Liebe am Fjord - Das Ende der Eiszeit (2011)

Annika Sörenbrandt runs a successful online book business, which she built herself, with great enthusiasm. She is content with her life. Without warning, she receives a phone call saying that her mother, Pernille, has had an accident in Fjærland, where she lives and where Annika’s own home was until she was eleven. Annika last saw her mother 25 years ago, when her parents separated. After talking with her boyfriend Mika, a state secretary at the Ministry of Culture, who encourages her to go, Annika decides to travel to Fjærland, a place widely known as a book village. Simon Österbrö, a friend of her mother’s who also called her, is waiting for her at the harbor. Österbrö is exceptionally versatile. His wife Helga tells Annika that he is very modest; for instance, he has published most of the Norwegian legends and songs. The reunion between mother and daughter after so long is tense, and both seem at a loss. At first, it appears that her mother’s injury is not serious and that there is no need for Annika to stay. At home, she also comes face to face with her half-brother Henrik, who is autistic. She knew she had a brother, but not what his condition was like, or that he needed supervision practically around the clock. On the one hand, Henrik has an absolutely astonishing memory and is a walking encyclopedia; on the other, he has the temperament of a child who needs certain rituals to feel safe. Annika doubts that Henrik could really know how many individual spaghetti strands there are in a packet, but he easily proves her wrong. Just as Annika has decided to return to Oslo, Simon Österbrö tells her that her mother suffered a severe traumatic brain injury in the fall down the stairs and had an intracerebral hemorrhage, the effects of which nearly killed her. Annika then decides to stay for at least another week. In a conversation, Pernille tells her daughter that perhaps her father could have lived with a disabled child, but not with another man’s child. For years, she had had to put up with her father’s affairs, but he could not endure or forgive a single mistake made out of desperation and a longing for affection. When Annika returns from a reading, the kitchen is on fire. As her mother tells her, to Annika’s dismay, this is not the first fire Henrik has caused. The next day, at Pernille’s request, Annika sets out with her brother on a trip to Bøyabreen, one of the glacier arms of Jostedalsbreen, where the two of them often went as children. When the siblings return, mother and daughter argue because Pernille deliberately kept it from Annika that a video conference with her publisher had been scheduled for that same day, so Henrik could spend a day with his sister. Annika feels that this is extremely disrespectful to her. When she seeks out Simon Österbrö’s company that day, he says that it is time to give her something. It is her mother’s diaries, which reveal to Annika that it was her father who had pressured her mother at the time, saying that Annika was the price she would have to pay in the divorce. Pernille’s accounts show Annika how great her mother’s pain was at losing her. When Annika returns, she finds her mother unconscious. Henrik had moved the pills Pernille needed from their usual place. When Pernille briefly regains consciousness, she explains to Annika that her father had demanded that she put Henrik in an institution; otherwise, he would leave her together with Annika. She could not give away her child, who needed her. Although it is hard for Pernille to agree, Annika eventually takes her brother with her to Oslo. However, her mother’s fears prove justified: Henrik feels lonely and abandoned in the completely unfamiliar surroundings and runs away after a few days. The search for him comes to nothing until Annika thinks to look for him in the harbor area, where she finds him and can take him in her arms. Mika, who is with her, says what Annika has known for a long time: Henrik needs the surroundings and the people he has known since early childhood. For Annika, this means returning to Fjærland, working online, and going to Oslo only when necessary. Mika says he would rather see her only now and then, happy, than all the time and unhappy. When Annika asks if he knows what a great guy he is, Mika replies with a smile that he has to be a good match for her, after all. And so brother and sister return to their mother, Pernille.