Author meeting with Karin Härjegård

Introduction and childhood memories

It started with me gluing a picture into a small notebook and then writing a story. Either I actually remember it, or I have seen this notebook afterwards, but I see it so clearly in front of me. I think something started there. There you could put together letters into words that became sentences and finally into stories. Since then, I have never stopped; I have just written and written.

My grandmother lived on the same farm as we did and she had a typewriter. I could go in to her and grandfather whenever I wanted, and there stood the typewriter just waiting for me. I wrote and I wrote. You know how it was with rolls and paper back then – it feels like a long time ago, and it is indeed. When I had finished writing something, I took it into the kitchen and asked grandmother to sit down. Then I read aloud what I had created, and grandmother always said: "But how brave you are!"

I think that is so important for a child. To feel that adults see you, listen, take their time, and confirm that what you are doing is good – it means a lot.

Since then, I have constantly written: poems, song lyrics, scripts for musical performances, hymns, and columns. I have always written alongside school and later alongside work.

Writing routines and working methods

I usually say that my superpower is that I am an early riser. It is a fantastic asset because then I can get up and write before the rest of the family has woken up. If you have one to two hours in the morning, you can accomplish a lot.

When I was going to start writing full-time, many told me: "Now you will start sleeping in and not get going until ten or eleven." They thought it would be like that when you manage your time completely on your own, but that’s not how I work. I wake up around half past five, am very alert, brew a cup of coffee, and go straight out to my writing cabin to write. It’s wonderful.

When I write, I use a timer that I set for 45 minutes. When it beeps, I take a break. I have learned that if I don't set a clock, I can end up sitting for several hours. Then I get back pain and feel completely sluggish in my head. Breaks are necessary. After 45 minutes, I might stand up and stretch, sit down for a while and rest, or take a short walk outside. Then I go for another 45 minutes before it's time for breakfast or to tackle household chores.

My brain is quite good at signaling when it's time to stop. After a certain number of hours, it's pointless to continue because what I write becomes just garbage. Some days I can keep going well into the afternoon, while on other days I hit a wall by lunchtime. That's the advantage of being your own boss – you can decide that it's enough for the day and go hang the laundry instead.

The work also looks different depending on which phase I'm in. When I'm editing and collaborating with my editor at the publishing house – when we go through the entire manuscript, cut, add, and change – it's very demanding. Then I usually shorten the work sessions to 30 minutes. When it's time for proofreading, an even more extreme focus is required, and then the sessions can become even shorter.

During the actual writing, I see everything in images. It's like a movie is playing in front of me, and my job is to write down what the movie is about – describe what the characters look like, how the trees sway, and what color the houses are. Then it's incredibly fun when the characters suddenly start doing completely different things than I had planned. You just have to go with it. However, it's important for me to know where the story is headed and what the ending should look like overall, even if the path there can change during the writing process.

The early books and the historical novels

The first book I wrote, I did together with my dear friends Sonja Wallén and Ulla Granqvist. It was a book about grief and what grief does to us humans. It contained short texts and Ulla's fantastic images, and was titled Grief, the most mysterious thing in my life.

After that, I wrote three historical novels. The first one is about a woman who came to my hometown Hede in 1937 and made a big impact there. That book is called That fire within. It was so incredibly fun to write about a real person, to sit at the county archive, do research, and seek facts to then build a novel around it.

After that, I wanted to continue on the historical path. During a community meeting in Åre parish at Sankt Olofsgården, we were talking about Åre's history. Two gentlemen at the coffee table, John and Gösta, then said: "Åre would be nothing without the women." I naturally agreed but asked who they were specifically thinking of. They then told me about Kristina Hansson, who came to Åre from Mellangrevie in Skåne in 1894. She pushed through and had Åre's first tourist hotel, Hotell Åreskutan (which is now called Åregården), built, which kickstarted the entire tourist development in the area. I was so fascinated by her story that I wrote the novel The Queen of Åre.

