Wistings univers
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Visit Vestfold
Welcome to Wistings' universe From his writing studio in the summer town of Stavern, Jørn Lier Horst has written the books about William Wisting. Stavern can hold a dark, shadowy and criminal side. At least in the world of fiction. On a tour of Stavern and Larvik, it is easy to recognize the places from the books and the series. This application will take you into Wisting's world and you will hear about the places and surroundings that have inspired the author to create the stories about Wisting. The places are also marked on a map that you can download digitally at visitvestfold.com. Join Wisting's world!
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Points of interest
#1
Hotel Wassilioff
Hotel Wassilioff is a unique hotel located in the heart of Stavern. This hotel is mentioned in several of the Wisting books. For example, in "The Key Witness"we read: "I met him here at Tatjana. We started talking over a beer. It's been a few summers since then. We used to sit at one of the tables on the sidewalk if there was space, or here at this table." "Tatiana" is the hotel's pub, named after Tatjana Wassilioff, the daughter of the hotel's founder, Michael Wassilioff. With Tatjana as head chef, the hotel's restaurant was awarded three stars in the prestigious Baedeker's travel guide in 1878, which is equivalent to today's Guide Michelin. Hotel Wassilioff and Tatjana Pub has become more of an institution in Stavern, and Wisting is a regular guest her.
#2
The Customs headland and the Maritime Museum
When Jørn Lier Horst created a new Norwegian crime hero, he chose to name him Wisting, as a kind of homage to a real hero who, like Wisting, was not afraid to venture into unknown waters. William Wisting's origins were in fact Oscar Wisting, the polar hero who, together with Roald Amundsen, was the first in the world to visit both the South- and the North Pole. In the book "The Key Witness", we are introduced to William Wisting's ancestor: "Wisting stood with the coffee cup in his hand and enjoyed the panoramic view from the office window. To the left was "Tollerodden" with the park and the childhood home of Colin Archer, who built and launched more than 200 boats there a hundred years ago. Below the church, he could also glimpse the Maritime Museum where a statue of Wistings ancestor, Oscar Wisting, was placed here in memory of Roald Amundsen's closest colleague and traveling companion." The area where you are standing now is called "Tollerodden" ("The customs headlands") and got its name from the customs business that was conducted here from the late 1600s until around 1800. The large, red stone building is called "Gamle tollbod" ("Old customs booth") and now houses the Maritime Museum. This is Larvik's oldest surviving stone house, built in 1730. In front of the building, facing the sea, is the statue of Oscar Wisting.
#3
The Herman Wildenveys street
This is Herman Wildenveys street, where William Wisting lives. It is a quiet residential area in the center of Stavern, and in the extension of Herman Wildenveys street, you will find the property "Hergisheim". This was the home of the poet Herman Wildenvey. Hergisheim is easy to recognize by its characteristic blue roof, and you can see it when you drive to and from Stavern along the Larviksroad. William Wisting lives at number 7, but as you may notice, there is no number 7 - the street starts at house number 9! A small trick by the author to distinguish between fiction and reality. In the Wisting book "The Caveman" we read: "Viggo Hansen had lived in the curve three houses away and had been dead for four months without Wisting himself or any of the other neighbours worrying." When you stand in Herman Wildenveys street and look south, you will quickly see Stavern's highest point, "Signalfjellet" ("The signal mountain"). If you go up there, you will see Stavern's finest viewpoint, 75 meters above sea level. And here you will also find an optical telegraph, a "Captain Ohlsen model" - which was used as part of the military warning system in the area from the early Napoleonic wars until 1814.
