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‘The grief takes your breath away’: how death transformed a loving family – and shaped a remarkable film

Nik and Maria Payne were raising their ‘wild and free’ children in the Norwegian countryside when cancer turned their lives upside down. The reluctant stars of A New Kind of Wilderness talk about a world without MariaPeace hangs over a farm in rural Norway. The last of the melting snow lingers in hummocks and bikes are strewn outside the Payne family’s small rented cottage. Nik Payne materialises from behind the barn where he has been feeding the cows. One of his three children, Falk, 12, is lying on the sofa with a fever and a Biggles novel; later, Freja, 15, and Ulv, nine (known as Wolf or Wolfie), return from school. Their home is as warm and chaotic as any family’s – boots and coats strewn in the hallway, a fridge covered in photos, shelves of books – but with a few differences: there is no television and behind the living room door is an unobtrusive, very personal shrine.The Paynes find themselves the reluctant stars of a film, A New Kind of Wilderness, which has won awards at Sundance and other festivals around the world. This documentary begins, deceptively, as Variety put it, “like Swiss Family Robinson updated for the era of Instagram cottagecore”. The children, with their older half-sister Ronja, are being raised by Nik, an Englishman, and his Norwegian wife Maria to be “wild and free”: home-schooled, creative, growing their own food, living closely and gently with nature. Continue reading...

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