He is the main character in my new novel series, The Henrik Bertelsen Saga.

Born on the island of Amager (a part of Copenhagen) on July 4, 1951, he is the youngest of four boys. In 1954, the family moved to Aalborg (in the northern part of Denmark), where he grew up, became a teenager, held down jobs, went to school, played football, learned to play guitar, went to parties and graduated. After one year at Aarhus University, he decided to move to Copenhagen, where he graduated in 1977 with a masters in political science and macroeconomics

When in volume one, Tumult in Mecca, we meet Henrik for the first time, he is a civil servant at the Ministry of Labour with a part-time job as a assistant lecturer at the University of Copenhagen. Things are going well for him, and he has his eyes firmly set on a career in public administration. But that’s not how it’s going to work out at all.

Trauma and pain-free literature

Unlike many other literary characters, Henrik is not characterized by a traumatic and painful childhood. Quite the opposite. He had loving, caring and outgoing parents. During his teenage years, which coincided with the youth rebellion of the late 1960s, his relationship with his parents was put to the test, but harmony was restored when he left home at the age of 19. Relationships with and between his brothers are also good, and overall, the family and friends are devoid of major conflicts and traumas. After a hectic bachelorhood, young Bertelsen met English Samantha in 1973 and in 1975 they were married at Copenhagen City Hall. Together, they decide to establish a co-housing community, and in July 1979, they move into their small terraced house in the Leerbjerg Lod co-housing community in Ny Hammersholt south of Hillerød, just north of Copenhagen. In November, the following year, they travel to Indonesia to adopt their first child, a boy, and in 1985 they adopt their second child, a girl, from Korea. At the end of volume one, Henrik quits his good jobs in the state administration and at the university to become a salesman for a large American computer company. Higher pay and fewer working hours enticed him to make the switch. What he didn’t anticipate was that he would end up in an industry that was about to undergo enormous changes over the following years. Changes that, in parallel with social developments and shifts in world politics, pull the rug out from under him and tempt him with new adventures. In the eight volumes I have planned so far for the series about the life and times of Henrik Bertelsen, things will never go as he plans. Something always gets in the way. Sometimes plans change on his initiative, but often others or circumstances do it for him. His appetite for adventure and variety always lands him in conflicts and dilemmas that are not so easy to get out of. The Henrik Bertelsen chronicle is not about deep human pain and great tragedies. It’s about what the search for the good life can look like in an ever-changing world, and how courage and luck can be the lifeline when things look bleakest. Perhaps there’s also a good dose of Stoic philosophy in the plot. Whatever the cause of the problems Henrik constantly runs into, he always takes responsibility.

“What could I have done differently?” he asks himself. “What can I learn?” he adds.

In Denmark, I was born …

Although the plot of The Henrik Bertelsen Saga takes us around the world, Denmark is the starting point. This is where he grew up and where his values and outlook on life were shaped. As the first academic in his family, he doesn’t attribute his success to himself.

“I stand on the shoulders of others,” is one of his favorite expressions. “I’m no better or smarter than anyone else,” he says, “but I was born in a lucky place and time. I started life with sunshine and a tailwind, and when the storms came, there were rubber boots and a raincoat on the dresser. Even at the worst of times, I don’t feel that my family’s life and well-being is threatened.”

With the security offered by the Danish social model, Henrik can throw himself headlong into daring business adventures without giving much thought to the possibility of things going wrong. And it usually does go wrong. None of the plans work out. But that doesn’t matter, because new opportunities always arise. Sometimes he just has to look for them first.

Overview of the series content

I The Ballad of Mecca we are in 1979.
Henrik, 28 years old, has a good job as an economist at the Ministry of Labor.
Twice a week he teaches economics at the University of Copenhagen.
Together with his English wife, Sammy, he is setting up a cohousing community in North Zealand, while they are also preparing to adopt a child from Indonesia.
Out of the blue, he is invited to join a business project to renovate and manage hospital kitchens in Taif, east of Mecca.
Working on a business project in the Middle East is very different from his job as a civil servant, but he likes it.
So much so that at the end of the first book, he accepts a job offer from Control Data Corporation, a large and successful American computer company.

