Maria hammers a candle for joy

Maria is very tempted to light the candle as soon as she enters the room, but decides to wait until she has read the task brief.

While opening the envelope, she gets distracted by the globe, noting "Oh yes. Sudan is there." (thus coining the episode's title).

After reading the letter, she lights the candle with a match, and recites part of the traditional Advent verse, "light a candle for hope and for joy" [Note: Norwegians celebrate Advent by lighting a candle each Sunday before Christmas, up to a total of four candles. Each candle gets an additional verse with an extra concept added in - joy, hope, longing, and peace]. She then carefully carries the lit candle outside, to the garage.

She admits that she is a bit frightened of flames, before trying to light the spray from an aerosol can on fire with a barbeque lighter, while crouched on the ground as far away as possible. However, she merely succeeds in extinguishing the lighter, with each attempt.

She then resorts to smashing the candle with a hammer, while wearing safety goggles, before returning to trying to light the aerosol spray on fire, and discovering that she's used up all of the lighter fluid.

Switching over to using matches, she manages to get a brief tongue of flame before scaring herself into stopping the aerosol spray.

Maria then gives up on flames, and returns to smashing away at the candle with her hammer.

In the studio, Atle mocks her choice of smashing the candle to pieces, referring back to the Advent verse she'd recited, but replacing the word 'light' with the 'hammer': "So we hammer a candle tonight, we hammer it for joy".

Atle doesn’t accept her destruction of the candle as valid, and so Maria only gets credit for the 10-20 grams she'd managed to melt while carrying the candle out to the garage.

(Written by Nic Greyson and proofread by Karl Craven)

(Illustrations collected by Nic Greyson and adjusted by David Fuller)