But I still didn't feel finished with the historical female portraits in our area. I found the third woman at Hovermo Gårdsmuseum – a fantastic museum that I warmly recommend you visit before it closes. In one of the exhibition rooms, I found the story of a woman from Rörjan who was an extremely skilled weaver. She emigrated to America in 1902 and made a big name for herself there as an artist and weaver. Her letters home to Sweden are preserved at the county archive. Despite the old-fashioned handwriting, they were easy to read. I sat there laughing and crying because the letters were filled with both humor and deepest sorrow. This resulted in the novel There has come a letter.

Between these historical novels, I also wrote two collections of short stories for the publishing house Verbum. They wanted biblical stories retold in short story form for young people. It was a really fun assignment that resulted in the books You draw in the sand and You meet my gaze in the crowd.

The mountain series

After all the work with research, county archives, and old documents, I longed to write something where I could create completely freely. That's when I started writing what would become The cold bather among the mountains. I couldn't imagine the impact that book would have.

It has since become one book a year in that series. The latest installment was released this March and is called The Wanderer Among the Mountain Plains. It is the fifth and final part of the series. I receive many lovely messages from readers who write that I must not stop and that the characters have become like their friends, but I have made up my mind – this will be the last part.

The success of the series has also given the earlier historical books a boost. It's fun, but also a bit sad since the printed editions of There has come a letter and The Queen of Åre are completely sold out. Recently, a library outside Gävle contacted me and said that a visitor who wanted to borrow The Queen of Åre ended up at position 34 in the queue. They asked if they could buy books directly from me, but I have none left myself. I have tried to get the publisher to print them again, but they say the books are too old (from 2017) and that there is no market, even though I know there is demand. But we have at least recorded them as audiobooks and e-books, which is a consolation.

The Valmåsen Trilogy

When I was working on the third book in the Mountain Series, The Pianist by the Mountain Lake, my husband and I visited my brother and his family in Funäsdalen. My husband picked a book from their shelf, started flipping through it, and said it was a factual book about Valmåsen.

I grew up in Hede and as a child had heard about a village that had been drowned, but I didn't understand what that actually meant. The book contained black and white pictures of beautiful old farms and people in everyday life and celebrations. It was an incredibly beautiful village. I read about how the people were forced to leave their homes because Sweden needed more electricity and the hydropower was to be expanded. Valmåsen and its inhabitants were sacrificed.

This affected me very deeply. I began to think about what it does to a person to be forced to leave their home, especially when it concerns old ancestral farms that have been passed down for generations. How long do those traces remain? I immediately felt that I had to write about this. My husband and brother pointed out that I was already busy with my ongoing series, but I couldn't let it go.

I got the factual book, searched for information online, and contacted people who grew up in Valmåsen and experienced the displacement. I had, among other things, a very strong meeting with Fritz, who recently turned 100 years old. We sat at his kitchen table, and he told me about his childhood in the village, about how the children swam in the lake in the summers, played in the woods, and about the village community. He also talked about when they received the final notice in 1957 that they had to move and that the farms would be demolished. Tears welled up in his eyes during the conversation. Even though many years have passed, the sorrow remains deep. He said the words: "There were villagers who never got up again." Those words really stuck with me.

After the meetings with Fritz and the others, I began to write. I chose not to write about the actual, real people in Valmåsen to avoid exposing anyone. Instead, I created my own characters but placed them in Valmåsen, where they went through the same things that the real villagers experienced.

During the work, a pair of twins appeared in my mind, Elsa and Rut, who are in their late teens. I immediately understood that they were my main characters. I placed them and their parents on an old ancestral farm in Valmåsen. To explore how these historical wounds affect later generations, I also created a contemporary character, Cecilia. She is in her 40s, has a seemingly perfect life in Alnö outside Sundsvall with family and a beautiful home by the sea. But something is gnawing deep within her – a rootlessness that has been inherited for generations. Some of the Valmåsen residents moved to Sundsvall (although most moved to Tännäs and Funäsdalen), so I let Cecilia's family have that origin. These two worlds intertwine in the book called When the Water Approaches.

I realized early on that the story was too big for a single book, so I asked my publisher if I could write a trilogy. He was very happy, so that's what I'm working on now. The first part is here today. And the fact is that just this morning I finished proofreading the second part, so we are celebrating that a little extra today!

Questions from the audience