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Abstract
Arv og miljø [Will and Testament] is about incest, trauma, and an inheritance dispute among four middle-aged siblings concerning testamentary dispositions of two beloved and valuable family cabins. Similarities between the characters in the novel and members of the author’s family were evident to the Norwegian public. Consequently, the novel provoked a counter novel Fri vilje [Free Will] from Hjorth’s sister. Within the general framework of Norwegian inheritance law, this article analyzes the interplay between emotions, intimate relationships, and financial dispositions as expressed in the testament and in the conflicting views on fairness and equity articulated in the two novels.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This article is an enhanced version of a paper given at the Conference “Passing On: Property, Family, and Death in Narratives of Inheritance”, Aarhus University, November 2019. I would very much like to thank the organizers for this wonderful conference, and Jakob Ladegaard and Beth Cortese for their constructive and competent criticism of my text. Also, a warm thank you to John Asland, Department of Private Law, University of Oslo, for his valuable comments on a draft version, and to Marianne Lien and Simone Abram, Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, for our discussions on inheritance and the materialization of kinship.
Notes
1 Vigdis Hjorth, Will and Testament. A Novel (London: Verso, 2019), 79.
2 Vigdis Hjorth, Arv og miljø. Roman (Oslo: Cappelen Damm, 2016). The literal translation of the title is “Inheritance and Environment”, but the title of the English translation is Will and Testament. All quotes are from the English translation.
3 Hjorth, Will and Testament, 37.
4 The most prominent review, initiating the debate, was Ingunn Økland, “Feberhet Incesthstorie” [Feverish Incest story] Aftenposten, September 11, 2016, 6.
5 Helga Hjorth, Fri vilje. Roman [Free Will. A Novel] (Oslo: Kagge, 2017). All quotes are translated by author.
6 Marianne Gullestad, Everyday Life Philosophers: Modernity, Morality, and Autobiography in Norway (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1996); Cheryl Mattingly, Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Jerome S. Bruner, Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
7 Marianne Holdgaard, Auður Magnúsdóttir and Bodil Selmer, “Introduction” in Nordic Inheritance Law through the Ages. Spaces of Action and Legal Strategies, eds. Marianne Holdgaard, Auður Magnúsdóttir, and Bodil Selmer, vol. 18, Legal History Library (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2020), 1–20.
8 Arne Borge, “Noen ganger er det for sent,” [Sometimes It Is Too Late] Vagrant, October 11, 2016. http://www.vagant.no/noen-ganger-er-det-for-sent/
9 Hjorth, Will and Testament, 1.
10 Hjorth, Fri vilje, 292. A former Norwegian Libel Act was abolished October 1, 2015.
11 Kirin Narayan, “Tools to Shape Texts: What Creative Nonfiction Can Offer Ethnography,” Anthropology and Humanism 32, no. 2 (2007), 130–144.
12 Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story. The Art of Personal Narrative (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2001). Quoted in Narayan, “Tools to Shape”, 132.
13 Mattingly, Healing Dramas, 9.
14 Ibid., 29.
15 The Norwegian Supreme Court ruled in 2014, only two years prior to the publication of Arv og miljø, that criminal guilt cannot be established against a deceased. See Jussi Pedersen, “Hjorth-Søstrenes Romaner Arv og miljø og Fri vilje som normativ kilde i jussen” [The Hjorth sisters’ novels Inheritance and Environment and Free Will as Normative Sources in Law], Kritisk juss (Online) 51, no. 2 (2020), 114–124.
16 Hjorth, Fri vilje, 287.
17 Hjorth, Will and Testament, 68.
18 Pedersen,“Hjorth-søstrenes,” 121
19 Pedersen, “Hjorth-Søstrenes,” 119. Translated by author.
20 Gullestad has explored the idea of “equality as sameness” in many contexts. See inter alia: The Arts of Social Relations: Essays on Culture, Social Action, and Everyday Life in Modern Norway (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1992), 252; “Invisible Fences: Egalitarianism, Nationalism and Racism, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, no. 1 (2002): 45–63.
21 Hjorth, Will and Testament, 75.
22 Hjorth, Fri vilje, 65–75.
23 Hjorth, Will and Testament, 79.
24 Hjorth, Fri vilje, 293.
25 Bodil Selmer, “How to Exchange with the Dead: The Significance of Heirlooms in Danish Inheritance Practices” in Donations, Inheritance and Property in the Nordic and Western World from late Antiquity until Today, eds. Ole-Albert Rønning, Helle Møller Sigh, and Helle Vogt (London & New York: Routledge, 2017), 299.
26 Marianne E. Lien and Simone Abram, Hytta. Fire Vegger Rundt En Drøm (Oslo: Kagge 2019). [The Cabin. Four Walls around a Dream].
