HOMME FARM:

In 1836, Birgit bore her second child, a little girl. "Since we've already tangled up the traditional naming scheme," she told Jon, "why don't we name her after your mother instead of mine? I know how much you miss her. I do, too." And so, two years after the passing of Farmor Tone, the Homme household gained another Tone, with a twist of flaxen curl on her crown and dimples in her cheeks.

Four-year-old big brother Halvor had gained the nickname Varder, or "guard," from the way he loved expeditions up Homme's Crest. "You'd make a great watchman," Jon told him many times, with the boy perched on his shoulders at the highest point on the knoll.

"I see Kvitseidvatn," Varder said. "I see Uncle Halvor Lamefoot riding a horse way down low. I see an eagle way up high. I see a bald spot on your head, Far."

Jon laughed. "Do you see a fire burning on any other mountaintop?" he asked.

Varder swiveled and peered. "Nei, no fire."

"Then all is well," Jon said. "A fire on a mountaintop is a way of warning folk that there's danger."

"All is well," the boy repeated, satisfied with his watch duty.

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MIDTBØ FARM (NEAR BREKKE):

Birgit's younger brother Talleiv also had a daughter that year, and named her after their mother Guro. He had gotten married the year before, and farmed at Midtbø near their older sister's home.

Talleiv had taken Olav's death four years earlier especially hard. Instead of relief from Olav's relentless verbal attacks, he felt a void, for his whole purpose until then had been been tangled up in defending himself -- always battling destruction, with no time or energy for construction. He had built nothing of himself, found no active role in life, forever reacting to others. Now he confided to Birgit that his life yawned empty as a cavernous pit.

"You have a loving wife and the sweetest little daughter," Birgit said, but her words fell into his abyss of despair and vanished in the dark.

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HUVESTAD FARM (NEAR HOMME):

Seventeen years earlier, Gunnhild's brother Bjørgulv had married the Huvestad heiress, Ingebjørg. Now Bjørgulv was developing a peculiar theory. "The world turned cold and hard after Ingebjørg's deformed brother was born, all tangled and twisted, with six fingers to a hand and six toes to a foot. Cold and hard." He shuddered.

"Nonsense," Gunnhild told him. "I've heard tell of many frigid, hungry years before his birth."

"They said it was a bad omen. And look where we've come since then."

"You can hardly blame the Napoleonic Wars on poor little Olav!"

Bjørgulv shook his head. "Local tragedies aplenty. Crops failing. Forest fires. Untimely deaths."

Gunnhild put an arm around his shoulder. Just a few months before, their big brother Burly Knut had died from some mysterious stomach ailment. And Bjørgulv's wife had just had another stillbirth. Out of their many children, only two had survived infancy.

"Ever since Olav's birth," he murmured.

Gunnhild could think of nothing to say.

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BEHIND THE SCENES

The "-vor" in the name Halvor comes from the old Norse word "vardr" which means a guard or sentry.