​

When I was a child, I asked my Grandfather in Norway who his hero was.
The reply came quickly, ‘My brother’.
My Grandfather’s brother was Hans Rohde Hanssen. One night, sometime in 1941, Hans disappeared from his home. His family could only assume he had joined the Norwegian resistance as many young men did following the German occupation of Norway in 1940.
However, they couldn’t know for sure and they certainly didn’t know anything about where he was. There are countless similar accounts from that time in Norwegian history.  Many men suddenly disappeared from their homes without word or trace.
Hans never returned home. The submarine he was on, sank off the coast of Norway in February 1943.

However, the full details of what had happened to him didn’t emerge until the mid 1980s when the wreckage was found and a memorial was held at sea. By this time though, Hans’ mother Aslaug was no longer alive. She died never knowing what had happened to her eldest son.


It was this ‘never knowing’ that grabbed me. I couldn’t imagine how someone would begin to cope with never knowing where their child was.
Aslaug Rohde Hanssen was by all accounts a powerful and hardworking woman, maybe a little ‘on edge’ and particularly nervous and agitated every year on the anniversary of her son’s disappearance.
It was these words, ‘never knowing’, ‘on edge’, ‘agitated’ that made me want to write Whispers. I knew I wanted to write about the women left behind, the mothers with missing sons, the wives with missing husbands, the girlfriends with missing boyfriends.

​

That ‘never knowing’ is central to Whispers. The German occupation of Norway is the backdrop. I haven’t written Aslaug’s story or any one specific story. Whispers is fiction inspired by fact.
The play has been through many drafts and changes over the last two years, but the core heartbeat has always remained.


What do we do when someone we love disappears without trace?

​

Elise Rohde-Hanssen
Jan 2013