Kirkøy

In the shadows of the pines at Storesand beach, you have a fabulous place to put up your tent. Here you can feel the breeze in your hair, you breath clean air. You can smell salty water and seagrass. Listen to the seagulls screaming in the sky—walk along the stony pathways. See the stone Church at Kirkøy, built over foundation stones who possibly stretch back to the Viking age. Back to the time when the Norwegians worshipped Thor and Odin.

As an author of fiction books, I must get inspired by reality, because my fictional characters are “living” in the real world. Therefore, I sometimes walk in their “footsteps”. In this reportage, I walk at Kirkøy island, where my two main characters Willy Lauer and Raja Romanova talked with each other at the beginning of The Sea Lion. Storesand beach and Hvaler Church.

The young fisherman Willy Lauer “lives” on Lauer island, which is a group of small islands. At these photos, you can see North Lauer, the very island where the Castle lies, Willy’s tiny house.

The white, wooden house above, is as I imagine, pretty like Willy`s house. But in my imagination his “Castle” is even smaller.