends in a remote community in rural Norway. In fact they have only just met, but in Vesaas's crystalline, delicate prose their relationship is charged from the very first with intense unspoken meaning. Siss can feel Unn's gaze on her in the schoolroom as a ‘sweet tingling in her body’; when they go to Unn's house, Unn locks the door and makes them both undress. There is something sexual about their relationship, but it is the ununderstood sexuality of one of Freud's case studies – for the girls are only eleven years old. Unn has a terrible secret, one which (she thinks) means she will not go to heaven.
The ice palace of the title is a natural structure that has built up around a half-frozen waterfall in the woods outside the village. The passages describing Unn's exploration of this eerie place are among the most extraordinary and poetic in the book – indeed the poetry so weighs on the prose that eventually one chapter is completely overtaken:
As we stand the snow falls thicker.
Your sleeve turns white.
My sleeve turns white.
They move between us like
snow-covered bridges.
Tarjei Vesaas is sometimes described as a modernist, but at moments in this novel – which is as stark and bare as a tree in midwinter – he seems more like a symbolist. Small elements of the natural world are freighted with enormous coded significance, and much is left unsaid: we never find out what Unn's great secret was, nor is the girls' mutual attraction ever really explained. Yet the prose itself is appealingly clear and straightforward, an effect that must have been heightened in the original by the fact that Vesaas wrote, unusually, in Nynorsk, instead of the traditional literary dialect of Bokmål. The contemporary English translation from Elizabeth Rokkan reads entirely naturally, I thought, and gives you a very clear idea of why Vesaas is considered such a giant of Norwegian letters.
Unn never comes back from her trip to the ice palace, and for Siss it becomes a symbol of the danger and awe of the frightening natural world – a symbol to which she knows she must eventually journey herself. What follows is by turns mysterious and touching, as Vesaas finds his own way to explain – ironically – how to ‘let it go’, but this time completely unburdened by clichés, heavy-handedness, or musical snowmen.
August 10, 2019
Promised you a miracle
April 16, 2018
The Ice palace takes place in the raw scenery of the Norwegian late autumn. The evening roaring heralds the strengthening of the ice covering the nearby lake, and in the shadow, on the roadsides unnamed creatures are skulking. But you are not afraid of darkness, Siss, are you? There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’ll envelop you with soft coat and then you can hear its indistinct voice. It loves to play sometimes with you, but you know all its clever tricks, all these whispers and rustles. There is only one thing, you just can’t run away. Because when you once start then you will never stop. So go, Siss. Unn’s cottage is very close. And you are going to have a wonderful time.
Leader of school pack Siss and timid and a bit mysterious Unn. The story of their friendship is very short - just one evening. During this meeting Siss and Unn, uncomfortably like new born horses attempting to stand on owns legs, are trying to make friendship, shyly and awkwardly examine own faces in the mirror. Something pulls them and repulses, girls trying to talk about the secret from Unn’s past, but this scares away Siss, and on the next day Unn takes her secret to the ice palace.
View of the palace is absolutely stunning. Shiny, cold and inaccessible and yet so tempting. Dainty, lace decorating, slender columns, openwork lace. Chambers sparkling with colors, white, blue, green. Somewhere in the distance a waterfall roars and in the icy walls - trapped eye of the sun. Come in, Unn. Get some rest.
Vesaas is for sure one of my greatest discoveries of this year. Some writers need plenty pages, hundreds words on it to say nothing while he writes with such an effortless style, tells with such simplicity and at the same time touches you deeply. Description of the palace, cold and snowy landscapes are really breathtaking. You feel that your fingers froze almost completely, you barely can turn pages. Metaphorical, full of symbols, minimalist writing about growing up, loss and attempts to come to terms with it. But like after storm comes a calm, so winter has to bowing to spring. And like sun releases chained with ice land so time will melt frozen crumb in the girl's heart. And visit at Ice Palace at the end of the winter will be like catharsis.
September 25, 2020
As eleven-year-old Siss heads out in to the darkness of a late autumn evening, she hears ice crack down by the river.
It's been an unusually cold autumn and an unlikely ice palace of epic proportions has formed from a frozen waterfall, and the dark and the cold have dominated the villagers' minds.
Siss's mind is particularly focused on the elements as she walks alone, near the remote woods, as ice thunders “like gunshot,” in the background, but she is steadfast in her resolve to visit her new friend, Unn.
It's a first play date for the new friends, and when Siss finally arrives at Unn's cottage, it's clear that the girls have an unusual attraction for one another. Their time together is sensual and intimate, despite their young ages and their new acquaintance, but it is cut short by Siss, who feels suddenly overwhelmed by their new relationship and Unn's mysterious hints.
Siss leaves promptly and Unn suffers pangs of doubt. Had she overshared? Did Siss feel the same way? Was she imagining their connection?
Both girls pass a restless night and Unn decides, the following morning, that she can't quite face Siss that day, and makes a plan to go down to see the rumored spectacle of the ice palace, knowing that she'll have the solitude she needs to clear her mind. . .
And, it is just at this part in this strange little novel that this reader sat up really straight in her chair and mumbled holy shit. . .
For, as the ice. . . “thundered and cracked and hardened”. . . and Unn “lay flat on the ice” with her “slim body” as the great phallus of the palace loomed above her. . . the story became positively mesmerizing. Unn wants to enter the ice palace, and even though I was ready to vomit from nerves, I needed her to enter it, too.
It was the only thing that was right, even though it was disobedient and wrong. She could never turn back now. It had to do with Siss and all the good things she could glimpse from now on. If she were to turn away from this, if she were to retreat from the roar down there and return home empty-handed, she would feel a chasm of deprivation, a longing for something she would never find again.
She was aware of nothing but her desire to enter.
And, so, Unn penetrates the palace. . . and becomes a modern day Alice, but instead of a well or a rabbit hole, she enters door after door, fissure after fissure and she just won't stop.
She behaves almost bewitched, and I was under the same spell. I wanted to shout at her GET OUT OF THERE, and at the same time, I needed to know what was in there, too.
After all, we are woodwind players, enchanted by things we cannot resist.
Intrigued??
It's been an unusually cold autumn and an unlikely ice palace of epic proportions has formed from a frozen waterfall, and the dark and the cold have dominated the villagers' minds.
Siss's mind is particularly focused on the elements as she walks alone, near the remote woods, as ice thunders “like gunshot,” in the background, but she is steadfast in her resolve to visit her new friend, Unn.
It's a first play date for the new friends, and when Siss finally arrives at Unn's cottage, it's clear that the girls have an unusual attraction for one another. Their time together is sensual and intimate, despite their young ages and their new acquaintance, but it is cut short by Siss, who feels suddenly overwhelmed by their new relationship and Unn's mysterious hints.
Siss leaves promptly and Unn suffers pangs of doubt. Had she overshared? Did Siss feel the same way? Was she imagining their connection?
Both girls pass a restless night and Unn decides, the following morning, that she can't quite face Siss that day, and makes a plan to go down to see the rumored spectacle of the ice palace, knowing that she'll have the solitude she needs to clear her mind. . .
And, it is just at this part in this strange little novel that this reader sat up really straight in her chair and mumbled holy shit. . .
For, as the ice. . . “thundered and cracked and hardened”. . . and Unn “lay flat on the ice” with her “slim body” as the great phallus of the palace loomed above her. . . the story became positively mesmerizing. Unn wants to enter the ice palace, and even though I was ready to vomit from nerves, I needed her to enter it, too.
It was the only thing that was right, even though it was disobedient and wrong. She could never turn back now. It had to do with Siss and all the good things she could glimpse from now on. If she were to turn away from this, if she were to retreat from the roar down there and return home empty-handed, she would feel a chasm of deprivation, a longing for something she would never find again.
She was aware of nothing but her desire to enter.
And, so, Unn penetrates the palace. . . and becomes a modern day Alice, but instead of a well or a rabbit hole, she enters door after door, fissure after fissure and she just won't stop.
She behaves almost bewitched, and I was under the same spell. I wanted to shout at her GET OUT OF THERE, and at the same time, I needed to know what was in there, too.
After all, we are woodwind players, enchanted by things we cannot resist.
Intrigued??
August 15, 2023
There are some novels where the visual imagery plays out in colour and, in others where the images are better suited, in black and white; just like the old noirs. This short novel, the third book I've read by Vesaas - two works of fiction and a collection of poetry, was the first time I can recall reading anything that evoked thoughts of an Animation. A sort of Norwegian Studio Ghibli. (That would be closer to the realism of The Grave of the Fireflies rather than the fantasy of, say, Spirited Away.)
And it all started as soon as Unn entered the blue/green shimmering ice palace.
Despite all that cold and ice, there is burning brightly the glow of a friendship, if only a brief one, that cascades a warm lyrical emotion over Vasaas's eerie and frozen landscape. Along with the vivid descriptions of the land, the observations look mostly at Siss, who not only has to deal with the vanishing and loss of Unn, but also coming to terms with the realisation that the fun and magical elements of childhood are slowly turning from liquid to vapour. Basically, she is a tween.
No doubt this is a beautiful little story, told in a nice simple prose, but it didn't resonate as strongly with me as it clearly did with a lot of other readers. I found The Birds to be the better of the two novels I've read.
