This is a BBC podcast.

You can get all our podcasts and our terms of use at BBCWorld Service.com slash podcasts. So this is the village and we go out skiing cross country around the house.

Welcome to assignment on the BBC World Service.

I'm Tim Hewell standing with a man called Marius at the head of a wild valley in Norway.

There are snowy mountains all around us.

I can see, I think that might be the school bus, is it?

Yes.

It's the school bus.

It's going there to the right.

Just snaking its way along the road, it's the only vehicle on the road.

The school day is just ended on the bottom of the valley.

There's only two kids left to be taken by the bus.

Our girls with this two used to be four kids. Taked by the bus here in the village.

They must really miss them. Everybody, you know.

Yeah, they are asking, they wrote them letters.

The kids at school, they've been told that we moved, that our girls moved,

kind of to, I don't know, explain why they're not coming at school. Ruth Marius live in a neat, bright modern house with huge windows looking out down the valley to the fjord.

But the first thing that really strikes you inside the house itself

is just the house is completely full of things

for children, boxes and boxes, plastic boxes of toys,

but there are no children here to play with them.

Marius used to play his keyboard for the children now he's just keeping the

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