{"id":17473,"date":"2022-10-14T22:01:26","date_gmt":"2022-10-14T22:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/jammerdalen-by-flu-hartgren-reviews-and-recommendations\/"},"modified":"2022-10-14T22:01:27","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T22:01:27","slug":"jammerdalen-by-flu-hartgren-reviews-and-recommendations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/jammerdalen-by-flu-hartgren-reviews-and-recommendations\/","title":{"rendered":"“Jammerdalen” by Flu Hartgren – Reviews and recommendations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“Jammerdalen” begins quite realistically, at a Sunday dinner in a rectory home quite some time ago. The strictly authoritative prelate himself sits at the end of the table, commanding. A mitigating mother, a girl and two boys in a slight sibling quarrel get to sit along. And then the theology student, Ingolf, who will live in the rectory for a few days. SUNDAY DINNER: There is power in the folded hands, but is it enough to keep the family together? Illustration: No Comprendo Press Quite apart from the father’s unstoppable corrections and prohibitions, it all goes quite calmly. The children have indeed found a strange animal track in the garden, but after evening prayer and the good-night song, “When I lay down to rest, thirteen angels stand around me”, it becomes night. The reader then truly sees that God’s own eye guards the parsonage and those who sleep there: Illustration: No Comprendo Press Gone was and gone was The next morning the one son does not come to breakfast, the lower bunk is empty, the duvet is gone. The window to the boys’ room is gaping open, and there is dirt on the floor. Brother J\u00f8rgen thinks Petter has stood up for everything, but he is nowhere to be seen. Petter has disappeared. Many years later, J\u00f8rgen says goodbye to his wife and son for a weekend seminar, the lock and security industry’s annual gathering. His wife warns him against drinking too much. J\u00f8rgen brushes her off, he is looking forward to presenting a new patent: a travel safe. But at the seminar, in addition to J\u00f8rgen’s strong alcohol intake, his safe is tanked by another rather different, spectacular invention. From here, realism is no longer what it was. SAFE BET: You’d think he’d be successful at the seminar with such a patent … Illustration: No Comprendo Press … but when that doesn’t happen, it might be nice to have a place to go. Illustration: No Comprendo Press Magical-realistic In connection with the launch of “Jammerdalen”, I have seen the novel placed in a magical-realistic genre. It may fit well as it develops. I have to stay far away from further plot descriptions, but I can’t help but mention travel across time and underground, digging beings who precisely control and contribute to such speeding between what we can, with reservations, call realities. Illustration: No Comprendo Press Cartoonist and illustrator Flu Hartberg Born: 28 October 1979, Lillehammer Raised: Biri in Oppland, later T\u00e5sen in Oslo Publications: A number of comics and books since 2001, including “Fagprat” in Dagbladet between 2007 and 2019. Major work “Jammerdalen” has supposedly been under construction for a decade. It is noticeable that a lot of work has gone into this. Like much else in Hartberg’s catalogue, this novel has a curious, absurd-witty and satirical approach to the narrative that suits the material very well. We rarely talk slapstick. Rather steady, indulgent chuckling, but also along the way recognition of the cartoonist’s antics on the already messy timeline. Illustration: No Comprendo Press Illustration: No Comprendo Press Illustration: No Comprendo Press Illustration: No Comprendo Press If we dare to place Hartberg’s latest in the well-established humor-action genre, then he mostly does credit, both to himself himself and his predecessors. As can be the case in good series, the second reading contributed for me to at least one experience of the aha type, that’s how it was! Drawing, shape and color Hartberg’s dealings with perspective, point of view and vantage point, if you will, are often elegant in his choices. SCRABLIKK: Flu Hartberg’s dealings with perspective and point of view. Illustration: No Comprendo Press DON’T LOOK SILENTLY: “The speech of the closed eyes” – taken from two different places in the story. Illustration: No Comprendo Press At the same time, the movement and facial expressions of the actors, like the speech of the closed eyes, may seem simplified – without being so. Hartberg can draw the ugliest creatures with human features. He also does it here, on one occasion. The color scale is fairly realistic in parts that ask for it, but moves almost beckoningly towards dim green, pink and violet tones when the narrative turns to horror. The drawings control the narrative, while the dialogues of the speech bubbles dominate all elements of the text. It is well tuned, well balanced and well spoken almost throughout. Like here, with a slightly lost character in Jammerdalen: Illustration: No Comprendo Press Missing it a bit? Even after repeated reflection and leaps across time as we know it, it is possible to object that the story seems to limp ever so slightly on a couple of occasions. At least a thread or two does not seem to have found its way back into the novel’s skein. What about the good-natured theology student Ingolf, the one who was arrested, is he still there in custody? I indicated in the preamble a dose of seriousness. And yes, it exists. Not annoying or obvious, but there is a kind of anti-authoritarian thread running through “Jammerdalen”: from the strict priest at the Sunday dinner at the beginning to a hollow and powerful priestly board that is revealed towards the end. That’s fine, I’m going to read “Jammerdalen” once more. Smallest. news reviews Photo: No Comprendo Press Title: Jammerdalen Author: Flu Hartgren Genre: Comic book Publisher: No Comprendo Press Number of pages: 160 Date: 2022
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“Jammerdalen” begins quite realistically, at a Sunday dinner in a rectory home quite some time ago. The strictly authoritative prelate himself sits at the end of the table, commanding. A mitigating mother, a girl and two boys in a slight sibling quarrel get to sit along. And then the theology student, Ingolf, who will live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2305,8356,8355,225,224],"class_list":["post-17473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-flu","tag-hartgren","tag-jammerdalen","tag-recommendations","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}