When we left Oslo, there was quite simply an extra carriage on the train.

By the time we were approaching Finse, the carriage had turned into the Royal Carriage and everybody knew that Mette-Marit and her bodyguards were on board, along with little Prince Sverre, no doubt. He was still so small, after all. He needed his mummy, the little darling. An eager, elderly man thought he had seen a little girl through a window before he was brusquely turned away by the police, so Ingrid Alexandra was there too.

But where had they gone, all these members of the royal family?

Sometimes I realize a little more clearly than usual why I would prefer not to have anything to do with other people.

Her voice was characteristic, bordering on parody.

It is said that opinions in themselves are never dangerous. I’m not so sure.

Whether it is Kari Thue’s views or her missionary zeal that frighten me most it’s difficult to say. At any rate, she is still very adept. She could play the main character in a play by Holberg, with her absurd logic, her way of distorting the facts, and her impressive belief in her own message. Besides which, she has such a bloody high profile. She’s everywhere: on the television, on the radio, in the papers. Kari Thue frightens nervous people into becoming aggressive, and seduces otherwise sensible men into insanity. The woman with a voice as sharp as the parting in her thin hair had already started a quarrel. There were two Muslims at Finse this afternoon; a man and a woman. Kari Thue is a bloodhound of note, and she had scented the problem long ago.

‘I’m not talking to you,’ she almost screamed, and I just had to open my eyes a fraction. ‘I’m talking to her!’

A short man with an enormous beard was trying to position himself between Kari Thue and a woman to whom he was married, judging by appearances. She was wearing dark, full-length clothes and a headscarf; she was the person the priest had tried to drag along to his prayer meeting in the hobby room, in his confusion.