27 Lien and Abram, Hytta, 34–5.
28 Simone Abram, “Values of Property (Properties of Value): Capitalization of Kinship in Norway,” Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change: Regimes of Value in Tourism 12, no. 3 (2014); Simone Abram and Marianne E. Lien, “Hvem Skal Arve Hytta Slektskapsprosesser, familierelasjoner og «avslekting»” [Who should inherit the holiday home? Processes of kinship, family relations, and «de-kinning»], Norsk antropologisk tidsskrift 29, no. 1-02 (2018): 26–41.
29 See Thomas Eeg, “Intestate Succession and Undivided Estate: For Spouses and Cohabitants in Norway” in Nordic Inheritance Law, eds. Holdgaard, Magnúsdóttir, and Selmer, 364–391.
30 Hjorth, Will and Testament, 58.
31 Abram, “Values of Property.”
32 Abram, “Values of property”; Lien and Abram, Hytta, 33.
33 Blurb to Lien and Abram, Hytta.
34 Hjorth, Will and Testament, 36.
35 Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Way of the Masks (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), 172.
36 Abram and Lien, “Cycles of Life at the Hytte” (paper presented at the 15th Biennial Conference of EASA, European Association of Social Anthropologists, Stockholm, August 2018).
37 Lien and Abram, Hytta, 63–93.
38 Hjorth, Will and Testament, 38.
39 Ibid., 289.
40 Ibid., 180.
41 Ibid.,115–116.
42 Ibid., 75.
43 Selmer, “How to Exchange,” 297.
44 Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies (London: Routledge, 1990), 12.
45 Selmer, “How to Exchange,” 299.
46 Hjorth, Fri vilje, 307.
47 Similar institutions in different parts of North Western Europe are known under terms like hereditary reserve, forced heirship or reserved portion. The equivalent in German is Pflichtteil and in French Réserve Héréditaire. See Imperative Inheritance Law in a Late-Modern Society. Five perspectives, eds. Cristoph Castelein, René Foqué, and Alain Verbeke (Intersentia, 2009).
48 All historic Norwegian acts which include provisions on inheritance such as King Kristian V’s Norwegian Law Code of 1687, The Inheritance Act of 1854, and Amendments in 1937 follow this tradition.
49 Norwegian Inheritance Act of 2019.
50 Ny arvelov. Utredning fra et utvalg oppnevnt ved kongelig resolusjon 15. april 2011. Avgitt til Justis- og Beredskapsdepartementet 10 februar 2014. [Norwegian Government Report on a New Inheritance Act] https://www.regjeringen.no./no/dokumenter/nou-2014-1/id750736/?ch=
51 Statement published on the webpage of the Norwegian Government 28 February 2020. Ny arvelov trer i kraft fra årsskiftet - regjeringen.no
52 Information from Statistics Norway, email message to author, October 14, 2020.
53 https://e24.no/privatoekonomi/i/8mXVBQ/ny-undersoekelse-avsloerer-muntlige-avtaler-som-ikke-holder-to-av-ti-har-ugyldig-testament. The survey was done by Opinion Perduco. It included 1,000 people.
54 When the deceased leaves a spouse and common children, the surviving spouse will in most cases keep the estate undivided. The distribution of the estate is then postponed until the surviving spouse dies or remarries.
55 Hjorth, Will and Testament, 58.
56 Ibid., 68.
57 Simone Abram, “Inheriting Kinship: Norwegian Holiday Property as Relational Practice,” in Holdgaard, Magnúsdóttir, and Selmer, Nordic Inheritance Law, 265. Allodial rights include the right to reclaim agricultural property when such property is transferred.
58 John Asland, “Gender-neutral Succession Law in Norway: A Long and Winding Road,” in Nordic Inheritance Law, eds. Holdgaard, Magnúsdóttir, and Selmer, 321.
59 Hjorth, Will and Testament, 35.
60 Hjorth, Fri vilje, 169.
61 Hjorth, Will and Testament, 283.
62 Ibid., 94.
63 Swedish Inheritance Code chap. 7, § 1; Danish Inheritance Act of 2007 chap. 1, § 5.
64 Holdgaard, Magnúsdóttir and Selmer, “Introduction,” 3.
65 Hjorth, Will and Testament, 37.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Bodil Selmer
Bodil Selmer is associate professor of Anthropology at The Institute of Culture and Society, Aarhus University. Her research centers on Legal Anthropology and Kinship Studies. She has a long line of publications in inheritance law and is co-editor of Nordic Inheritance Law through the Ages. Spaces of Action and Legal Strategies, Legal History Library Vol 38, Brill Nijhoff 2020.