What do you think is the identity of the actor that played Young Rolf in Zombies in the Snow? Sally Sebald calls him 'Omar', which is a name that people frequently mix up with Olaf in the series, but in the photo he's clearly a teenager despite the movie having been made recently at the time of The Reptile Room. This has just always bothered me and I wondered if you had any thoughts on it.
This has bothered me immensely as well! Especially since there are been clues that Olaf worked with Gustav Sebald during his youth:
“DidI ever tell you how I began my career as an actor?”“It’sa fascinating story,” the hook-handed man said.“Itcertainly is,” Olaf agreed. “Give me some more wine, andI’ll tell you. Now then, as a child, I was alwaysthe most handsome fellow at school, and one day a young director . ..”[The Carnivorous Carnival, Chapter Two]
But clearly Olaf starring in the very movie which is supposed to expose him is very difficult to believe. Also please remember that by Lemony’s self-admission the photographs taken from the un-Authorized Autobiography cannot be trusted: when he can’t find any, he replaces them with similar pictures of people more or less the same age (emphasis on “more or less”).
Maybe we’re reading too much into it and Sally is just mistaking a person’s name for Omar, as a running gag and a echo to “The Vile Village”.
A more outlanfish theory would be to identify this boy as Omeros, a young castaway from “The End”. The similarity with “Omar” alone would explain the confusion better. He’s described as a “young boy”, which fits the description given by Sally in her letter:
“Omeros is the root of the trouble,” Dr. Kurtz said, pointing at the young boy. “He’s the one who gave Ishmael the harpoon gun insteadof dumping it in the arboretum!”[The End, Chapter Twelve]
So it could still be possible that Omeros was a child actor who starred in Gustav Sebald’s Zombies in the Snow and ended up on the Island some time between “The Reptile Room” and “The End”.
The timing fits, because we know for a fact that at least one ship sank near the Island during that year: the Prospero. The cheesemakers from Valorous Farm Dairy smuggled the Incredibly Deadly Viper onbard, as recounted in the un-Authorized Autobiography. So it’s possible that other people could have been onboard as well, especially if they had been in on Gustav’s and Monty’s plan, which involved taking the Prospero. Most of the castaways seem to share a shady past with VFD, after all.
Strangely there’s some speculation that Olaf may have a bastard son lying around: in the un-Authorized Autobiography, Lemony tries to make a list of Olaf’s allies through coded messages, and mentions a “son” amongst them. Is Omeros that son? Considering that Omeros eventually gives Ishmael a harpoon gun to kill Olaf, this would make for a particularily tragic family history.