The White Bear

by Henrik Pontoppidan

Genres: General Fiction; Classics; Dystopian

Synopsis

Love, faith, and the political mingle in these two short novels by a Nobel Prize-winning Danish author. One about a young couple making a new life in Rome, the other about a priest who goes to live among native peoples in Greenland, both books explore the reaches of the human heart through their complex and unforgettable characters.

Henrik Pontoppidan, the Danish Nobel laureate, is admired for the concentrated force of his novellas as much as for long, populous, world-encompassing novels like A Fortunate Man, and here are two of those novellas, newly and brilliantly translated by Paul Larkin.

The White Bear follows the fate of the odd, gangly, red-bearded Thorkild Müller. Born in rural Jutland and destined for the ministry, Thorkild proves to be a poor student and is assigned to a remote Inuit tribe in Greenland. There, with his mythic-looking staff and dogskin skullcap, he becomes known as the White Bear—a beloved legend among the locals and a freewheeling embarrassment to his fellow priests. Grown old, he returns to Denmark, where again his flock adores him while his fellow men of cloth try to tame the "whirling dervish in their midst." In the end Thorkild mysteriously disappears, presumably back to the snow wilderness of Greenland.

The Rearguard, on the other hand, is a marriage story. Newlyweds Jørgen Hallager and Ursula Branth are as different as night and day. The brash son of a poor village teacher, Jørgen is an avowed socialist whose revolutionary beliefs translate into his work as a painter of social realism; Ursula comes from a conservative, upper-middle-class family. At first, as they start their married life in Rome, they each try to change the other's worldview with arguments and threats, but as time wears on and they wear each other down, it becomes clear there can be no reconciliation. It is a tragic tale of art and idealism, individuality and love.

This translation was funded in part by a grant from the Danish Arts Foundation.

Release date: June 10, 2025

Publisher: NYRB Classics

Print pages: 200

Sample

1

IMAGINE, dear reader, a large flame-red face, from which hangs a thick and matted snow-white beard. A mass of beard, indeed, where old soup and bread remnants also often reside, not to mention more bits of brown tobacco plug and snuff than is ever appetizing. Add to this a shining and gnarled forehead, bordered to the sides and back by white neck hairs hanging in curls over a coat collar; a pair of small, dense, furry ears; thick slabs of cottonwool-like eyebrows; and a mighty nose that tends to a bluish luster between large, penetrating, oceanic eyes. Add further to this countenance an incessant, seemingly unconscious animation; a frequent smile while in thought; an impish narrowing of one eye, along with a sudden, involuntary raising and lowering of those same weighty eyebrows, accompanied by similar movements of arm or shoulder—imagine all these features, and you will be able to form a rough image of the source of Uggelejre county seat’s greatest distress; the anguish of its priests; the indignation of its schoolteachers, and the utter despair of the bishop himself—yes, this is the parish priest for Søby and Sorvad: one Thorkild Asger Ejnar Frederik Müller by name.

It can be further reported that Pastor Müller stood exactly six feet, three inches tall. That he had lost a finger on his left hand. And that regardless of summer or winter, he exhibited the same outlandish garb to the world, comprising a moth-eaten dogskin skullcap with earflaps, and a pair of gray-checkered trousers tucked into a pair of huge, sour-smelling boots. This odor emanating from the fish oil in which they were greased. This priest also wore a short hunter’s jerkin that was shiny from severe overuse—a so-called cooler jacket—which was buttoned tightly around the girth of his mighty trunk. Not even in the most severe winter cold could he have been persuaded to change this attire. The only compromise he would make occurred in truly freezing weather, during which he would, it is true, tie his blue-and-white-striped cotton neckerchief around his throat, but otherwise he would just take an extra pinch of snuff from his pouch that was made of a seal’s-bladder lining. This he always carried on his person and called his “heat bag.”

