In the novel Power, we meet Olav, a 75-year-old Norwegian veteran of the Waffen-SS. He gives his account of one of the operations he participated in on the German side during the Second World War and the life that followed in its wake. As one of Hitler’s so-called silver foxes, in March 1945 he was given a demanding special assignment. Together with five others, he was put ashore by submarine on the coast of Finnmark. Once there, they carry out their mission from their base in one of the caves previously used by the resistance. “Operation Schneehund” was carried out in the very last days of the war, while the rest of the country waited and hoped for imminent capitulation and liberation.

In the novel, Hanna Dahl explores how a human being lives with the burden of the consequences of his own words and actions. Power is a novel about identity, guilt, responsibility and the temptation to tell your story in a way you and those closest to you can live with. The novel is inspired by real events.

“I’m doing a mental exercise for myself, putting myself in the shoes of someone important. And I hear someone call out ‘heil og sæl!’ – the Old Norse greeting adopted by the Norwegian national socialists – to wish me well on my journey. Sooner or later I’ll have to apologise to everyone who has suffered irreparable loss as a result of that greeting. It sounds sinister and vulgar to me, too.”

Praise:

“Original, fascinating and with an utterly assured sense of style. [...] Dahl’s strength is that she is very much able to be independent in terms of the material in which she is immersed. She uses the events of war and their aftermath more as a kind of raw material or backdrop, then turns it up a notch, thus succeeding in creating a free-standing and especially clear-cut work of fiction. [...] Dahl has a deft touch throughout and is able to evoke both the war situations and retrospective reflections on them in an exceptionally convincing way. [...] By the end, my copy was almost ruined by my underlining in ballpoint pen of turns of phrase and wordings deserving of praise, for which there is, unfortunately, no room to mention here. In conclusion, I instead offer a rare note of positivity: This is how you do it! You are a role model for any writer in this genre, Hanna Dahl!”
Stavanger Aftenblad

“By cultivating uncertainty as a linguistic and narrative technique, Hanna Dahl leads us into the fog of the past without shepherding us safely out to the other side. The result is an occasionally frustrating but always interesting deconstruction of individual recollection as history.”
Dagens Næringsliv

“Hanna Dahl has chosen to show solidarity towards a lonely elderly man, an ardent opponent of hindsight, and the limited perspective he had in a submarine and a cave in 1945. This solidarity, in turn, invites the reader to orientate themselves more closely in the immediate area and to do some deeper reflecting of their own. The Germans’ Operation Schneehund was actually part of the almost unknown history of the war in Finnmark that I would like to read more about. […] As such, the novel’s uncompromising exploration of the art of constraint may also make readers wonder and search further on the fringes of what we are being told. That in itself is one bonus of good books.”
Vårt Land

“Hanna Dahl writes with ingenuity and insight about the self-understanding of a national traitor.”
Dag og Tid

Hanna Dahl

Publications