Gunnvør Nolsøe

De sjove aar

The story opens just before Christmas, when solitary, apathetic bank clerk Flemming Borck uncovers a plot to rob his bank. After doing a little rookie recon, Borck identifies the would-be bank robber as a faux shopping-mall Santa Claus, and counter-plots to steal the money himself and let Santa take the blame. This works out about as badly as you might imagine, and our bumbling protagonist spirals further and further away from the carefree, laconic lifestyle he had hoped to ensure for himself.

Young vicar Mr. Paul arrives at the Faroe Islands to take up a benefice, and meets the young Barbara, twice married to vicars, and with both husbands laid cold in the grave. Despite the warnings of the surrounding community and his own religious scruples, he falls victim to Barbara's at once innocent and sinful charm. The appearance of the charming and gallant Andreas Heide in Thorshavn puts their love to the severest of tests.

A middle aged married woman suffers from depression. Her husband suggests she get a dog, but instead she gets a job. Treatment of the women workers leads her into a hilarious fantasy in which roles are reversed and bearded men sit behind typewriters worrying about their looks and what to buy for dinner. She gets involved in a strike and loses her job, but has found some friends and a more positive attitude to life.

Set in the neurosurgical ward of Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet, the city and country's main hospital, nicknamed "Riget", a number of characters, staff and patients alike, encounter bizarre phenomena, both human and supernatural.

Three siblings ingeniously avoid being sent off to a children's home while their solo-mother serves a short sentence in a prison for shoplifting. Rather than have the news leak out and have to be escorted off with the eccentric welfare officer, they invent a 'never present' dad who is looking after them.

Thelma og Irene