The Penguin Classics edition I read does have a most gorgeous cover though.
March 7, 2022
So, I was sitting in my bed, reading my book, minding my own business, covered in blankets -no central heating in our Greek household since the 2008 financial crisis - and then I realised something stood behind me. There was a grey trunk poking my shoulder, leaving me no choice but to address the elephant in the room.
This book, written by a non-militant bigot, is a mixture of pagan and Christian morality with a non-aggressive and yet intense bias against homosexuality, deemed as a kind of hysteria or aberration that can occur when young people, a girl, in this case, grows in an all-women environment and can be contagious, transmitted and yet cured.
Now first things first. There is a recurring theme in Vesaas's book about outsiders that appear in people's lives, causing mental, emotional, psychological turbulence. Many of his stories depict the struggle to restore things in their previous state of normalcy.
Up to this day when people review "The Ice Palace" seem reluctant to address such issues due to a fear of sexualising the eleven-year-old main characters, two girls, Siss and Unn. But this is a matter of basic human sexual development hence there is nothing exploitative in talking about it.
Unn is the newcomer in Siss's school, an orphaned girl that grew up with her single mother, never met a father, and after her mother's death came to stay with her spinster Auntie. Unn insists on distancing herself from the others and yet there is an obvious attraction between her and her schoolmate, Siss:
"Unn and Siss stood there like two combatants, but it was a silent struggle, a matter between herself and the newcomer. It was not even hinted at. After a while Siss began to feel Unn’s eyes on her in class. Unn sat a couple of desks behind her, so she had plenty of opportunity. Siss felt it as a peculiar tingling in her body. She liked it so much she scarcely bothered to hide it. She pretended not to notice, but felt herself to be enmeshed in something strange and pleasant. These were not searching or envious eyes; there was desire in them – when she was quick enough to meet them".
Only one fatal meeting is granted by the author between the two girls. Inside Unn's closed bedroom, through a looking glass, they spot the connection that occurs from their common nature, they undress to further justify their mutual attraction and proceed no more because of guilt and their inability to find the right words to describe what is happening to them:
"They sat for a while as if resting. Siss thought: I’d like to go now. Unn said:
‘Don’t go, Siss.’
Silence again. But the silence was not to be trusted, nor had it been any of the time. Here the wind came in sudden, capricious gusts, quick to change direction. It had dropped, but here it was again, unexpectedly, making her jump.
‘Siss.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m not sure that I’ll go to heaven."
This book was published back in 1963, an era where a heated debate was held in Norway about homosexuality and its influence upon children:
"From 1951-53 there ensued a fierce debate in Norway over a proposed change in the penal law of 1902. That law criminalized sexual acts between men and could result in penalties of up to one year in prison. It was particularly an alarm raised about the “seduction of adolescents” that lay behind the proposed change […] It took Norway 20 years to conclude that: “a conversion to homosexuality via childhood seduction was unlikely and in 1972 Norway’s criminal law was changed so that sexual actions between men were no longer considered criminal”
(see further in Reidar Kjær’s article “Look to Norway? Gay Issues and Mental Health Across the Atlantic Ocean” included in The Mental Health Professions and Homosexuality: International Perspectives, CRC Press, 2003 p. 59).
But what about lesbians in Norway?
“On many historical occasions, women’s desire for other women has not been recognized as a site of prohibition, such as when the Norwegian parliament passed an act criminalization of male homosexuality in 1902. Female homosexuality was not prohibited because the phenomenon was impossible (Friele, 1997). Is there an ontological effect of visualizing lesbian existence in terms of lesbian desire through a socio - erotic specification?”
(see Agnes Bolsø’s article “The Politics of Lesbian Specificity” in Queering Norway, Routledge, 2009, p. 49)
This notion can shed light into Vesaas's insistence on not naming or expressing what is Unn's secret, creating a negative space where nothing can be said about a nonexistent condition, similar to darkness being the absence of light. Lesbianism is merely a whim, a substitute for the lack of males or a mental illness occurring when women hide their feminity inside a symbolic wall of ice, that cannot be penetrated by men and is deemed as a kind of antisocial behaviour. So according to him it can be treated and can be cured through the exposure to heteronormative influences.
Not only lesbians are broken and mentaly ill, but asexuals too. Auntie is clearly an asexual character- I can tell because it takes one to know one - and the way she is depicted is indicative of Vesaas's worldview. She is the one that urges Siss to forget about Unn:
"You’ve been ill,’ said Auntie"
"You can’t bind yourself to her memory, and shut yourself away from what is natural for you. You would only be a bother to yourself and to others, and no one will thank you for it, far from it. You’re already making your parents unhappy".
"I say again, you must feel you are freed. It’s not right for you to go on as you are. It’s not like you. You’re a different person".
"I’m a worthless creature,’ said Auntie shortly afterwards, when they were nearing her house, nearing the end of the evening. She began again: ‘Worthless. The people here have done everything for me during this misfortune, and now I’m going like this when I ought to take my leave properly".
This is not a confession of a woman that is tormented by guilt for failing to save the life of the child that was entrusted upon her. Auntie is not comforting Siss to help her overcome the grief after losing a loved one. This is a declaration of a woman trapped in a chronic condition that forces her to act against her nature, living in an emotional, physical, mental and ontological self-exile. An ailing human. A broken human. Auntie poses as an example of what should be avoided.
Of course, there is nothing broken with asexuals or lesbians and all the other humans that cannot fit within this heteronormative narrative. But Vesaas truly believes he does the right thing. Unn is dead before sinning, so she is going to Heaven. Auntie's self diagnose is used to cure Siss's illness. Siss finally overcomes her sickness and is brought back to normalcy. Everyone wins! Am I right?
I say, there is something that Vesaas definitely missed. You see, ice can also be seen as a prism to break white light up into the colours of the rainbow.
Oh well, I'm not sad, next time I'll just pick a better Norwegian author, maybe Gerd Brantenberg. You live, you learn.
This book, written by a non-militant bigot, is a mixture of pagan and Christian morality with a non-aggressive and yet intense bias against homosexuality, deemed as a kind of hysteria or aberration that can occur when young people, a girl, in this case, grows in an all-women environment and can be contagious, transmitted and yet cured.
Now first things first. There is a recurring theme in Vesaas's book about outsiders that appear in people's lives, causing mental, emotional, psychological turbulence. Many of his stories depict the struggle to restore things in their previous state of normalcy.
Up to this day when people review "The Ice Palace" seem reluctant to address such issues due to a fear of sexualising the eleven-year-old main characters, two girls, Siss and Unn. But this is a matter of basic human sexual development hence there is nothing exploitative in talking about it.
Unn is the newcomer in Siss's school, an orphaned girl that grew up with her single mother, never met a father, and after her mother's death came to stay with her spinster Auntie. Unn insists on distancing herself from the others and yet there is an obvious attraction between her and her schoolmate, Siss:
"Unn and Siss stood there like two combatants, but it was a silent struggle, a matter between herself and the newcomer. It was not even hinted at. After a while Siss began to feel Unn’s eyes on her in class. Unn sat a couple of desks behind her, so she had plenty of opportunity. Siss felt it as a peculiar tingling in her body. She liked it so much she scarcely bothered to hide it. She pretended not to notice, but felt herself to be enmeshed in something strange and pleasant. These were not searching or envious eyes; there was desire in them – when she was quick enough to meet them".
Only one fatal meeting is granted by the author between the two girls. Inside Unn's closed bedroom, through a looking glass, they spot the connection that occurs from their common nature, they undress to further justify their mutual attraction and proceed no more because of guilt and their inability to find the right words to describe what is happening to them:
"They sat for a while as if resting. Siss thought: I’d like to go now. Unn said:
‘Don’t go, Siss.’
Silence again. But the silence was not to be trusted, nor had it been any of the time. Here the wind came in sudden, capricious gusts, quick to change direction. It had dropped, but here it was again, unexpectedly, making her jump.
‘Siss.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m not sure that I’ll go to heaven."
This book was published back in 1963, an era where a heated debate was held in Norway about homosexuality and its influence upon children:
"From 1951-53 there ensued a fierce debate in Norway over a proposed change in the penal law of 1902. That law criminalized sexual acts between men and could result in penalties of up to one year in prison. It was particularly an alarm raised about the “seduction of adolescents” that lay behind the proposed change […] It took Norway 20 years to conclude that: “a conversion to homosexuality via childhood seduction was unlikely and in 1972 Norway’s criminal law was changed so that sexual actions between men were no longer considered criminal”
(see further in Reidar Kjær’s article “Look to Norway? Gay Issues and Mental Health Across the Atlantic Ocean” included in The Mental Health Professions and Homosexuality: International Perspectives, CRC Press, 2003 p. 59).
But what about lesbians in Norway?
“On many historical occasions, women’s desire for other women has not been recognized as a site of prohibition, such as when the Norwegian parliament passed an act criminalization of male homosexuality in 1902. Female homosexuality was not prohibited because the phenomenon was impossible (Friele, 1997). Is there an ontological effect of visualizing lesbian existence in terms of lesbian desire through a socio - erotic specification?”
