Spoilers ahead!
Throughout human history, we’ve tended toward castigation, expulsion, and even death of those we do not understand. The wayward, the mentally unwell, those deemed deviants (of a different sexual orientation or identity), all manner of disorders and conditions, and of course, even just women being women. In Camilla Sten’s 2019 book, The Lost Village, she adroitly sits with the tremors of such actions over the course of 60 years in one small Swedish village.
The premise of The Lost Village is one I’m surprised I haven’t come across before — emphasis on “come across” because surely someone else has tinkered with the concept! — where a group of would-be documentarians have started a Kickstarter account to fund their documentary endeavor. The group is led by producer, Alice, and consists of her friend of two years, Tone; her ex-friend of much longer, Emmy, who is needed for her talents and connections, but they’ve had an as yet undisclosed falling out; Emmy’s redheaded boyfriend, Robert; and Max, who seems to dote on Alice and is along for the ride as the main benefactor of the project. The project is to figure out what happened to the village of Silvertjärn, a coal mining village in the middle of nowhere (which will affect cell phone capabilities in 2019). In the summer of 1959, inexplicably, nearly 900 of the village residents disappeared without a trace. All that was left of the village was Birgitta, one of those wayward, misunderstood souls, stoned to death at the stake (actually, a pole), and a baby left alone in the school, still alive.
We later learn that Alice has a direct connection to Silvertjärn. Her grandmother was Margareta, who was living in Stockholm with her husband and newly birthed baby when whatever happened in Silvertjärn … happened. So, Alice has letters Aina, Margareta’s younger sister, wrote to Margareta, along with all manner of press clippings, timelines, and birth records concerning Pastor Mattias. More on him in a moment.
Tone also has a connection: It’s her mother who was the baby found in the school. The mother wants nothing to do with Silvertjärn or the documentary, but Tone is game. We later learn that Tone has had some psychotic episodes before, but is on medication to manage them. This gives us our throughline from 1959 to 2019: Two women with mental disorders, who will later be castigated as devilish (Birgitta) or in our more modern context, violent (Tone).
Pastor Mattias comes to Silvertjärn and quickly asserts himself, replacing the existing pastor, castigating him a soul lost to the bottle. I bet he killed him. Within weeks, Mattias essentially pulls the wool over everyone’s eyes as a cult-like figure, who is promising glory through God, paradise on earth, and that to obtain both, they must kill the demon, Birgitta. In Margareta’s sleuthing, she uncovered Mattias’ terrible, abusive upbringing, and then later, his own misdeeds sexually assaulting (and impregnating) women, including his own cousin, I believe. He also takes Aina, who is a 16-year-old, as his, tearing her from her mother, Elsa. Elsa is one of the few people to not have lost their mind, which is particularly helpful as she’s been the caretaker of Birgitta since her own mother died. You can insinuate what’s going on with Mattias and Aina. Yuck. We later learn than that it’s heavily implied Mattias raped and impregnated Birgitta. Somehow, it’s all part of his sinister (in his eyes, godly) plan. Thankfully, Elsa isn’t the only one who has kept her head. Two other villagers, Dagny and Ingrid, the school nurse, do as well. Dagny was never able to have children, so it was a sweet moment to have her help with Birgitta’s birth and child.
Finally, Alice has one more bit of context to add to this story. She was severely depressed and suffered from anxiety in college while roommates with Emmy. At some point, Emmy seemed to stop trying to help Alice, and at the worst time no less: When Alice was on a bridge ready to kill herself. Hence, they’re falling out. Emmy eventually apologizes and explains it as being a stupid kid who didn’t know what to do with someone suffering in the way Alice was. Which, fair. What’s never explained — unless I missed it! — was what caused Alice to not jump and eventually, become mentally well again. That other side of Alice would have been nice to see.
Once the group arrives in Silvertjärn, they intend to scout pertinent locations, hoping to uncover some sort of “smoking gun” that explains what happened 60 years prior that’ll make for great documentary fodder. They have five days budgeted and scheduled. To be honest, they aren’t great scouts! But they also get sidetracked by oddities that occur, like hearing voices and laughter and seeing shadowy figures. At some point, Tone sprains her ankle falling through a broken, wooden step. Emmy thinks she should go to the hospital; Alice says Tone said she didn’t need to. Tone goes off her medication to take the pain reliever, apparently. Emmy then, wanting to at least connect with her mom, takes one of two vans far enough to make a call. When she returns, Tone is gone. Then, someone (presumably) blows up one of the vans, causing the other van and Max’s car to blow up and/or be damaged.
At this point, sticking with the theme and upon learning Tone’s connection and that she’s off of her medication, Emmy, Robert, and Max think she might be violent and unhinged, i.e., the cause of the explosion. While looking for Tone, Emmy dies. At first, they think from a bad fall through those dang steps, but it turns out she was strangled to death. Afterward, Robert, Max, and Alice are all able to wrangle Tone and lock her in Elsa’s house, assuming she’s the culprit. But then Max turns up dead — kudos to Sten for being willing to kill characters! — then it’s obvious it wasn’t Tone since she was locked up. Before I get to the big reveal, just before his death and the reason he separated from the group, Max made a move (quite the timing!) on Alice, who rejected him. He flipped out. What a jerk! Basically saying he played nice, including backing the project, to get with her and then was mad it didn’t work out.
Aina is still alive. That’s the reveal. She’d have to be at least 76, but she’s a feisty little thing. After confronting them openly in a bid to kill Tone, the devil spawn and to finish what they started 60 years, she leads Tone, Robert, and Alice to tunnels beneath the coal mine. The coal mine was never investigated in 1959 or later in the early 1990s due to structural integrity concerns.
Sten goes back-and-forth in her book, quite brilliantly, between the “now” of Alice’s group and the “then” of Elsa’s time in 1959, as the village loses its marbles to Mattias. Even the locations parallel each other. Toward the end, Elsa (and Dagny and Ingrid) are taken down in the tunnel in 1959, and Robert, Tone, and Alice are taken down into the tunnel in 2019. Mattias intends to kill Elsa. From there, I don’t know what his game plan really was. But before he can, the coal mine caves in on them, killing everyone in the village, except for Aina and the baby. Nobody ever checked. That’s how they “disappeared without a trace.” Not with a Jonestown-like mass suicide, the Russians kidnapping them for experiments, or something supernatural. More like a whimper, in the grand scheme of things, which feels fitting for a delusional cult.
Robert, Tone, and Alice are able to get the best of Aina and kill her before she can “sacrifice” them to continue Mattias’ mission. I’m not quite sure how Aina survived for 60 years in an abandoned town, but I thought it was smart to have her be the one who emerged as the villian and certainly, to dispel the myth that those suffering from mental illness are inherently violent.
Sten’s book had a promising premise that ultimately delivered, while also having something poignant to say about the abuse people, particularly women, have faced over the years because of their misunderstood and indeed, feared, disorders. I particularly think it was poignant the generational harm Birgitta and her granddaughter, Tone, faced because of their disorders. I’ve always worried, perhaps misguidedly, about passing down a mental malady, as it were, but it’s even worse to consider that the same old fears also get passed down.
What a debut for Sten! I look forward to more of her work.
Milam's Musings 