“The Ice Palace” is the most mystical book I ever read.

So many questions.

Do you think you could resist? Of course not. Everyone will succumb to the Ice Palace, so mesmerizingly described by Tarjei Vesaas. Even if you once got so captivated by a bewitching snowfall that you were hit by a car and now try to be cautious around the enchanting magic of snow, you will still enter this palace. Even if you have claustrophobia, you will not be able to pass by the endless corridors of the frozen waterfall. The mysteries of existence haunt everyone without exception, the past distracts everyone, nature makes everyone revere and bow before it. You will enter Vesaas’s icy temple dispassionately and won’t stop; you will keep going for a long time, feeling like you are doing everything right.

This is what happened to the little and sensitive girl Unn, whom you will immediately love as yourself. You will also want to leave the library or your home where you are reading this story and start searching for Unn. The narrative is poignant and fragile, hypnotizing and gripping. Vesaas’s characters are ordinary village residents, filled with small, insignificant, and simple symbolism, which seems unremarkable. But due to the psychological tension, so fantastically described, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a village or New York City; you will read with such fascination as if you hadn’t read in 78 years.

Look! The mountain is covered in snow
And the trees on it – row by row,
As far as the eye can see.
Wherever we are,
They are always near.
They forever stand before our inner gaze.
“Snø Og Granskog,” Tarjei Vesaas

December 2014