Sworn Brother (41 page)

This last remark decided me. Thor may have put the words in Bolli’s mouth as a reward for my offerings to him, but it was Odinn who determined the outcome. A journey to Miklagard would not only carry out Grettir’s wish, it would also bring me closer to my God’s mysteries.

So it was that, less than a month later, I had a trader’s pack on my back and was plodding through the vast forests of Permia, wondering if Odinn had been in his role as the Deceiver when he lured me there. After a week in the wilderness I had yet to glimpse a single native. I was not even sure what they were called. Bolli Bollason had called them the Skridfinni, and said that the name meant ‘the Finni who run on wooden boards’. Others referred to them as Lopar or Lapu and told me, variously, that the name meant ‘the runners’, ‘witches’ or ‘the banished’. All my informants agreed that the territory they occupied was barren beyond belief. ‘Nothing except trees grows up in their land. It’s all rock and no soil,’ Bolli had warned. ‘No crops at all, not even hay. So you won’t find cows. Therefore neither milk nor cheese. It’s impossible to grow grain
…
so no beer. And as for vines to grow grapes, forget it. Not even sheep can survive. So the Gods alone know what the natives do for clothing to keep out the cold when they haven’t any wool to weave. They must do something. There’s snow and ice for eight months in the year, and the winter night lasts for two months.’

No one at the trading post where
I
had bought my trade stock had thrown more light on these mysteries. All they could say was that I should fill my pack with coloured ribbons, brass rings, copper figurines, fish hooks and knife blades. They thought I was mad. Winter was coming on, they pointed out, and this was not the time to trade. Better wait until the spring when the natives emerged from the forest with the winter pelts of their prey. Stubbornly
I
ignored their advice.
I
had no intention of spending several months in a remote settlement on the fringes of a wasteland. So
I
had slung my pack on my back and walked away. Now, with the chill wind beginning to numb my fingers and face,

I was wondering - and that not for the first time - if I had been incredibly foolish. The footpath I had been following through the forest was more and more difficult to trace. Soon I would be lost.

I blundered on. Everything around me was featureless. Each tree looked like the last one I had passed and identical to the trees that I had seen an hour earlier. Very occasionally I heard the sound of a wild animal fleeing from me, the sounds of its alarmed progress fading into the distance. I never saw the animals themselves. They were too wary. The straps of my pack were cutting into my shoulders, and I decided that I would set up camp early and start afresh in the morning. Casting around for a sheltered spot where I could light a fire and eat a meal of dried fish from my pack, I left the faint trace of the path and searched to my left. After fifty paces or so I came across such a dense thicket that I was forced to turn back. I tried in the opposite direction. Again I was thwarted by the thick undergrowth. I returned to the path and walked forward a little further, then tried again. This time I got only twenty paces — I counted them because I did not want to lose my track — before I was again forced to a halt. Once more I returned to the path and moved forward. The bushes were crowding closer. I limped on. There was a raw blister on my right heel where the shoe was rubbing and my foot hurt. I was concentrating on this pain when I noticed that the path led to an obvious gap between the dense thickets. Gratefully I quickened my pace and walked forward, then tripped. Looking down, I saw my foot was entangled in a net laid out on the ground. I was bending down to untangle the restraint when I heard a sharp, angry intake of breath. Straightening up, I saw a man step from behind a tree. He was carrying a hunting bow, its arrow set to the string and he drew it back deliberately and quietly, aiming at my chest. I stood absolutely still, trying to look innocent and harmless.

The stranger stood no higher than my chest. He was wearing the skin of an animal, some sort of deer, which he wore like a loose blouse. His head poked through a slit cut in the skin and the garment was gathered in at his waist by a broad belt made from the skin of the same animal. This blouse reached down to his knees and his lower legs were clad in leather leggings, which extended down to strange-looking leather slippers with turned-up toes. On his head was a conical cap, also of deerskin. For a moment he reminded me of a land wight. He had appeared just as silently and magically.

He made no further move towards me, but clicked his tongue softly. From behind other trees and out of the thickets emerged half a dozen of his companions. They ranged from one youngster who could only have been about twelve years old, to a much older man, whose scraggly beard was turning grey. Their precise ages were difficult to tell because their faces were unusually wrinkled and lined, and they were all dressed in identical deerskin garments. Not one of them was tall enough to come up to my shoulder, and they all had similar features — broad foreheads and pronounced cheekbones over wide mouths and narrow chins, which gave their faces a strangely triangular shape. Several of the men, I noted, had watery eyes as if they had been staring too long into the sun. Then I remembered what Olaf had told me about the long months of snow and ice, and recognised what I had seen in my childhood in Greenland - the lingering effects of snow blindness.

They were not aggressive. All of them were carrying long hunting bows, but only the first man kept an arrow aimed at me, and after a few moments he lowered his bow and let the tension relax. Then followed a brief discussion in a language that I could not understand. There seemed to be no leader — everyone including the youngster had an opinion to express. Suddenly they turned to leave and one of them jerked his head at me, indicating that I was to follow. Mystified, I set out, walking behind them along the trail. They did not even look over their shoulders to see if I was there and I found that, despite their small size, the Lopar - as I knew they must be - travelled remarkably quickly through the forest.

