Norwegian culture, heritage and woodstacking with bestselling author Lars Mytting

RNZ News

11-05-2025

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In the 1860s and 70s two Norwegian settlements were established in the lower North Island. As the name of one of those today suggests - Norsewood - Norwegians were invited to settle here to clear a huge swathe of forest known as Seventy Mile Bush.
Which makes the arrival of Norwegian novelist Lars Mytting this weekend down the road at Wairarapa book festival Booktown in Featherston rather apt. He's there also ahead of literary events in Christchurch and Auckland.
Mytting is still best known internationally for his 2015 non-fiction book
Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way
. Considered one of that region's greatest publishing successes - as you read it, you really can smell the freshly-cut wood.
But Lars Mytting is principally a novelist. And since
Norwegian Wood
he has published a remarkable historical fiction series
The Sister Bells Trilogy
. Set in a remote valley in central Norway, the three novels tell the story of a small farming community and take place over three generations - from the 1880s through until the end of the second world war. The novels track the tension between long-held ways of living and modernisation, and between Norwegian culture and the influence of others.
The Sister Bells Trilogy
has been enormously successful in Norway - 400,000 copies sold, it's said, in a country with the population of New Zealand.
The books have also been acclaimed internationally, and the last of the three books
The Night of the Scourge
has just been published in English translation.
Lars is speaking in events at
Auckland Writers Festival
May 16, 17 and 18 and in a
Word Christchurch event
May 21.