(see Agnes Bolsø’s article “The Politics of Lesbian Specificity” in Queering Norway, Routledge, 2009, p. 49)
This notion can shed light into Vesaas's insistence on not naming or expressing what is Unn's secret, creating a negative space where nothing can be said about a nonexistent condition, similar to darkness being the absence of light. Lesbianism is merely a whim, a substitute for the lack of males or a mental illness occurring when women hide their feminity inside a symbolic wall of ice, that cannot be penetrated by men and is deemed as a kind of antisocial behaviour. So according to him it can be treated and can be cured through the exposure to heteronormative influences.
Not only lesbians are broken and mentaly ill, but asexuals too. Auntie is clearly an asexual character- I can tell because it takes one to know one - and the way she is depicted is indicative of Vesaas's worldview. She is the one that urges Siss to forget about Unn:
"You’ve been ill,’ said Auntie"
"You can’t bind yourself to her memory, and shut yourself away from what is natural for you. You would only be a bother to yourself and to others, and no one will thank you for it, far from it. You’re already making your parents unhappy".
"I say again, you must feel you are freed. It’s not right for you to go on as you are. It’s not like you. You’re a different person".
"I’m a worthless creature,’ said Auntie shortly afterwards, when they were nearing her house, nearing the end of the evening. She began again: ‘Worthless. The people here have done everything for me during this misfortune, and now I’m going like this when I ought to take my leave properly".
This is not a confession of a woman that is tormented by guilt for failing to save the life of the child that was entrusted upon her. Auntie is not comforting Siss to help her overcome the grief after losing a loved one. This is a declaration of a woman trapped in a chronic condition that forces her to act against her nature, living in an emotional, physical, mental and ontological self-exile. An ailing human. A broken human. Auntie poses as an example of what should be avoided.
Of course, there is nothing broken with asexuals or lesbians and all the other humans that cannot fit within this heteronormative narrative. But Vesaas truly believes he does the right thing. Unn is dead before sinning, so she is going to Heaven. Auntie's self diagnose is used to cure Siss's illness. Siss finally overcomes her sickness and is brought back to normalcy. Everyone wins! Am I right?
I say, there is something that Vesaas definitely missed. You see, ice can also be seen as a prism to break white light up into the colours of the rainbow.
Oh well, I'm not sad, next time I'll just pick a better Norwegian author, maybe Gerd Brantenberg. You live, you learn.
May 8, 2014
The more I like a book, the more I hesitate about how to write it up in a review, about how to capture its beauty and how to convince other readers that it is worth checking up. I read The Ice Palace in one sitting, then I sat and thought about it for a week. At first glance, it is such a simple, straight-forward story, told in understated, minimalist prose. Two young girls meet after school and believe they could become close friends, yet they shy away from giving in to their impulses too fast, too easy. The next day, one of the girls goes missing, and the other feels guilty, abandoned. All events are circling around and coming back to a frozen waterfall near their small town in a mountainous district of Norway.
Yet this simple story has touched me deeply with its eerie beauty, its sadness and especially with the things left unsaid, unexplained: the silences, the unfinished gestures, the loneliness, the indifference and the mystery of winter landscape to the incursions of the human intruders upon its domain.
Warning: may contain spoilers!
Siss and Unn are eleven years old and as different from each other as fire and water. Siss is lively and outspoken and even a little bossy with her friends. Unn is introverted and reticent, sitting alone at the edge of the playground. Siss comes from a content and comfortable family, with parents who give her a lot of leeway to express herself. Unn is an orphan with an unknown runaway father and has recently lost her mother to illness, now living with an elderly aunt. Yet from the first time their eyes meet across a schoolyard they feel connected. Too young and inexperienced to know how to express their feelings, shy and yet filled with yearning. Naked flames of innocence and enthusiasm, they shed their clothes and danced around each other, coming very close then jumping away in fright at the intensity of the feeling. Vesaas the poet knows how to go beyond mere words to capture the moment, in the first of a couple of lyrical passages that mark the high points of the story for me:
Gleams and radiance,
gleaming from me to you,
and from me to you alone -
into the mirror and out again,
and never an answer about what this is,
never an explanation.
These pouting lips of yours,
no, they're mine, how alike.
Hair done the same way,
and gleams and radiance.
It's ourselves!
We can do nothing about it,
it's as if it comes from another world.
The picture begins to waver,
flows out to the edges,
collects itself, no it doesn't.
It's a mouth smiling.
A mouth from another world.
No it isn't a mouth, it isn't a smile,
nobody knows what it is -
it's only eyelashes open wide
above gleams and radiance.
After their first tentative meeting, Unn decides to play truant from school, in order to avoid embarassing her new friend, and goes to visit the frozen waterfall near the town. We will return to this ice construction several times more in the novel, during the day, at night by lanternlight, under snow and finally in spring to witness its eventual collapse. The beauty of the water and frost sculpted chambers is amazing, beckoning not unlike a desert mirage with refractions of light and hidden treasures, menacing and cruel at other moments with the pressures of the ice and the shifting underground torrents, closed to scrutiny and transient - the ice palace as a metaphor I translate into the ultimate answer (or the lack of an answer) to the meaning of life. Caught in the middle of this "home of the cold" , unable to find her her way back to her friend, the final image I retained of the girl Unn is in one of the translucid ice chambers:
This room seemed to be made for shouting in, if you had someting to shout about, a wild shout about companionship and comfort.
I wanted so much to be able to reach out and hold my hand out to Unn, bring her back to sunshine and to the warmth of a roaring hearth fire, to bring her and Siss back together and to watch their instinctive attraction develop into a lifelong friendship. But Siss is left to deal with the aftermath on her own, struggling to cope with remorse and guilt, trying to keep true to the memories of her missing almost friend. Here's were the second poem I've bookmarked fits in:
As we stand the snow fell thicker.
Your sleeve turns white.
My sleeve turns white.
They move between us like
Snow covered bridges.
But snow covered bridges are frozen.
In here is living warmth.
Your arm is warm beneath the snow
And a welcome weight on mine.
It snows and snows upon silent bridges.
Bridges unknown to all.
The sad overtones of the novel are tempered in part by the majestic beauty of the country (Telemark in Norway, a place that until now I associated only with a WWII commando movie) and a musical theme introduced in the last chapters, announcing the coming of spring to the tune"woodwind players". I am thinking of Grieg and Sibelius as the most appropriate composers for a soundtrack of the story, the romantic musicians that have been so strongly associated with national spirit in Scandinavia. In a similar way, Tarjei Vesaas is now a symbol of the Nordic spirit for me. Comparisons between him and the taciturn and sombre Ingmar Bergman don't seem forced at all after being exposed to the silences and mysteries of the palace of ice. I'm thinking of Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring) in particular, because it has a similar theme of innocence destroyed in the middle of a beautiful and indifferent landscape.
I have to thank a couple of Goodread friends (again) for bringing this frozen gem of a story to my attention.
April 14, 2019
A haunting, beautiful, atmospheric and poetic novella set in the harsh Norwegian winter. Siss and Unn are two very different 11 year old girls who are just embarking on a tentative friendship when tragedy strikes. The ice palace of the title is the name they give to the ice sculptures formed by a freezing waterfall. I could say more but I don't think it is necessary...
September 4, 2024
A story told through the eyes of an eleven year old girl and the guilt and trauma seemingly small events bring with them. Rich in metaphors and suggestions, this book left me rather cold
To read the The Ice Palace as an audiobook (which was the way I got to know the book) is I feel not the best format to enjoy the writing, which has poem-like section interspersed into it.
Throughout the book the titular ice palace, menacing and beautiful at the same time, starts to feel like a symbol of what one of the girls needs to go through in order to deal with partly unexplained events in a small Norwegian village. Guilt and trauma, and in general dealing with group dynamics and what kind of person one wants to be, play major roles. The tone of main narrator Siss is distinctly childlike, which at times I found rather too much contrasting with the lyrical nature descriptions.
I just didn't connect too well to this book, but for a literary trip to Norway and to feel the coleur locale Tarjei Vesaas definitely succeeds - 2.5 stars rounded down.
To read the The Ice Palace as an audiobook (which was the way I got to know the book) is I feel not the best format to enjoy the writing, which has poem-like section interspersed into it.
Throughout the book the titular ice palace, menacing and beautiful at the same time, starts to feel like a symbol of what one of the girls needs to go through in order to deal with partly unexplained events in a small Norwegian village. Guilt and trauma, and in general dealing with group dynamics and what kind of person one wants to be, play major roles. The tone of main narrator Siss is distinctly childlike, which at times I found rather too much contrasting with the lyrical nature descriptions.
I just didn't connect too well to this book, but for a literary trip to Norway and to feel the coleur locale Tarjei Vesaas definitely succeeds - 2.5 stars rounded down.
May 23, 2023
Das Eisschloss (1963) von Tarjei Vesaas ist einer jener Klassiker, die lange unter meinem Radar flogen. Ich meine, es ist überhaupt mein erstes Buch eines norwegischen Schriftstellers. Auf BookTube, vermehrt im englischsprachigen Raum, hielten es jedoch immer mehr Leute in die Kamera und so wurde auch ich darauf aufmerksam. Ich vermute, dass es an dem wunderschönen Cover der Penguin Classics-Ausgabe liegt, die so erst 2018 erschien. Wie dem auch sei, ich bin froh, es endlich gelesen zu haben.
