"As It Used To Be": Children's Relationships in Vesaas

In Tarjei Vesaas’s The Ice Palace, the narrated interaction between eleven-year-olds Siss and Unn reveals the complex depths of the relationships that adolescents create. Through this innocent complexity, the Norwegian Vesaas illuminates an important dimension of what Arnold Weinstein calls the fiction of relationship.  Vesaas does so, both in his fictional story about the friendship of two young girls and in the relationship that they actively construct.

Most basically, the connection between Siss and Unn reminds readers that children’s relationships are far from simple or rudimentary merely because the participants are not adults.  Children, too, both long for relational intimacy and fashion their individual and social identity through their personal connections. It may be tempting for adults to look condescendingly on these early forays into friendship.  Vesaas challenges us not to do so.