On January 8, 1958, a fire broke out on the Norwegian ship Earling Jarl while the vessel was docked in Bodø, a small coastal town north of the Arctic Circle. The ship was part of the Hurtigrutten (Express Route), which serves small isolated communities up and down the coast carrying mail, goods, and people. The route is between Kirkenes in the north and Bergen, about five days sailing. The Earling Jarl fire took the lives of fourteen people. A small bronze memorial stands in the town to commemorate the event—and the victims. The artist is Istvan Lisztes, a Norwegian sculptor of Hungarian descent. Although I have taken the Hurtigrutten I have not seen the memorial. But from the photograph it seems like a perfect commemoration: small, unostentatious, attractive, and full of feeling. In an era of pompous, obscure, and sprawling memorials, there is a lesson here.