In diesem schmalen Roman folgen wir dem jungen Mädchen Siss, das in einer ländlichen Gemeinde in Norwegen aufwächst. Ihr Leben ändert sich, als Unn nach dem Tod ihrer Mutter zu ihrer Tante ins Dorf zieht. Nach anfänglicher Distanz können die Mädchen der Anziehungskraft, die zwischen ihnen herrscht, nicht mehr widerstehen und treffen sich in Unns Haus. Sie unterhalten sich, Unn zeigt Siss ein Bild ihres Vaters, und überredet sie schließlich, dass sich die beiden aus Spaß ausziehen sollen. Sie tun es, beobachten sich gegenseitig, und Siss fühlt, dass etwas zwischen ihnen unausgesprochen und unerfüllt geblieben ist. Unn erzählt Siss, dass sie ein Geheimnis hat und Angst, nicht in den Himmel zu kommen. Die Stimmung zwischen den beiden ist jedoch so aufgeladen, dass Siss es nicht aushält, sich schnell wieder anzieht und nach Hause rennt.
Von Scham zerfressen beschließt Unn, am nächsten Tag die Schule zu schwänzen, damit sie Siss nicht begegnen muss. Stattdessen besucht sie das "Eisschloss", das durch einen nahe gelegenen Wasserfall entstanden ist. Eisschlösser sind in dieser Region in kalten Wintern normal, wenn das Wasser an Wasserfällen zu riesigen Strukturen gefriert. Diesen Winter ist das Eisschloss jedoch größer und eindrucksvoller als je zuvor. Unn klettert in dieses Eisschloss und erkundet die Räume, verwirrt von seiner Schönheit. Schließlich verliert sie die Orientierung und findet nicht mehr den Weg nach draußen. Sie stirbt an Unterkühlung mit dem Wort "Siss" auf den Lippen.
Die Dorfbewohner, allen voran Siss, sind aufgewühlt und suchen tagelang nach Unn. Siss gerät in den Fokus, da sie die letzte Person ist, mit der Unn gesprochen hat. Siss schweigt jedoch, da sie ihrerseits von dem Verlust Unns und ihrer Einsamkeit und Verwirrung überwältigt ist. Siss schwört sich, Unn niemals zu vergessen. Die vorher sehr beliebte Siss steht von nun an allein auf dem Schulhof und weigert sich, zu spielen oder zu sprechen. Sie ist in ihrem eigenen mentalen Eisschloss gefangen, aus dem sie weder ihre Freunde noch Eltern herauslocken können.
Das Eissschloss ist ein hochspannender Roman, der vor allem durch seine klare, fast schon kühle Sprache besticht. Vesaas ist kein Mann vieler oder großer Worte. Sein deskriptiver Stil ist präzise und immersiv. Die Art, wie er Landschaften und vor allem den Winter beschreibt, lässt einen sofort in besagte Szenerie eintauchen. Es wäre sicherlich ein Genuss, ihm im Original zu lesen.
Die Geschichte an und für sich ist natürlich etwas dünn. Es passiert nicht wirklich viel und das, was passiert, passiert unheimlich schnell. Die Mädchen werden quasi durch ein einziges Treffen zu unzertrennlichen Freundinnen. Zuvor wechselten sie kein Wort miteinander und danach, aufgrund von Unns unglücklichem Tod, auch nie wieder. Unn verkriecht sich im Eisschloss und schwupps, ist sie weg.
Vieles in diesem Roman spielt sich auf der zwischenmenschlichen und einer introspektiven Ebene ab. Wir verbringen viel Zeit in der Gefühlswelt und den Gedanken von Siss. Ich bin mir jedoch nicht sicher, ob es Vesaas tatsächlich gelingt, die komplexe Gefühlswelt von 11-jährigen Mädchen authentisch darzustellen. Vieles fand ich nicht nachvollziehbar. Oft fand ich es schwierig, mich in Siss oder Unn hineinzuversetzen. Was ich jedoch mochte, war, wie Vesaas über Trauer, Trauma und Einsamkeit schreibt. Es war schwer mit anzusehen, in welch tiefes Loch Siss fällt und wieviel Mühe und Anstrengung es sie kostet, da schließlich wieder herauszufinden. Unns Tod ist so unerklärlich, dass er nur schwer zu begreifen ist. Ohne den Fund ihrer Leiche – das Eisschloss hat sie auf ewig verschluckt –, ist auch jedes Abschließen und sich damit Abfinden schwer. Hinzu kommen Schuldgefühle und das Gefühl, nicht für Unn da gewesen zu sein.
Was mich an diesem Roman am meisten überraschte, war, dass man die Geschichte von Siss und Unn auch als queere Liebesgeschichte lesen kann. Für mich hatte der Anfang des Romans nicht nur "coming of age"-vibes, sondern auch "lesbian and/or sexual awakening":
Im Großen und Ganzen hat Vesaas hier einen innovativen, introspektiven Roman geschaffen, der mich auf vielen Ebenen überzeugen konnte, auch wenn die Charaktere für mich nicht immer greifbar waren.
In diesem schmalen Roman folgen wir dem jungen Mädchen Siss, das in einer ländlichen Gemeinde in Norwegen aufwächst. Ihr Leben ändert sich, als Unn nach dem Tod ihrer Mutter zu ihrer Tante ins Dorf zieht. Nach anfänglicher Distanz können die Mädchen der Anziehungskraft, die zwischen ihnen herrscht, nicht mehr widerstehen und treffen sich in Unns Haus. Sie unterhalten sich, Unn zeigt Siss ein Bild ihres Vaters, und überredet sie schließlich, dass sich die beiden aus Spaß ausziehen sollen. Sie tun es, beobachten sich gegenseitig, und Siss fühlt, dass etwas zwischen ihnen unausgesprochen und unerfüllt geblieben ist. Unn erzählt Siss, dass sie ein Geheimnis hat und Angst, nicht in den Himmel zu kommen. Die Stimmung zwischen den beiden ist jedoch so aufgeladen, dass Siss es nicht aushält, sich schnell wieder anzieht und nach Hause rennt.
Von Scham zerfressen beschließt Unn, am nächsten Tag die Schule zu schwänzen, damit sie Siss nicht begegnen muss. Stattdessen besucht sie das "Eisschloss", das durch einen nahe gelegenen Wasserfall entstanden ist. Eisschlösser sind in dieser Region in kalten Wintern normal, wenn das Wasser an Wasserfällen zu riesigen Strukturen gefriert. Diesen Winter ist das Eisschloss jedoch größer und eindrucksvoller als je zuvor. Unn klettert in dieses Eisschloss und erkundet die Räume, verwirrt von seiner Schönheit. Schließlich verliert sie die Orientierung und findet nicht mehr den Weg nach draußen. Sie stirbt an Unterkühlung mit dem Wort "Siss" auf den Lippen.
Die Dorfbewohner, allen voran Siss, sind aufgewühlt und suchen tagelang nach Unn. Siss gerät in den Fokus, da sie die letzte Person ist, mit der Unn gesprochen hat. Siss schweigt jedoch, da sie ihrerseits von dem Verlust Unns und ihrer Einsamkeit und Verwirrung überwältigt ist. Siss schwört sich, Unn niemals zu vergessen. Die vorher sehr beliebte Siss steht von nun an allein auf dem Schulhof und weigert sich, zu spielen oder zu sprechen. Sie ist in ihrem eigenen mentalen Eisschloss gefangen, aus dem sie weder ihre Freunde noch Eltern herauslocken können.
Das Eissschloss ist ein hochspannender Roman, der vor allem durch seine klare, fast schon kühle Sprache besticht. Vesaas ist kein Mann vieler oder großer Worte. Sein deskriptiver Stil ist präzise und immersiv. Die Art, wie er Landschaften und vor allem den Winter beschreibt, lässt einen sofort in besagte Szenerie eintauchen. Es wäre sicherlich ein Genuss, ihm im Original zu lesen.
Die Geschichte an und für sich ist natürlich etwas dünn. Es passiert nicht wirklich viel und das, was passiert, passiert unheimlich schnell. Die Mädchen werden quasi durch ein einziges Treffen zu unzertrennlichen Freundinnen. Zuvor wechselten sie kein Wort miteinander und danach, aufgrund von Unns unglücklichem Tod, auch nie wieder. Unn verkriecht sich im Eisschloss und schwupps, ist sie weg.
Vieles in diesem Roman spielt sich auf der zwischenmenschlichen und einer introspektiven Ebene ab. Wir verbringen viel Zeit in der Gefühlswelt und den Gedanken von Siss. Ich bin mir jedoch nicht sicher, ob es Vesaas tatsächlich gelingt, die komplexe Gefühlswelt von 11-jährigen Mädchen authentisch darzustellen. Vieles fand ich nicht nachvollziehbar. Oft fand ich es schwierig, mich in Siss oder Unn hineinzuversetzen. Was ich jedoch mochte, war, wie Vesaas über Trauer, Trauma und Einsamkeit schreibt. Es war schwer mit anzusehen, in welch tiefes Loch Siss fällt und wieviel Mühe und Anstrengung es sie kostet, da schließlich wieder herauszufinden. Unns Tod ist so unerklärlich, dass er nur schwer zu begreifen ist. Ohne den Fund ihrer Leiche – das Eisschloss hat sie auf ewig verschluckt –, ist auch jedes Abschließen und sich damit Abfinden schwer. Hinzu kommen Schuldgefühle und das Gefühl, nicht für Unn da gewesen zu sein.
