Runa was on a writing residency with us in October/November 2025 where she worked on her third novel. Here is a text Runa Skjeldal has written about writing in her assigned room at Velferden :

“Where do I write? Where do I write from? The desk lamp was on when I first entered The Pink Room. It shone yellow and lonely. I sat down. I sit down. For 21 days I sit down, write. A lamp. The light. Two windows. Outside, the mountain and the valley tower, the fir trees. The river roars. The industry. The village. I write about a daughter, first and foremost a daughter.

I have been assigned a square pink room, in this room I write. This is not where I sleep. I sleep down in the village, in the Director's Residence. I was also assigned a room there. An orange post-it note hung on the door, with my name and a smiley face in marker. A bed, but no desk. I need a place to write in the morning, I carried a table up from the first floor. I write before doubts overtake me, before dreams fade and become foolish.

If I don't write in the morning, in my room in the Director's Residence, I can't write in the industrial building, in the Pink Room either. In both rooms I write about a daughter who rides a bicycle. So that no one will confuse me with her, I give her a different name. Otherwise I lend away all my sorrows, disappointments, all my hopes. I iterate. The sentences are rewritten, deleted, brought back in, reformulated.

In the next room, Elin paints a coastal landscape of southwestern Norway. “For a long time, many people were preoccupied with clouds,” she says. Her painting covers an entire wall, the clouds have a stony feel. She paints. I write.

It takes three quarters of an hour to walk from the Director's Residence to the Pink Room. The sheep follow me silently with their eyes across the ravine. It's raining, it's November. I dry my bag and Dad's oil lamp over the radiator. I write. I've also been given a small heater. I write to the sound of a dripping oil lamp, to the whir of the stove fan. Outside there are trees and mountains, a dilapidated greenhouse.

If my mother knew what I wrote, she would probably despair. The whole autumn passes, the sheep, the rain, the deciduous trees, the ducks in the river I cross, without me taking part in their decay. I live with Ylva along the Kattegat Trail for a week in August. A swollen sun, a hammock. In the novel it is late summer. It is necessary. I owe it to Ylva to explore why we don't trust our mothers.

One Saturday I find a new job title: “I’m not afraid of dogs.” One Sunday I leave, Elin drives me to the train, I’ve baked a loaf of bread as a thank you.”