Ferries have a spooky association with death, Charon, an ugly demon employed by Hades as the underworld’s ferryman, picking up the souls of recently perished human beings in his skiff and depositing them in the afterlife, in Greek mythology. In The Ferryman and His Wife by 64-year-old bestselling Norwegian author and winner of the prestigious Brage Prize, Frode Grytten takes readers on an epic journey: Ferry Driver Nils Vik’s last route along the fjord instead of the River Styx, which he must cross to get there “it rumbles and rustles, it whispers and rushes, even on days with no wind”, what he knows will be his last day alive.

Grytten, takes us through rocks and avalanches and little cabins, the silvery moon overhead and the “bird’s eggs among the pines”. The landscape isn’t without danger, though “Generation of seafarers had never learnt to swim” because they knew that if their boats went down “It was game over regardless”. They get tattoos of pigs, roosters and swallows since “these are the animals and birds that know the way home” according to Grytten.

 Nils Vik wales up on November the 18^th and knows it will be the day he dies. He follows his morning routine as voices from his past echo his mind, and looks around the empty house one last time, before stepping into his beloved boat.

His dog, dead these many years, leaps aboard with him, and then the other dead begin to emerge- from the woods along the fjord, from each of the ferry stops along the route, from his logbook full of memories and quotations and jotted-down notes about the weather conditions. The people from the past accompany him now, prodding him, showing him what he might have missed before, as he waits for his Marta, his late, remarkable wife, to finally join him on the boat again.

Timeless and absorbing , those moments that might seem insignificant as they happen but prove to be the most meaningful in the end.

Grytten’s characters are not only intriguing but also represent a host of different ways that death can happen: dehydration; falling from a crane; drowning in the water; a fire at a filthy motel in Alberta, Canada. Nils came to conclusion: “You live for a time, and then it’s over”. What is the point of that life, he wonders “To wake, to eat, to piss and shit and love.” Sums it up, really. 

The Ferryman and His Wife is about what we take with us- those moments that might seem insignificant as they happen but prove to be the most meaningful, in the end.The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten, Translated Alison McCullough, Serpent’s Tail £12.99, 176 pages.