Was mich an diesem Roman am meisten überraschte, war, dass man die Geschichte von Siss und Unn auch als queere Liebesgeschichte lesen kann. Für mich hatte der Anfang des Romans nicht nur "coming of age"-vibes, sondern auch "lesbian and/or sexual awakening":
After a while Siss began to feel Unn’s eyes on her in class. Unn sat a couple of desks behind her, so she had plenty of opportunity. Siss felt it as a peculiar tingling in her body. She liked it so much she scarcely bothered to hide it. She pretended not to notice but felt herself to be enmeshed in something strange and pleasant. These were not searching or envious eyes; there was desire in them – when she was quick enough to meet them. There was expectancy. Unn pretended indifference as soon as they were out of doors and made no approach. But from time to time Siss would notice the sweet tingling in her body: Unn is sitting looking at me.Ich weiß nicht, wie diese Anziehungskraft zwischen den Mädchen in den 60er-Jahren rezipiert wurde (oder was Vesaas Intentionen waren), aber aus heutiger Sicht ist sie bemerkenswert, diese Mischung aus Neugier, Bewunderung und Erotik, die sich auf Unn konzentriert. Siss hat (noch) kein Vokabular für diese neuen Dinge, die sie da fühlt. Sie weiß nur, dass sie Unn unbedingt treffen muss. Vesaas schafft es, diese Intensität und Dringlichkeit, die die Pubertät vieler zeichnen, einzufangen. Es wurde auch an mich herangetragen, dass Das Eisschloss in Norwegen mittlerweile als queerer Klassiker gefeiert wird – das wundert mich nicht.
She saw to it that she almost never met those eyes. She did not yet dare to do so – only in a few swift snatches when she forgot.
But what does Unn want?
Some day she'll tell me.
Im Großen und Ganzen hat Vesaas hier einen innovativen, introspektiven Roman geschaffen, der mich auf vielen Ebenen überzeugen konnte, auch wenn die Charaktere für mich nicht immer greifbar waren.
March 31, 2023
After losing her mother, the shy and reticent eleven year old Unn goes to live with her aunt.
Siss, one of Unn’s classmates who is lively and popular, strikes up a friendship with her. But the very next day after their first awkward meeting, Unn disappears. No one knows what has become of her but every one suspects Siss knows more than she lets on.
Either this book was lost in translation or the metaphors were too profound for me to understand. There was no character development. We know only the names of the two girls, the other characters are all referred to as mother, father, teacher, the boy with the boot, the girl who became the leader, which was annoying.
Siss, one of Unn’s classmates who is lively and popular, strikes up a friendship with her. But the very next day after their first awkward meeting, Unn disappears. No one knows what has become of her but every one suspects Siss knows more than she lets on.
Either this book was lost in translation or the metaphors were too profound for me to understand. There was no character development. We know only the names of the two girls, the other characters are all referred to as mother, father, teacher, the boy with the boot, the girl who became the leader, which was annoying.
July 30, 2021
Maybe it's because I've lived most of my life in regions of tropical monsoon climate, but I love the cold, the snow, the blizzards, the ice structures, the frozen lakes, the endless white landscapes. In theory, I'm completely besotted with it.
But beneath all the iciness within this book is a barrage of emotions, unresolved tensions, and portent desire. It is in the deadlock of death that we confront the reverie of life, it is in the imaginary that we seek the real, as with Unn in this book, who senses her innocent malaise in a severe hypothermic state and under the gaze of large, monstrous eye that she can no longer tell herself is unreal.
On the other side is Siss, with her remorse, grief and the drive to 'undo.' Siss tries to impose order onto her grief by imitating the desired, perhaps she hopes to transform her very longing into a real entity, perhaps she wants to morph into the desired through pure remembrance and repetitions.
I read this book while on a beautiful train ride and the timing couldn't have been more perfect. It left me with a deep longing for the cold and surreal.
But beneath all the iciness within this book is a barrage of emotions, unresolved tensions, and portent desire. It is in the deadlock of death that we confront the reverie of life, it is in the imaginary that we seek the real, as with Unn in this book, who senses her innocent malaise in a severe hypothermic state and under the gaze of large, monstrous eye that she can no longer tell herself is unreal.
On the other side is Siss, with her remorse, grief and the drive to 'undo.' Siss tries to impose order onto her grief by imitating the desired, perhaps she hopes to transform her very longing into a real entity, perhaps she wants to morph into the desired through pure remembrance and repetitions.
I read this book while on a beautiful train ride and the timing couldn't have been more perfect. It left me with a deep longing for the cold and surreal.
January 20, 2015
Frostily immaculate and mysterious as the titular ice formation. Tunnels of ice, spires of ice. Rooms with only entries and no exits that beckon, beckon.
There's so much that fascinates here: the ethereal descriptions of northern landscapes, and accompanying slightly alien compassion of its communities, the inexpressible pre-sexual bonds of children, the inexpressible secrets and promises of self and other, the ice palace, always the ice palace. The simple direct language all the more capable of poetry, perfectly formed intercuts of non-narrative scenes (snow-fleas, birds of prey), heightening mood and quietly pulsing with the theme beneath the story. as water runs under ice.
I seem to be more drawn to these compressed bursts of sheer otherworldy poetics lately, and this is a key example among those.
There's so much that fascinates here: the ethereal descriptions of northern landscapes, and accompanying slightly alien compassion of its communities, the inexpressible pre-sexual bonds of children, the inexpressible secrets and promises of self and other, the ice palace, always the ice palace. The simple direct language all the more capable of poetry, perfectly formed intercuts of non-narrative scenes (snow-fleas, birds of prey), heightening mood and quietly pulsing with the theme beneath the story. as water runs under ice.
I seem to be more drawn to these compressed bursts of sheer otherworldy poetics lately, and this is a key example among those.
May 18, 2014
Many years ago (decades even) I watched this movie on television about the life of American poet Maya Angelou. The details of the story have long ebbed away but there’s this one scene that I recall vividly. In it a sort of teacher figure is telling the young Maya about how beautiful words can be, how wonderful it is to love them. I guess this conversation remained with me because at the time I didn’t understand it. I loved reading books already, I loved the stories they told and the adventures I could vicariously experience but words in themselves? That didn’t make sense to me yet. Over the years I have come to know differently. I’ve learned to read and love poetry, to read it aloud and enjoy the resonance of words painstakingly chosen. I now know that words can be used to evoke happiness or heartbreak, fear or foreboding, they can create sounds and even music for those that can hear it. And they can be used to build otherworldly palaces made of ice of a beauty that is both extraordinary and deadly:
It was a room of tears. The light in the glass walls was very weak, and the whole room seemed to trickle and weep with these falling drops in the half dark. Nothing had been built up there yet, the drops fell from the roof with a soft splash, down into each little pool of tears.
This is one of the most lyrical passages in the book. But in general the author chooses ordinary everyday words and uses spare language to create this ethereal dreamworld of ice and snow with which to enchant his readers. He tells a haunting story of a budding friendship, of loss and a grief that incapacitates against the cycle of freezing winter and the thaws of spring. Greek mythology associates this cycle with the eternal struggle between life and death and though the latter will finally prove victorious when it is time, life too will claim its own victories. It seems fitting that just as with the coming of the warmer weather the gorgeous ice palace finally crumbles away our heroin’s grief also begins to thaw and life’s instincts gradually win her over.
I'm only sorry I cannot read this in Norwegian, for if it was this beautiful in translation....
It was a room of tears. The light in the glass walls was very weak, and the whole room seemed to trickle and weep with these falling drops in the half dark. Nothing had been built up there yet, the drops fell from the roof with a soft splash, down into each little pool of tears.
This is one of the most lyrical passages in the book. But in general the author chooses ordinary everyday words and uses spare language to create this ethereal dreamworld of ice and snow with which to enchant his readers. He tells a haunting story of a budding friendship, of loss and a grief that incapacitates against the cycle of freezing winter and the thaws of spring. Greek mythology associates this cycle with the eternal struggle between life and death and though the latter will finally prove victorious when it is time, life too will claim its own victories. It seems fitting that just as with the coming of the warmer weather the gorgeous ice palace finally crumbles away our heroin’s grief also begins to thaw and life’s instincts gradually win her over.
I'm only sorry I cannot read this in Norwegian, for if it was this beautiful in translation....
August 22, 2016
What a bedeviled activity reading is!
When one reads the book or what has one read just before, are circumstances that alter the relationship between the printed pages and the reader.
I came to The Ice Palace after finishing The Long Ships, which had delighted, illustrated and greatly amused me. After Bengtsson’s smooth but engaging jocularity, I was not ready for the lyricism and the evocative tone of Vesaas’s book, and it took me several pages to adjust my senses. The new coldness made my eyes somewhat numb.
