Little Halvor burst into the cabin. "We're done, Farmor! Come see!"

Liv blinked at him. "So soon? Hmm-- I need to rest here a little longer--" Her eyes drifted shut.

Halvor giggled. "You'll make the rocking chair too heavy. Papa says it's the last thing to--"

"I'll help you up, Mor," Torjus said.

"My word, where did you come from?" Liv allowed her son to hoist her to her feet. "Did I drowse off again?"

"Of course you did. You're enjoying the life of ease you've earned. And the new house will make it even easier." Torjus steadied Liv over the threshold and across the yard.

"What about the rocker?" little Halvor called.

"We'll fetch it."

Liv had to think a moment before recognizing the voices of the brothers-in-law from Byggland farm. She peered up at the new house Torjus had built over the last two years. "With glass pane windows, both high and low!"

"Yes, Mor. There's a window in your room, too. They're all standing open to air out the smell of sawdust, but we can close them tight against the evening chill. Now, two steps up into the mudroom entryway."

"My word, a railing and everything." One hand on the rail, Liv lurched up and inside.

The entryway opened onto a living area with wooden floorboards, flat and even from wall to wall. No central hearth. Liv's eyes teared up to see the stonework in the corner. A fireplace and chimney. "You did it," she whispered.*

"Yes. No more smoky rooms in the middle of winter. Nor in summer. We'll use the old cabin for a summer kitchen."

Liv marveled at the wrought ironwork set into the fireplace. Swinging arms for pots to hang from. Grates below.

"Over here," Torjus said, "the doorway into your downstairs bedroom."

Little Halvor grabbed Liv's hand. "Our rooms are upstairs, Farmor. Come see!"

Liv eyed the stairway. "If I take these steps, my knees won't forgive me."

Åsmund and Talleiv from Byggland brought in the rocking chair and placed it near the corner hearth.

Liv settled into it with a sigh. She looked over the stonework. "You didn't haul all these from the creek bank, did you?

"I raided the old gravemounds."

"What?!"

Torjus laughed. "I dug into one as a boy. There's nothing buried there, just stones cleared from the fields long ago. No graves. Not even any viking swords and hammers like my father-in-law dug up at Byggland."

From upstairs came a thump and a wail. Tone came downstairs with the baby shrieking in her arms, and three-year-old Liv hopping down behind her, jabbering about snowflakes and trolls and bent nails.

Farmor Liv eyed her bedroom door, and smiled. Come evening she could close the door on childish mayhem.

Close the door on grown-up talk about a French general named Bonaparte. Close the door on word of King Christian's decline. Close the door on news of a British sea attack on Copenhagen.

Close the door on trouble and woe. Open her heart to peace.

An old stone foundation at Homme farm in 2006 (no buildings standing at that time)

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BEHIND THE SCENES

Frederik VI ruled as prince regent in the stead of his mentally ill father, King Christian VII, from 1784 until Christian's death in 1808.

* See chapter "1799" for the background to the comment about the chimney.

Photo at the top: a "gravemound" at Homme farm