When Alt for Norge was first published in Oslo in 1975, a chorus of praise went up from critics in Pål Espolin Johnson's native country. It contained "the joy and art of storytelling at its best," one said. This novel about the fishing folk who live on an island off the northern coast of Norway is Johnson's own favorite of his works to date, and it is the first to be translated into English, by Conrad Røyksund, who perfectly catches its eloquent simplicity.
In the tiny village of Mostad, squeezed between the roaring ocean and a saw-toothed mountain, the struggle against the element is eternal. In that small space births, weddings, and deaths unite families. The men who go down to the fishing boats do not always return. The women work and wish for better times while keeping the home fires burning. The people in these pages are almost too strikingly real to make fiction of, particularly Magda, who stays at Mostad for thirty-nine years and listens to its heartbeat grow dimmer as war, economic depression, and the effects of time and tide set in. For Love of Norway is a memorable modern Nordic saga, all the more impressive for an objective style that is the literary equivalent of photography.