The Ice Palace seemed at times a prose poem, a gelid one. Descriptions, in particular of coldness, and of ice, and of darkness, with the ice palace looming as the undecipherable symbol, but which undeniably withholds death, are the sparkling and biting gems in this book.
However, I failed to engage in the mutual fascination that has frozen the two girls into their own icicle. As this spell is water-coloured in a very suggestive language with much unsaid, I wondered whether in the process of translation the original vacuum had been somewhat dislocated.
So, by the end of the read, I felt a bit cold. Just one icy star cold.
November 23, 2023
Stranger than any fairytale.
Set in a minimalist setting somewhere in a land covered with ice and snow, this novel starts with two young girls striking up a magnetic friendship. What lies ahead seems endearing and full of promises. Yet, as these two friends struggle to act and find words to convey their feelings, there is a deep unknown casting its inescapable shadow.
At once she had been abandoned to the unknown, who walks behind one's back on such evenings.
How to deal with one’s undefined sense of self, the unknown other and all these unnamed feelings? Maybe the clearness of a frozen waterfall, the miraculous Ice Palace, will hold the solution?
She knew at once what she would do: she would go to see the ice.
All by herself.
Then she would have plenty to do all day, and could keep warm and everything.
Although Tarjei Vessas' writing is incredibly simple, it’s full of suggestions and metaphors. Less is definitely more in this novel. It took me some time to get used to its elusive tone. The setting is natural, but there is almost something otherworldly about its atmosphere. After glimpsing into a character's mind, I felt even more mystified. But the novel told me our time is brief, so I decided to trust my feelings and dive into the icy ocean of the unknown.
A bird passes overhead. A birch-clothed promontory runs out into the lake. Our brief time.
Such a devastatingly beautiful tale about discovery of new feelings, loss and difficulty of acceptance. A dreamlike reading experience I will not easily forget, I promise.
Set in a minimalist setting somewhere in a land covered with ice and snow, this novel starts with two young girls striking up a magnetic friendship. What lies ahead seems endearing and full of promises. Yet, as these two friends struggle to act and find words to convey their feelings, there is a deep unknown casting its inescapable shadow.
At once she had been abandoned to the unknown, who walks behind one's back on such evenings.
How to deal with one’s undefined sense of self, the unknown other and all these unnamed feelings? Maybe the clearness of a frozen waterfall, the miraculous Ice Palace, will hold the solution?
She knew at once what she would do: she would go to see the ice.
All by herself.
Then she would have plenty to do all day, and could keep warm and everything.
Although Tarjei Vessas' writing is incredibly simple, it’s full of suggestions and metaphors. Less is definitely more in this novel. It took me some time to get used to its elusive tone. The setting is natural, but there is almost something otherworldly about its atmosphere. After glimpsing into a character's mind, I felt even more mystified. But the novel told me our time is brief, so I decided to trust my feelings and dive into the icy ocean of the unknown.
A bird passes overhead. A birch-clothed promontory runs out into the lake. Our brief time.
Such a devastatingly beautiful tale about discovery of new feelings, loss and difficulty of acceptance. A dreamlike reading experience I will not easily forget, I promise.
September 27, 2020
انشودة شعرية عذبة ، يتصدع أمامها الجليد ، لن يصمد طويلاً أمام نعومتها وشفافيتها...
بالأمس عقدت صداقة بين الصغيرتين" آن " و "سيس " ، في صباح اليوم التالي توجهت " آن " الى قصر الجليد ، هنا ستقف أنت مشدوهاً أمام عالم غارقٌ فى البياض ، يتمازج فيه الصوت والضوء ، تنزلق بخفة على سطح البحيرة الأملس ، تتسلل الى الحجرات الثلجية المختبئة وراء هدير الشلال الصاخب ، تخترقك ومضات الضوء الخاطفة ، تنصت لتساقط قطرات الماء من رقائق الثلج العالقة ، كما لو كانت تعزف لحناً متقطعاً ينذر بخطر وشيك...، تتسلل خيوط الشمس بين الشقوق ، تتراقص ورود على الجدران الجليدية...
فيض من النور يغمرك في دفق لانهائي من الجليد ، لقد حاولتُ العثور على صوت النهر لكن للأسف دون جدوى ...
هل ستعود " آن" من هذه الرحلة ؟ وإن لم تعد ماذا ستفعل
" سيس" عندئذ ؟ ..تراها يمكنها ان تحتمل ثقل فقد صديقتها ؟ ...
في النهاية ستدرك أنه مهما تبدى لنا أنه باستطاعتنا تشييد قصر جليدي يخفي ما بدواخلنا ، سيأت يومٌ ربيعياً مشرقاً ، فيرتجف القصر ، يترنح ، يسقط متهاوياً ، سيطوف الجليد على السطح ويذوب ويتوقف عن أن يكون ...
رواية رائعة..آسرة..ولن تُنسى ابداً ....💕
بالأمس عقدت صداقة بين الصغيرتين" آن " و "سيس " ، في صباح اليوم التالي توجهت " آن " الى قصر الجليد ، هنا ستقف أنت مشدوهاً أمام عالم غارقٌ فى البياض ، يتمازج فيه الصوت والضوء ، تنزلق بخفة على سطح البحيرة الأملس ، تتسلل الى الحجرات الثلجية المختبئة وراء هدير الشلال الصاخب ، تخترقك ومضات الضوء الخاطفة ، تنصت لتساقط قطرات الماء من رقائق الثلج العالقة ، كما لو كانت تعزف لحناً متقطعاً ينذر بخطر وشيك...، تتسلل خيوط الشمس بين الشقوق ، تتراقص ورود على الجدران الجليدية...
فيض من النور يغمرك في دفق لانهائي من الجليد ، لقد حاولتُ العثور على صوت النهر لكن للأسف دون جدوى ...
هل ستعود " آن" من هذه الرحلة ؟ وإن لم تعد ماذا ستفعل
" سيس" عندئذ ؟ ..تراها يمكنها ان تحتمل ثقل فقد صديقتها ؟ ...
في النهاية ستدرك أنه مهما تبدى لنا أنه باستطاعتنا تشييد قصر جليدي يخفي ما بدواخلنا ، سيأت يومٌ ربيعياً مشرقاً ، فيرتجف القصر ، يترنح ، يسقط متهاوياً ، سيطوف الجليد على السطح ويذوب ويتوقف عن أن يكون ...
رواية رائعة..آسرة..ولن تُنسى ابداً ....💕
November 15, 2016
Tarjei Vesaas has written an absolute masterpiece here.
Read it - Examine the ice palace on the cover of the book and the picture of a girl. Use your imagination and think of imagery and symbolism, snow, ice, water, new seasons, mental trauma, the mirror that reveals all, two eleven year old girls, an outsider and the other the leader of a group at school. The catalyst is the ice palace.
Meet death and then the birth of the phoenix. What is the wild bird doing and what is the significance? The woodwind players too...
Delve into this author's mind. Meet an author who lived in an isolated village in Telemark, a mountainous region in southern Norway, who loved the countryside so much, he stayed there until his death. Even now people visit the farm where Vesaas lived.
Meet pure magic here.
Doris Lessing was quite right when she said "How simple this novel is. How subtle. How strong. How unlike any other. It is unique. It is unforgettable. It is extraordinary."
Yes indeed and I've read this novella twice and can pick it up at any page and savour it.
Read it - Examine the ice palace on the cover of the book and the picture of a girl. Use your imagination and think of imagery and symbolism, snow, ice, water, new seasons, mental trauma, the mirror that reveals all, two eleven year old girls, an outsider and the other the leader of a group at school. The catalyst is the ice palace.
Meet death and then the birth of the phoenix. What is the wild bird doing and what is the significance? The woodwind players too...
Delve into this author's mind. Meet an author who lived in an isolated village in Telemark, a mountainous region in southern Norway, who loved the countryside so much, he stayed there until his death. Even now people visit the farm where Vesaas lived.
Meet pure magic here.
Doris Lessing was quite right when she said "How simple this novel is. How subtle. How strong. How unlike any other. It is unique. It is unforgettable. It is extraordinary."
Yes indeed and I've read this novella twice and can pick it up at any page and savour it.
April 12, 2021
Esta novela va sobre la pérdida y el comienzo del abandono de la niñez. Todo contado con lirismo y una delicadeza que pareciera que el autor caminara por un lago congelado y temiera que se requebrajara.
Es curioso, porque me costó ensamblar todas las piezas y la historia no hizo "clic" en mi cabeza hasta la tercera parte. Es entonces cuando comprendí lo del espejo y... todo, en general. Son la misma niña. No literalmente, pero sí literariamente. Solo que una lo supera, mientras que la otra no lo hizo.
Es un drama, pero no una tragedia, aunque haya un momento donde parece que todo va a desmoronarse. Como el propio palacio de hielo.
Al final te encariñas con Sis y su drama personal y como todo el mundo que la conoce en la novela, quieres ayudarla y que todo le vaya bien. Porque al fin y al cabo, tiene toda la vida por delante.
Es curioso, porque me costó ensamblar todas las piezas y la historia no hizo "clic" en mi cabeza hasta la tercera parte. Es entonces cuando comprendí lo del espejo y... todo, en general. Son la misma niña. No literalmente, pero sí literariamente. Solo que una lo supera, mientras que la otra no lo hizo.