Should it happen, in such inclement weather, that Pastor Müller encountered one of the local farming fraternity in the street, who tried to steal past him on the opposite footpath; said rustic displaying a dripping nose and runny eyes and half-congealed with the frost despite being swaddled in woolens—Pastor Müller would stop his own forward progress, produce his warmest smile, put his hands to his sides, and ignoring all formalities call out across the street: “Hello! You there! . . . For God’s sake take care not to get frozen solid to your sheepskin coat, man!” After which Pastor Müller would continue his journey, but not without issuing a deafening laugh that shocked the very air for some distance around him and caused the two large, rangy dogs that always followed him to raise their snouts skywards and howl with wild abandon.

And the smile would remain there, beaming. His lips puckering and mouthing words in a most jovial fashion as he heeded his “life music”—the creaking sound of the snow under his boots. And always on the last hill, which overlooked the town, he would tarry for a while and straighten his bearlike limbs in order to fill his lungs with those ice-needle drafts of air, before stooping into the entrance of his once imposing rectory—Danish rectories and vicarages traditionally being points of architectural interest or even splendor in all towns and villages. Quite apart from also providing accommodation for the parish deacon, Pastor Müller’s priestly abode had once housed a whole family and attendant servants. Now only a deacon remained, and he occupied some rooms on the upper floor.

Once inside, he was not received by the de rigueur diminutive priest’s wife, ever ready with a warm embrace; who, still in her apron after setting a pie in the oven, would then relieve him of his sturdy walking stick and hat, brushing the snow off his coat, and stroking his wet cheek as she did so. Nor, therefore, by the little rectory “miss,” running up to him in her bouncing pigtails, who would throw her arms around his neck, tug at his beard, and call him her “very naughty big and bold teddy bear!” The only thing to appear was an old, manky red cat that was returning from the attic with a rat in its half-open maw. The cat slipped into a large empty room

that adjoined the corridor. A freshly slaughtered calf’s carcass was suspended from the high ceiling in this room, its stomach entirely open and scoured, the better to cool it down as quickly as possible. Though this would not take long, as the ground floor was almost unheated.

Thus, we now better understand that, if Pastor Müller himself was a rare sight to behold for most townspeople, his dwelling—or “the hovel,” as it was called by his parishioners—was viewed as no less an object of scandal. It was impossible to imagine anything that could be further removed from the cozy, carpeted priest’s haven, with its plethora of small, tastefully arranged rooms lined with imposing bookshelves and comfy armchairs, in which our cosseted village priests are wont to potter, pulling on pipes as they ponder their sermons. For here, even in the priest’s own living room, there was not so much as a rag over the window. The floor was as soiled and black as a newly turned field, and the spartan furniture—an old and cracked oilcloth sofa, a couple of small tables, an empty bookcase, and a decrepit wooden armchair with a leather backrest—was thrown around the room without the slightest heed paid to comfort and good order. The only thing that might pass for decoration was a peculiar collection of large bear and seal pelts, walrus teeth, and caribou antlers. These had been put up on one of the gable walls, as you might view such rarities in a museum. However even these “attractions” were not enough to offset the uninviting little table in the corner by the stove, which displayed a clay bowl containing the remains of a meat and vegetable soup concoction, a clump of hard rye bread, a wide jug that contained butter, or more probably lard, and a rough knife.

In other words, Søby’s parish priest was a dedicated recluse and his whole existence was testimony to this. Or rather: his actual home was the whole region whose forests, heather-bedecked slopes, and upland heaths he roamed from morning to evening. And, armed as he was with either his rifle or his long oak-wood staff, he would invariably cause alarm among children and wayfaring people with his fierce appearance and reckless laughter.

Now, it is true that Pastor Müller, in his capacity as priest, was obliged to keep a wizened old biddy as a kind of housekeeper; an obligatory service that went with his professional position and state emolument. But the priest had declared war against her from his very first day there. Indeed, in his sheer obduracy, he would not even allow her to cook for him, let alone approach his living room.

And he would otherwise erupt in furious rage on the few occasions when he suspected that this tentative and terrified old lady may have left a trace of herself in his inner sanctum.