#4
The Auserød area
In a house here in the Auserød area, retired Preben Pramm is found dead in the book "The Key Witness": "The house is turned upside down, but it does not seem that the killers have found what they are looking for." "The key witness" is the first book in the series about William Wisting, and the plot is based on the real events surrounding the murder of 71-year-old Ronald Ramm that shook Larvik on December 8, 1995. The actual murder took place in a house on Rødberg between Larvik and Stavern, but in the book the plot is set here in Auserød. The Ramm case was the first case Jørn Lier Horst got insight in when he started as a police officer in Larvik in 1995. The real murder case is still unsolved, so who took the life of Ronald Ramm is a mystery to this day.
#5
The Fjerdingen area
Now you are in "Fjerdingen", which is the area in Stavern where Wisting grew up. William Wisting was born here on April 14, 1958, and is the son of doctor Roald H. Wisting and house wife Ruth Elise Wisting (born Grindem). This neighborhood is known for the old small houses located west of "Pumpeparken" ("The pump park"). The area was once a place for the common and outcasts and was nicknamed "Fantefjerdingen", which eventually became "Fjerdingen", and it was in this oldest part of Stavern Wisting had his childhood.
#6
The Fredriksvern shipyard
Inside the walls of Fredriksvern shipyard you will find Jørn Lier Horst's writing room, where many of the stories about Wisting are written. Fredriksvern was the Norwegian Navy's first main station in Norway, begun in 1750 and named after King Frederik the fifth. The station had extensive fortifications, moats and many buildings. Most of it was completed in 1758, and of the original buildings, among others, the guardhouse, the commandant's residence, the gunpowder house and the galley sheds still remains. Today, the Norwegian Highway patrol have their national headquarters here, and you can still hear sirens when young police recruits go out on training tours. Down by the ocher-yellow Galleys you will also find the escape room called "Blindgang". This is a fun game based on the Wisting novel "Ordeal". Are you good at cracking codes and solving puzzles? Test your knowledge and see if you can find the decisive clues that lead to a breakthrough in the case, and to praise from your investigative colleagues.
#7
The memorial hall and the Skråvika area
The Memorial Hall in Stavern is a well-known landmark that was opened by King Haakon the Seventh in 1926. In the book "The Key Witness", we read: "At the end of the Stavern mainland, he saw the outlines of the Memorial Hall after World War I, a national monument to fallen Norwegian sailors. Wisting knew that in total, more then 7500 names were etched into the copper plates inside the hall. Among them was his own grandfather". The Memorial Hall was built in gratitude for "willingness and deed" as it was called. The architects behind the Memorial Hall called the project "Bifrost", which is mentioned in Norse mythology as the bridge from the human world to the world of the gods - to Valhalla! The memorial has clear references to a grave pyramid as a mausoleum and to the ward as a sea mark. From the Memorial Hall you can see down to Skråvika, which has long traditions of recreation and social gatherings. In the 1920s, the beach was a popular place for camping with tents, and in the 1950s and 60s, the place was used as an outdoor arena for stage shows, a tradition the Stavern Festival continued when they held their first music festival here in 2001, with only 172 paying spectators. If you look from the Memorial Hall at an angle down in the opposite direction of Skråvika, you will find the popular beach Korntin. At the beginning of the book "Dregs", Wisting is standing on the beach looking out: "<Wisting> was standing with fine-grained sand in his shoes, using his hand to shade the sunlight from his eyes, the third policeman to reach the discovery site. Waves broke against the shore in front of him and rolled back to sea. Bare rock faces, smooth and slippery wet, sloped gently into the water on either side of the bay. Two uniformed colleagues had cordoned off the western side of the bathing beach."