Es un drama, pero no una tragedia, aunque haya un momento donde parece que todo va a desmoronarse. Como el propio palacio de hielo.
Al final te encariñas con Sis y su drama personal y como todo el mundo que la conoce en la novela, quieres ayudarla y que todo le vaya bien. Porque al fin y al cabo, tiene toda la vida por delante.
November 5, 2023
Unn lay watching, captivated by it; it was stranger than any fairy tale.
...
Why am I here? It occurred to her, as she walked up and down. Not so many steps; she was walking more and more stiffly and unrecognizably. Why am I here? She attempted to find the solution to this riddle. Meanwhile she walked, strangely exalted, half unconscious.
She was close to the edge now: the ice laid its hand upon her.
The Ice Palace came to my attention highly garlanded with praise.
Peter Owen Publishing has one of the most impressive lists of any UK publisher, for example the wonderfully Sebaldesque Panorama : pripoved o poteku dogodkov by Dušan Šarotar from their World Series. Their history is worth quoting:
Is-slottet was also winner, on publication, of the 1964 Nordic Council's Literature Prize. 50 years later the English translation won the Fiction category of the inaugural (and unfortunately short-lived) Daphne Awards, founded in 2014, to revisit the book awards of 50 years earlier and see which books had stood the test of time:
They were inspired by the frustration with awards that so frequently go to the mediocre and the safe, and the realization that often times truly transformative work takes years or decades to be acknowledged and embraced
and where it beat off competition from a shortlist of books that had weathered well, including Cortazar's Hopscotch, Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell from the Sea, Boll's The Clown, and Plath's The Bell Jar.
As for the novel itself, yes it deserves the hype. It is a powerfully intense exploration of friendship between two girls, and of life and death, simple on the page but complex in its emotional resonanc.
It opens:
A young white forehead boring into the darkness. An eleven-year-old girl. Siss. It was really only afternoon, but already dark. A hard frost in late autumn. Stars, but no moon, and no snow to give a glimmer of light.
Siss is on the way to meet with Unn, her classmate, who moved to Siss's small community that summer, to live with her Aunt following the death of her mother. Unn has to date stood alone in the playground, an enigma, but has finally opened up a little, inviting Siss, the acknowledged leader of the children, to her Aunt's house, an encounter that Siss is
The time they spend together takes only 10 pages in the novel to describe, a chapter called One Single Evening, and perhaps only a couple of hours elapses in real time, and is the last as well as first conversation they have, but is the pivot for the rest of the novel.
The two immediately forge a strong bond, but while they are physically close, words are harder.
Siss attempts to come close to Unn, but equally senses the risk of probing too far:
Was their some danger here? No, there couldn’t be, but she didn’t feel quite safe either; evidently it was easy to go far.
And they part with a promise from Unn that when they next meet she will tell Siss a secret. But the next morning, fearing what might happen, Unn decides to defer the encounter and instead of going to school, heads to see the Ice Palace instead:
There had been an unusually long period of severe frost this autumn ... There was a waterfall some distance away that has built up an extraordinary mountain of ice around it during this long, hard period of cold. It was said to look like a palace, and nobody could remember it happening before.
....
And what was this?
It must be the ice palace.
The sun had suddenly disappeared. There was a ravine with steep sides. The sun would perhaps reach into it later, but now it was in ice-cold shadow. Unn looked down into an enchanted world of small pinnacles, gables, frosted domes, soft curves and confused tracery. All of it was ice, and the water spurted between, building it up continually. Branches of the waterfall had been diverted and rushed into new channels, creating new forms. Everything shone. The sun had not yet come, but it shone ice-blue and green of itself, and deathly cold. The waterfall plunged into the middle of it as if diving into a black cellar. Up on the edge of the rock the water spread out in stripes, the colour changing from black to green, from green to yellow and white, as the fall became wilder. A booming came from the cellar-hole where the water dashed itself into white foam against the stones on the bottom. Huge puffs of mist rose into the air.
At first the palace seems difficult to penetrate, but Unn suddenly finds a tiny gap she can squeeze through and then another, journeying through the palace where she finds a succession of rooms:
When she arrived inside the next one she caught her breath at what she saw: she was in the middle of a petrified forest. An ice forest.
The water, which had spurted up here for a while, had fashioned stems and branches of ice, and small trees stuck up from the bottom among the large ones. There were things here, too, that could not be described as either the one or the other – but they belonged to such a place and one had to accept everything as it came. She stared wide-eyed into a strange fairy-tale. The water was roaring far away.
In the last room, she suddenly, mysteriously, can't find a way out, not even how she came in. But in any case:
She was ready for sleep; she was even warm as well. It was not cold in here at any rate. The pattern in the ice wall danced in the room, the light shone more strongly. Everything that should have been upright was upside-down – everything was piercingly bright. Not once did she think this was strange; it was just as it should be. She wanted to sleep; she was languid and limp and ready.
At the end of the school day, Siss goes to the Aunt's house, at her teacher's request, to find why Siss was absent, only to find her Aunt thought she was at school. The whole village sets out to hunt for the missing girl, and the Ice Palace forms the centre of their search:
They themselves have lent it life; light and life to the dead block of ice, and to the silent time that follows midnight. Before they came the waterfall had been roaring, despondent and unconcerned, and the colossus of ice had been merely death, completed and mute.
Attention also focuses on Siss as the last to speak to Unn, and she at first lets slip that something may have been said of significance, but when she comes under pressure refuses to say more - in a sense justified since all she knew was that Unn had a secret, not what the secret was, and the main "happening" was the fierce spark between the two girls, and the promise to meet the next day.
As Siss gets increasingly distressed by the questioning, that day and in the following days, the villagers eventually adopt the opposite tactic and no-one speaks about Unn to Siss, making her feel that everyone else has forgotten the still missing Unn.
And Siss makes a promise of her own to Unn: I promise to think about no one but you; a promise that leaves her increasingly isolated from the other children, standing alone in the playground, her position as leader usurped by others.
And as the winter passes and spring approaches, the Ice Palace begins to melt, the very thing that Siss both anticipates and fears....
Highly recommend - 4.5 stars
...
Why am I here? It occurred to her, as she walked up and down. Not so many steps; she was walking more and more stiffly and unrecognizably. Why am I here? She attempted to find the solution to this riddle. Meanwhile she walked, strangely exalted, half unconscious.
She was close to the edge now: the ice laid its hand upon her.
The Ice Palace came to my attention highly garlanded with praise.
Peter Owen Publishing has one of the most impressive lists of any UK publisher, for example the wonderfully Sebaldesque Panorama : pripoved o poteku dogodkov by Dušan Šarotar from their World Series. Their history is worth quoting:
Peter Owen (1927–2016) started his company, aged twenty-four, six years after the Second World War.And the book that Peter Owen regarded as the crown jewel of that highly distinguished roster? The Ice Palace: the English translation, in 1993, by Elizabeth Rokkan of the Norwegian writer Tarjei Vesaas 1963 novel Is-slottet.
He ran the business from home, with a typewriter as his only equipment. Soon, however, the company started to flourish, enabling him to employ some staff – his first editor was Muriel Spark. He was able to bring some of the very best international literature to what was a very insular British market.
In the decades since then, although the industry has changed beyond recognition, Peter Owen Publishers continues the tradition of producing new and interesting writing. The company has published seven Nobel Prize winners, including Hermann Hesse, Octavio Paz and Isaac Bashevis Singer, and boasts a backlist that includes some of the most talented and important writers from all over the world.
Peter Owen sadly died in May 2016, but his legacy lives on in the publishing house that carries his name and his commitment to publishing talented and exciting writers.
Is-slottet was also winner, on publication, of the 1964 Nordic Council's Literature Prize. 50 years later the English translation won the Fiction category of the inaugural (and unfortunately short-lived) Daphne Awards, founded in 2014, to revisit the book awards of 50 years earlier and see which books had stood the test of time:
They were inspired by the frustration with awards that so frequently go to the mediocre and the safe, and the realization that often times truly transformative work takes years or decades to be acknowledged and embraced
and where it beat off competition from a shortlist of books that had weathered well, including Cortazar's Hopscotch, Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell from the Sea, Boll's The Clown, and Plath's The Bell Jar.
As for the novel itself, yes it deserves the hype. It is a powerfully intense exploration of friendship between two girls, and of life and death, simple on the page but complex in its emotional resonanc.
It opens:
A young white forehead boring into the darkness. An eleven-year-old girl. Siss. It was really only afternoon, but already dark. A hard frost in late autumn. Stars, but no moon, and no snow to give a glimmer of light.
Siss is on the way to meet with Unn, her classmate, who moved to Siss's small community that summer, to live with her Aunt following the death of her mother. Unn has to date stood alone in the playground, an enigma, but has finally opened up a little, inviting Siss, the acknowledged leader of the children, to her Aunt's house, an encounter that Siss is
The time they spend together takes only 10 pages in the novel to describe, a chapter called One Single Evening, and perhaps only a couple of hours elapses in real time, and is the last as well as first conversation they have, but is the pivot for the rest of the novel.
The two immediately forge a strong bond, but while they are physically close, words are harder.
