The people and the town in Jakob Ejersbo’s Aalborg novel Northern Power

Marking time in thug town

BY PIA HAMMERSHØY

Jakob Ejersbo
Northern Power
Gyldendal. DK

»I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix…« – With his famous and infamous poem Howl (1956), Allen Ginsberg gave voice to the social schism of the fifties: the young generation who objected to the conformity of the new welfare society and prepared themselves for a rebellion without knowing exactly where it should lead – rebels without a cause. The scourge of the middle class didn’t seem tempting, but what alternative was there but to go to the dogs – »destroyed by madness…looking for an angry fix«?

The quiet misfits
Five decades have passed since Howl, but Ginsberg’s manifesto still resonates. What’s going on in the suburbs today; aren’t they still there, the young people who refuse to conform, the young people who are bored and cannot find themselves in the labyrinths of terrace houses, families with young children, and sensible apprenticeships? In his hardcore nineties novel Northern Power, Jakob Ejersbo picks up the thread; his protagonists are young, they are broke (most of the time), they deviate from the norm, and they all live in Aalborg with a tough pusher and underground culture in common.
In three reckless narratives we are presented with various life stories: users and abusers, the lost and the hopeful and those in between. They are all running from and searching for something while trying to bridge the yawning existential void with a daily dose of hash. We are in the beginning of the nineties and the nuclear family has long since turned into broken homes, the apprenticeship has been replaced by life on the dole, and mother’s warm embrace smells of cheap alcohol. In the novel we follow the thugs and fallen angels of Aalborg. There’s the young Maria, who struggles with her identity, her relationship with her half mad pusher boyfriend, and her parents who are on acid and ego-trips respectively. And there’s the older Allan, who returns from life at the sea to an alcoholic mother, a stormy love affair, and a desperate attempt to stay clear of the life on drugs which he left behind some years ago.
Like a Benn Q. Holm from Northern Jutland, Ejersbo follows these junkie characters in the old port and industrial town which, with its raw and wind-swept power, creates a distinctive framework for a group of young people living on the edge: On the one hand they share a desperate dream of a better life than the one that the drugs can offer them, but on the other hand they possess a defeatist awareness of the illusion of this dream. But the dream is alive, and the constant search for fixed points in their lives becomes a lifeline to many of the characters in the novel. Maria leaves her seedy pusher boyfriend for the Iranian refugee Hossein. He is also a petty criminal, but at least he is a better person and she actually manages to create a fairly stable, yet alternative, life for herself with husband and child. Allan succeeds in maintaining his fragile love for Maja, which is described very well in the novel. He takes care of his family, and manages to hold on to his job even though his financial situation doesn’t demand it.

Angry Young Man
Ejersbo avoids the usual clichés about the city’s riff-raff who stagger about in a constant daze of hash. The biker chicks from the eastern part of town meet with the upper class boys from Hasseris at Vesterbro Bodega and Cafe 1000fryd, the favourite hangouts of the subculture. This culture embraces all kinds of people, and in a town with 160,000 inhabitants – too small for anonymity and too big for lucidity – there is a clear need for joint hangouts and communities even if these revolve around beer, joints and one-night stands. There is no doubt that life in the city is rough, and that there is no chance of seeing things in the broader perspective.
»You haven’t got a chance, take it! » was one of the messages in Jan Sonnergaard’s Radiator, a bleak collection of short stories about the marginalised people of the nineties. – »You must look for the answers where they are – at the bottom of a bottomless hole«, Maria ponders in Northern Power's opening scene. For the homespun philosopher Steso – alias Thomas – this reflection leads directly to the darkness of disillusion. More than anyone he speculates about »the meaning of life«, but he is one of the first to succumb to an overdose and is found with the needle sticking out of his anaemic body. His death and funeral gather up the threads and characters of the story in the novel’s final chapter, which shows the destructive powers of drug abuse but also a persistent survival urge in those left behind.

Hard-boiled and grim humour
Provincial life marks time and goes on as usual: the same old routines, the same ups and downs, dreams that emerge and are shattered. An ambivalent trip across the Liim Fiord (Limfjorden) to get new supplies is turned into a hard-boiled and moving novel about a group of shifty young people who do not fit in and therefore are left to their own devices. Lost or saved? In Ejersbo’s Northern Power there is no condemnation, no self-righteousness or blaming society, but instead a blend of harsh reality and grim humour mixed with feeling and sympathy. With great loyalty Ejersbo describes war and love in the pseudo city Aalborg, which already became known in Niels Arden Oplev’s pusher film Portland from 1996. Northern Power also deals with these rebels without a cause, the bad conscience of the middle classes and the lives of a group of people whom nobody seems to notice in the streets of Aalborg (or any other provincial town for that matter). But they are there and they fill the town with their lives and thoughts. »This is our town«, the sensitive Tilde notes, »Only no one knows«.

Pia Hammershøy has an MA in Danish,Cultural Communication and Informatics

Translated by Helle Sandmann