Book two, Driven by Dollars (working title covering the years 1980 to 1986) is about Henrik’s rise from sales trainee to sales manager in a rapidly changing industry. His appetite for international adventure leads him to the Soviet Union just as Mikhail Gorbachev launches glasnost and perestroika, and Ronald Reagan finds the recipe to tame communist ambitions for global ideological expansion. An intensive travel program collides with opportunities to play with his new rock band, a dream since his teenage years, and the adoption of a second child. This time a little girl from Korea. He must find a way to balance his family life, his musical ambitions and his appetite for business challenges.

In book three, Starting From Scratch (working title covering 1986 to 1989), Henrik leaves a promising career in the big American company and instead accepts an offer from a start-up Danish company. Samantha also wants to pursue a career, so Henrik has to do his share of looking after the family’s two young children. In addition to playing an increasing number of gigs with his rock band, Henrik is now also responsible for driving revenue in the newly established company. After getting a handle on the small Danish market, he’s moving on to open up the international markets. Things are going really well for Henrik until external investors, brought in to strengthen the international expansion, suddenly start to change the company’s management and culture. Henrik defects, gets a job at another start-up company, only to discover that their product isn’t ready for the market. The more he sells, the more problems arise. What’s next?

In book four, Vanity Summit (working title covering 1989 to 1997), Henrik Bertelsen is tempted by a headhunter looking for a country manager for the subsidiary of a small and somewhat failing American computer company. Dazzled by the title and an attractive salary package with stock options, he breaks his promise to never work for an American company again. However, due to circumstances beyond his control, his subsidiary company exceeds its budgets and outperforms his colleagues in its sister companies. He is celebrated as a hero and showered with bonuses and stock options. When reality hits, and he has to fight for a conservative budget, no one will listen. For the first time in his career, he is fired.

In volume five, In a strong tailwind (working title covering 1997 to 2001), Henrik gets a job at a highly successful software company and moves to Germany to build and run the business in the German-speaking countries.
It’s 1997, and customers are replacing their old software to avoid millennial risk.
Preparing for an IPO requires the company to demonstrate high growth rates abroad, and Henrik is asked to create and implement an aggressive growth plan.

While he’s busy delivering on his budget, the family struggles to adapt to their new surroundings in southern Germany.

He manages to balance the family’s needs and the company’s expectations when a merger suddenly disrupts all his plans and ambitions.

In book six, Only on loan (working title covering 2001 to 2004), Henrik Bertelsen is fired again, returns to Denmark and decides to start his own business. No more corporate politics and surprises. But what type of business should he start?

As he considers his options, headhunters present him with new opportunities, but he turns them down.
He’s lost his appetite for monogamous working relationships. When a start-up company offers him the manager job on consulting terms, he gives in. But entrepreneurship is risky and without a safety net, and for the first time in his life, he has to take a company through bankruptcy.

In volume seven, On Your Own (working title covering 2004 to 2013), Henrik finally manages to break away from his monogamous working relationship and launches a consulting firm.

Although business takes off, he quickly realizes that he needs to move away from selling hours. Increasing his income by simply working more doesn’t seem attractive. He’d rather spend more time with his family and friends and on his hobbies. An idea to build a consultancy of equal partners on franchise terms gains some momentum, but never fulfills his ambitions. He has to find other ways.

In book eight, Independent (working title covering 2013 to the present), Henrik starts blogging and writing how-to books on international business development. His core area of expertise. The fourth book becomes an international bestseller and his phone starts ringing more often.

He wants to spend more time writing books and especially to fulfill an old dream of writing fiction. Once again, he revises his business model and manages to find the time and money needed to write his first novel, which he titles The Ballad of Mecca.

Autobiography?

No, it isn’t!
But writing about something you’re already familiar with is the lazy writer’s shortcut to a good story. Of course, I’ve drawn from my own world and my own experiences. Inspired by Forrest Gump, a number of real people and institutions appear in the books. However, they are described as historically accurate as possible.

Technically, the genre is called autofiction, where reality and fantasy are mixed in such a way that it can be difficult for the reader to tell which is which. My advice to the reader is to see it all as fantasy. My goal is to leave the reader with the impression that it could have happened in reality.

“Based on a true story” is what they say in Hollywood.

Why is that?

Why on earth did I set out to write eight novels?

Because I want to, and because I have so much I want to tell.

It’s as simple as that.

The book as a medium, where I have the reader’s full attention and an alignment of expectations where the story can unfold over a few hundred pages, is the perfect medium for what I would like to tell.