Siss attempts to come close to Unn, but equally senses the risk of probing too far:
Was their some danger here? No, there couldn’t be, but she didn’t feel quite safe either; evidently it was easy to go far.
And they part with a promise from Unn that when they next meet she will tell Siss a secret. But the next morning, fearing what might happen, Unn decides to defer the encounter and instead of going to school, heads to see the Ice Palace instead:
There had been an unusually long period of severe frost this autumn ... There was a waterfall some distance away that has built up an extraordinary mountain of ice around it during this long, hard period of cold. It was said to look like a palace, and nobody could remember it happening before.
....
And what was this?
It must be the ice palace.
The sun had suddenly disappeared. There was a ravine with steep sides. The sun would perhaps reach into it later, but now it was in ice-cold shadow. Unn looked down into an enchanted world of small pinnacles, gables, frosted domes, soft curves and confused tracery. All of it was ice, and the water spurted between, building it up continually. Branches of the waterfall had been diverted and rushed into new channels, creating new forms. Everything shone. The sun had not yet come, but it shone ice-blue and green of itself, and deathly cold. The waterfall plunged into the middle of it as if diving into a black cellar. Up on the edge of the rock the water spread out in stripes, the colour changing from black to green, from green to yellow and white, as the fall became wilder. A booming came from the cellar-hole where the water dashed itself into white foam against the stones on the bottom. Huge puffs of mist rose into the air.
At first the palace seems difficult to penetrate, but Unn suddenly finds a tiny gap she can squeeze through and then another, journeying through the palace where she finds a succession of rooms:
When she arrived inside the next one she caught her breath at what she saw: she was in the middle of a petrified forest. An ice forest.
The water, which had spurted up here for a while, had fashioned stems and branches of ice, and small trees stuck up from the bottom among the large ones. There were things here, too, that could not be described as either the one or the other – but they belonged to such a place and one had to accept everything as it came. She stared wide-eyed into a strange fairy-tale. The water was roaring far away.
In the last room, she suddenly, mysteriously, can't find a way out, not even how she came in. But in any case:
She was ready for sleep; she was even warm as well. It was not cold in here at any rate. The pattern in the ice wall danced in the room, the light shone more strongly. Everything that should have been upright was upside-down – everything was piercingly bright. Not once did she think this was strange; it was just as it should be. She wanted to sleep; she was languid and limp and ready.
At the end of the school day, Siss goes to the Aunt's house, at her teacher's request, to find why Siss was absent, only to find her Aunt thought she was at school. The whole village sets out to hunt for the missing girl, and the Ice Palace forms the centre of their search:
They themselves have lent it life; light and life to the dead block of ice, and to the silent time that follows midnight. Before they came the waterfall had been roaring, despondent and unconcerned, and the colossus of ice had been merely death, completed and mute.
Attention also focuses on Siss as the last to speak to Unn, and she at first lets slip that something may have been said of significance, but when she comes under pressure refuses to say more - in a sense justified since all she knew was that Unn had a secret, not what the secret was, and the main "happening" was the fierce spark between the two girls, and the promise to meet the next day.
As Siss gets increasingly distressed by the questioning, that day and in the following days, the villagers eventually adopt the opposite tactic and no-one speaks about Unn to Siss, making her feel that everyone else has forgotten the still missing Unn.
And Siss makes a promise of her own to Unn: I promise to think about no one but you; a promise that leaves her increasingly isolated from the other children, standing alone in the playground, her position as leader usurped by others.
And as the winter passes and spring approaches, the Ice Palace begins to melt, the very thing that Siss both anticipates and fears....
Highly recommend - 4.5 stars
June 21, 2021
Tarjei Vesaas es uno de los novelistas noruegos más importantes del siglo XX, entre sus obras más famosas destaca «El palacio de hielo» que fue publicado en 1963. Gracias a esta editorial podemos disfrutar de un libro escandinavo excepcional, con una edición inmejorable y una nota de editor que nos vuelve a brindar un cierre encomiable a la par que maravilloso a la lectura.
Esta es la historia de una amistad que se forja fugazmente, con una intensidad puramente inocente y genuina entre dos niñas de once años. Sucederá algo que cambiará radicalmente lo que pudo ser pero no fue, pero no por ello quedará en el olvido. Cobrará importancia el palacio de hielo que se forma cuando la cascada se hiela en invierno, sus enormes salas dotadas de vida y los seres que habitan en los bosques harán de este un lugar mágico y simbólico.
Trata muchos temas, pero sobre todo se centra en el duelo, en la pérdida que ahoga, la negación a aceptar lo sucedido y el valor de las promesas dichas. Explora con brillantez los sentimientos de la protagonista: el temor de fallar, de no permitir el paso al olvido y la incapacidad de seguir adelante sin esa persona. Relata un encuentro entre almas gemelas que se ven unidas por una extraña pero sincera conexión que deriva en una amistad inolvidable.
Si le sumamos además una ambientación invernal en Noruega, con la que el autor logra traspasar el frío gélido de sus páginas al lector, hace que esta sea una lectura en conjunto fascinante. La oscuridad toma un cariz revelador, la naturaleza está presente y sus cambios forman un paralelismo simbólico con la protagonista.
En definitiva, nos hallamos ante un escrito lírico, sutil, narrado con sencillez y que nos proporciona una mirada poética de un encuentro prematuro ante la muerte. Nos hace viajar, otorga momentos emotivos y tristes pero que finalmente se ven endulzados por el progreso y la capacidad de superación de una niña que necesita seguir siendo una niña. Una obra que recomiendo leer desconociendo su trama pues sorprende y enamora.
Esta es la historia de una amistad que se forja fugazmente, con una intensidad puramente inocente y genuina entre dos niñas de once años. Sucederá algo que cambiará radicalmente lo que pudo ser pero no fue, pero no por ello quedará en el olvido. Cobrará importancia el palacio de hielo que se forma cuando la cascada se hiela en invierno, sus enormes salas dotadas de vida y los seres que habitan en los bosques harán de este un lugar mágico y simbólico.
Trata muchos temas, pero sobre todo se centra en el duelo, en la pérdida que ahoga, la negación a aceptar lo sucedido y el valor de las promesas dichas. Explora con brillantez los sentimientos de la protagonista: el temor de fallar, de no permitir el paso al olvido y la incapacidad de seguir adelante sin esa persona. Relata un encuentro entre almas gemelas que se ven unidas por una extraña pero sincera conexión que deriva en una amistad inolvidable.
Si le sumamos además una ambientación invernal en Noruega, con la que el autor logra traspasar el frío gélido de sus páginas al lector, hace que esta sea una lectura en conjunto fascinante. La oscuridad toma un cariz revelador, la naturaleza está presente y sus cambios forman un paralelismo simbólico con la protagonista.
En definitiva, nos hallamos ante un escrito lírico, sutil, narrado con sencillez y que nos proporciona una mirada poética de un encuentro prematuro ante la muerte. Nos hace viajar, otorga momentos emotivos y tristes pero que finalmente se ven endulzados por el progreso y la capacidad de superación de una niña que necesita seguir siendo una niña. Una obra que recomiendo leer desconociendo su trama pues sorprende y enamora.
May 11, 2025
Schon lange hat mich kein Buch so berührt wie dieses. Was war es? Die emotionale Geschichte? Die winterliche Landschaft Norwegens, Mitleid mit den kindlichen Hauptpersonen Siss und Unn, die Mitmenschlichkeit ihrer KlassenkameradInnen, das zurückhaltende Verständnis der Erwachsenen?
Ich denke es ist die grundlegende Frage, wie wir mit dem Verlust eines geliebten Menschen umgehen und wir mit Menschen umgehen, die solch einen Verlust erlitten haben. Kinder werden in dieser Geschichte ernst genommen, ihre Hoffnungen, Freuden und Nöte sind ebenso existentiell, wie die von Erwachsenen, ja vielleicht sogar mehr noch. Und auch wenn es hier kein Happy End, wie bei Astrid Lindgren oder in Andersens Märchen „Die Schneekönigin“ gibt, eröffnet sich ein Weg zum Weiterleben. Für Siss vielleicht sogar der Beginn eines neuen Lebensabschnitts: Schneezeit und Todeszeit und eine verschlossene Kammer – und dann ist man auf einmal fast zu plötzlich auf der anderen Seite, bekommt feuchte Augen vor Freude, weil ein Junge sagt: Du mit deinen Grübchen.
Ich denke es ist die grundlegende Frage, wie wir mit dem Verlust eines geliebten Menschen umgehen und wir mit Menschen umgehen, die solch einen Verlust erlitten haben. Kinder werden in dieser Geschichte ernst genommen, ihre Hoffnungen, Freuden und Nöte sind ebenso existentiell, wie die von Erwachsenen, ja vielleicht sogar mehr noch. Und auch wenn es hier kein Happy End, wie bei Astrid Lindgren oder in Andersens Märchen „Die Schneekönigin“ gibt, eröffnet sich ein Weg zum Weiterleben. Für Siss vielleicht sogar der Beginn eines neuen Lebensabschnitts: Schneezeit und Todeszeit und eine verschlossene Kammer – und dann ist man auf einmal fast zu plötzlich auf der anderen Seite, bekommt feuchte Augen vor Freude, weil ein Junge sagt: Du mit deinen Grübchen.
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