Johannes

Johannes is the thirty-five-year-old protagonist of the story. He is married to Henriette, and together they live live with Johannes' father Otto and his mother Liv on a small mountain farm on the high plains of Hardanger in Norway. When we enter the story, Johannes is bearing a strong grudge against his father, for reasons only he knows, but which we learn as the story progresses involves his lover of two years Victoria, and a brutal rape she experienced a couple of months earlier.


Otto

Johannes' father is a traditional mountain farmer, and together with his wife he built the farm where the whole family now live and work. But Otto is also a simple man with limited foresight, and only at the end of our story, when Johannes explains to him the chain of events behind the tradegy that leads the father and son to their quest for revenge, does he explain the gravity of his thoughtless actions.


Erik and Leif

Erik is the young impressionable lumberer who goes with his two friends Karl and Bjorn, from the lumber camp where they all work, to avenge the murder of his twin brother Leif. Leif, on the other hand, is a bad seed who went with Karl and Bjorn to rape a young woman they knew lived alone up on the mountain plateau.


Karl

Karl is the ruthless leader of the pack of three lumberers who went out to rape a young woman together, then killed the wives of two men, and now he's waiting for a chance to kill the husbands, who he knows is coming for him and his friends. He is a cold blooded man, devoid of human compassion and any sense of remorse.


Bjorn

Karl's trusted friend is the ideal brother of arms. Faithful, equally deprived of scruples and moral sense, and as tough physically as he is to look at.


Henriette

Henriette is Johannes' loving wife of eight years, who is desperately fighting to keep her husband, knowing they have steadily grown apart over the last two. She suspects he has a lover, but is too proud, and too afraid of losing him, to confront him about her suspicions.


Liv

Johannes' mother is as graceful and loving mother as any man could want. She has lived a long and happy life together with her Otto, and she loves her son more than anything, despite the flaws she knows he has, and has an unwavering belief that he will return to be the good son and loving husband to Henriette that he once was.


Victoria

Victoria is the young woman who is the catalyst for the tragic events that unfold in our story. A woman of great beauty and grace, she unknowingly made a ten year older Johannes fall in love with her two years ago, and has now become the victim of human folly and lust. There was never a man who loved a woman more than Johannes loves Victoria, which is tragically also the reason why he started a chain of events that has lead, and will continue to lead, to unfathomable bloodshed.