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“I’ve thought and thought, these last few days, about the endless day of the Nordland summer. I sit here and think about it, about a hut I lived in, and about the forest behind the hut, and I take to writing things down for my own amusement and to pass the time. Time hangs heavy, I can’t make it pass as quickly as I would like, though I have no regrets and lead the merriest of lives. I’m quite content with everything, and thirty is no great age. A few days ago I received a pair of bird’s feathers from far away, from someone who was under no obligation to send them to me—two green feathers in a sheet of letter paper with a coronet on it and sealed with a wafer. It gave me real pleasure to see those two feathers, so devilishly green. Otherwise I have no complaints, except for a touch of rheumatism in my left foot now and then, from an old gunshot wound that has long since healed.”