#8
The Rakke compass
"Did you drive straight home? Wisting continued. No. I stopped at Rakke. I took a walk on my own on the rocky boulders to get some fresh air and clear my thoughts." The lines is from the book "The Key Witness". The area you are in now is called Rakke. And the installation on the small hill with the fantastic view we call an outdoor compass. The Rakke compass is located as a natural stopping point along the 35 kilometer coastal path that winds between cliffs and scrub forest from Stavern to Helgeroa. When you turn the compass's arrow, it shows you the direction to a number of sights both near and far. Turn the arrow yourself and see! During World War II, the Germans established Rakke fort here, and not far from the compass you can see the imprint of one of the anti-aircraft batteries that used to stand here. During the war, the fort consisted of 91 different structures, such as bunkers, shelters and shooting positions. And on "Kuøya" ("The Cow island"), the small outcropping just west of the compass point, false houses and wooden cannon positions were built to serve as a diversion and as "cannon food". Rakke is an area that Jørn Lier Horst knows inside and out and is very fond of. Here the sea spray is high when the waves hit the polished cliffs. Here the coast shows itself at its worst, and at the same time at its very best.
#9
Larvik police station
William Wisting was hired at the Patrol Division here at Larvik Police Station in 1980. In 1984, he was transferred to the Investigative Division, where he eventually became a Police Chief Inspector and Head of Investigations. This is close to Jørn Lier Horst's own career, which started at Larvik Police Station, first as an officer and then as an investigator. Larvik Police Station is located at Brannvaktsgate 7, and Wisting has an office on the second floor with a view of the Larviks fjord. However, in the first season of the TV series about Wisting, it is the building of the former Larvik Power Plant in Romberggata 3 that has been converted into a police station. But in 2019, this building was demolished and the property was incorporated into the new "Grandkvartalet", so from season 2, the police station has moved to Nedre Torggate 9, which formerly housed Larvik District Court.
#10
The Larvik city square
In the book "The night man", the morning fog is thick over Larvik. When the fog retreats, a woman's head appears on a stick, in the middle of Larvik city square. But this was not the only time that dead human bodies have been lying in the streets of Larvik. Back in the 16- and 1700s, the night man operated in the streets and squares of the city. He emptied outhouses and latrines, removed garbage, caught dogs and slaughtered animals. He also removed dead animals and dead people. Both those who died of natural causes and those who where executed, as the The night man also operated as an executioner. The night man got his nickname because his work was usually carried out at night to avoid disturbance and the bad smells. It is not difficult to imagine that the night man appeared as a rather creepy figure as he drove around the streets in the dark night on his horse with all sorts of things in his sled.
#11
The Farris lake
"The Caveman" was the first book about Wisting to be adapted for film, and the Farris Bridge with its large towers became an iconic landmark as an introduction to the series. Here we meet Line, Wisting's daughter, on her way home to Larvik: "It did not take long for her to join the queue behind the snow plough. Sometime later the grey waters of the Farris lake appeared on her right and she took the exit lane for Larvik. The roads leading into town were not so well ploughed; slush squelched under the tyres and sloshed against the wheel arches. The lake had still not frozen over, and the wind was churning the surface with choppy ripples." The Farris lake is about 120 meters deep. The dam which holds back the lake, was formed when the glaciers melted more than 10,000 years ago. Today, the Farris lake is a drinking water source for nearly 200,000 people in this region. Many people believe that this water is bottled and sold in stores, but that is not correct. The bottled Farris water comes from King Olav the fifth's spring, which is underneath the beech forest. But the bottled water has taken the name "Farris" from the lake.
#12
The Beech forest
In the Wisting novel "Felicia disappeared", a group of nursery school children find a human eye on the playground behind the restaurant "Bøkekroa", in the middle of the beech forest. There has probably never been much crime committed in these woods, but it is not to be denied that on a dark autumn evening, this place can easily awaken scary fantasies. "Bøkeskogen" is the country's first public free area, donated by landowner Treschow to the people of Larvik in 1884. Here you will find the world's northernmost occurrence of Beech, which you mainly only find in Central Europe. From the fjord, the forest appears as a large green roof over the city. When you stand in the middle of the forest, you will understand why "Bøkeskogen" has been given poetic nicknames such as "pillar hall" and "natural cathedral". The beech tree can be 48 meters high, 3 meters around the trunk and 400 years old. In the Viking era, the beech tree was used, among other things, for ornaments on Viking ships.