The Weight of Longing: Lærke Kløvedal on Inherited Restlessness and the Search for Peace

As a child, Lærke Kløvedal would stand beneath the sea mark on the coast of Thy, a tall wooden signpost on the German west coast that sailors use to navigate. From that spot, she could turn one way and look out over the sea toward her father, and turn the other to see the house where her mother was. "It was also a starting point for me to look out into the water, where my father was," she says, "and turn my gaze towards our house, which I could see, where my mother walked around." That split attention — pulled between a distant, charismatic father and a present, grounded mother — became the organizing tension of her life.

The Inheritance of Restlessness

Kløvedal grew up in a women's collective in Thy with her mother, while her father, the famous adventurer and author Truls Kløvedal, was mostly absent — traveling the world, living out ideals of freedom, adventure, and love. She saw him occasionally, but the visits were charged: "There's also something about when you see so little, then you also want to be cute as a child. Or when he called home from the other side of the earth. If you were angry there, then it might be the way he thought you were. There's something about all too much importance, because it doesn't last that long."