On this particular day—and he in his most auspicious of winter moods—he strode into the rectory, then stopped for a moment on the threshold, as was his ingrained habit, to weigh the air and generally ascertain whether everything had been left untouched. Nothing untoward being traced there, he plunged his half-frozen fingers into his red sealskin snuff-pouch and took a decent portion in honor of the day. He then proceeded to prepare his usual hermit’s supper. Such work consisted of throwing his bowl of soup remnants into the oven compartment in the stove. He then placed a pile of sticks on top of the slumbering embers in the firebox. Once the wood began to catch fire and the first savory aromas from the greasy soup bowl began to pervade the air, he rubbed his numbed hands with gleeful anticipation.

Suddenly a thought struck him. He went to a wall cupboard in the opposite corner, opened it with a mischievous smile, and extracted from its depths a paper-wrapped bottle, some of the contents of which he poured into two small colored glasses. These were on the dining table between the butter jug and the cob of bread. Then he knocked on the ceiling with something like the tusk of a narwhal, which he had hauled out from behind the sofa. That done, he let himself drop into the old armchair, which creaked and moaned under the weight of his huge body.

Directly above the living room, where Deacon Ruggaard had his rooms, the scrape of a chair could now be heard as it was being pushed back. Then footfall, softened by being ensconced in felt shoes, was heard across the floor up there—all the way to the opposite end of this large house, where it faded and was then accompanied by a creaking staircase. A number of doors were opened and closed throughout the otherwise empty rooms. Finally, there came a knock at Pastor Müller’s own door.

Deacon Ruggaard was thirty years of age, portly of build, and with a face that smacked of a flat, newly licked greasy plate. Rather surprisingly for a religious who aspired to serious theology, he wore no beard. Here he stood now in the doorway, holding his gray housecoat tightly over his stomach bulge and looking

questioningly at the armchair through his thick round spectacles.

“I believe,” he said finally in a very broad Jutland dialect and pushing a wavering hand up to his glasses: “I believe that Pastor was knocking?”

“Yes yes . . . I was indeed!” The old warhorse jumped up theatrically, as if the thought had just had occurred to him. “It was just that . . . I just wanted to ask your High Reverence if you might not be tempted to join me in partaking of a wee dram . . . for medicinal purposes of course? I took the liberty of pouring you a small glass, sir . . . perhaps after one or two griddle cakes too many and you are feeling the pinch . . . for the digestion, you know. . . ?”

“Pastor Müller knows very well,” the deacon interjected with barely concealed indignation, “he knows very well that I never ever indulge in alcohol or spirits outside of mealtimes. Really now, Pastor . . . it does strike me that this little comedy has become ancient. In fact and in truth, and if I may speak somewhat bluntly to my religious superior, I would most appreciate it if the Pastor would find some other ways of entertaining himself.”

“Ah yes, yes, my apologies, yes . . .” sighed the old man, shaking his head, as if he knew shame. “But still and all and anyway. . .would Your Reverence not care to enter a humble fellow priest’s winter lair and share his epoch-making, dogmatic ponderings with his priest? If my intellectual better would only settle here for a while, I will fetch a bucket of coal and a footrest for you. Tell me again now. . .was it not pneumatology you were studying . . . the Holy Ghost and other higher spirits? . . . Anthropology also, was it not? . . . And how goes it with blessed—Petrus Lombardus, or Peter Lombard to us mere mortals?”

But Deacon Ruggaard remained standing in the doorway, looking down at this grizzled old ancient with an expression that shifted between pity and outrage.

“Pastor Müller seems to continually forget . . . almost deliberately forget, if I may say so . . . that he is my spiritual superior. The man to whom I am supposed to look for guidance and inspiration. So do you really think, Hr. Pastor, that it is appropriate for us to speak of these sacred things in such an offhand manner? It really does seem to me that, in these days when there are so many folk who are happy to mock and profane all things holy, that we religious should beware of being dragged down to their level of irreverence. I really do doubt that the good Pastor believes this to be the best way for us to pass our time, when out there among our flock there is so much ignorance and spiritual want. The very things that call most for our help! On that very point, I can report to Pastor that there was a message this afternoon that came in your absence from the wheelwright Hr. Povlsen from up near Sorvad Meadow, whose old father—as you may recall—is not long for this world. Well . . . it seems he is in a bad way and waiting his last in some distress and need. ...