A brisk march brought us to where they lived. A cluster of tents stood on the bank of a small river. At first I thought this was a hunters’ camp, but then I saw women, children and dogs and even a baby’s cradle hanging from a tree, and realised that this was a nomad home. Tethered at a little distance were five unusual-looking animals. That they were deer was evident because they had antlers which would have done justice to the forest stags I had hunted with Edgar in England. Yet their bodies were less than half the size. Somehow their smallness seemed appropriate among a people who — by Norse standards — were diminutive.

The man who had first revealed himself to me in the forest led me to his tent, indicated that I should wait and ducked inside. I eased the pack from my shoulders, lowered it to the ground and sat down beside it. The man reappeared and silently handed me a wooden bowl. It contained pieces of a cake. I tasted it and recognised fish and wild berries mashed together.

As I ate the fish cake, everyone in the camp continued about their normal business, fetching water from the river in small wooden buckets, bringing in sticks of firewood, moving between the tents, all the while politely ignoring me. I wondered what would happen next. After an interval, during which I finished my meal and drank from a wooden cup of water brought to me by one of the Lopar women, my guardian - which was how I thought of him - again emerged from his tent. In his hand was what I thought was a large sieve with a wooden rim. Then I saw it was a drum, broad, flat and no deeper than the span of my hand, an irregular oval in shape. He placed the drum carefully upon the ground and squatted down beside it. Several of the other men strolled over. They sat in a circle and another quiet discussion followed. Again I could not understand what they were saying, though several times I heard the word vuobman. Eventually my guardian reached inside his deerskin tunic and produced a small wedge of horn, no bigger than a gaming counter, which he placed gently on the surface of his drum. From the folds of his blouse he next pulled out a short hammer-shaped drumstick and began to tap gently on the drum skin. All the onlookers leaned forward, watching intently.

I guessed what was happening and rose to my feet. Walking over to the group, I joined the circle, my neighbour politely shifting aside to give me space. I was reminded of the Saxon wands. The surface of the drum was painted with dozens of figures and symbols. Some I recognised: fish, deer, a dancing, stick-like man, a bow and arrow, half a dozen of the Elder runes. Many symbols were new to me and I could only guess their meaning — lozenges, zigzag lines, irregular star patterns, curves and ripples. I supposed that one of them must represent the sun, another the moon and perhaps a third depicted a forest of trees. I said nothing as the little horn counter hopped and skipped on the drum skin as it vibrated to the regular tapping of the drummer. The counter moved here and there, then seemed to find its own position, remaining on one spot — over the drawing of a man who seemed to have antlers on his head. Abruptly my guardian stopped his drumming. The counter stayed where it was. He picked it up, placed it on the centre of the drum and began again, tapping a slow, repeated rhythm. Again the counter advanced across the drum and came to the same position. A third time my guardian cast the lot, this time starting the counter at the edge of the drum skin before he began to urge it into life. Once more the wedge of horn moved to the figure of the antlered man, but then moved on until it came to rest on the symbol of a triangle. I guessed it was a tent.

My guardian slipped the drumstick back inside his blouse, and there was complete silence in the assembled group. Something had changed. Where the Lopar had previously been courteous, almost aloof, now they seemed a little nervous. Whatever the drum had told them, its message had been clear.

My guardian returned the drum to his tent and beckoned to me to follow him. He led me to a tent set slightly apart from the others. Like them it was an array of long thin poles propped together and neatly covered with sheets of birch bark. Pausing outside the tent flap, he called, ‘Rassa!’ The man who came out from the tent was the ugliest Lopar I had yet seen. He was of the same height and build as all the others in the camp, but every feature of his face was out of true. His nose was askew and bulbous. Eyes, bulging under bushy eyebrows, gave him a perpetually startled expression. His lips failed to close over slightly protruding teeth, and his mouth was definitely lopsided. Compared to the neat foxy-faced Lopars around him, he looked grotesque.

‘You are welcome among us. I am glad you have arrived.’ said this odd-looking native. I was startled. Not just by what he said, but that he had spoken in Norse, heavily accented and carefully phrased but clearly understandable.

‘Your name is Rassa?’ I asked hesitantly.

‘Yes.’ he replied. ‘I told the hunters that the vuodman would provide an unusual catch today and they should not harm it, but bring it back to camp.’

‘The vuodman?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘The vuodman is where they lie in wait for the boazo.’ He saw that I was looking even more mystified. ‘You must excuse me. I don’t know how to say boazo in your tongue. Those animals over there are boazo.’ He nodded towards the five small tethered deer. ‘Those are tame ones. We place them in the forest to attract their wild kind into the trap. Now is the season when the wild boazo leave the open ground and come into the forest to seek food and find shelter from the coming blizzards.’

‘And the voudman?’

‘That was the thicket that kept turning you back when you were walking. Our hunters were watching you. I hear you tried to leave the trail several times. You made much noise. In fact they nearly lost our prize boazo who was frightened by your approach and ran off. Luckily they recaptured it before it had gone too far.’

I recalled the hunting technique Edgar had showed me in the forest of Northamptonshire, how he had placed me where the deer would be directed towards the arrows of the waiting hunters. It seemed that the Lopar did the same, building thickets of brush to funnel the wild deer in the place where the hunters lay in ambush.

‘I apologise for spoiling the hunt,’ I said. ‘I had no idea that I was in Lopar hunting grounds.’

‘Our name is not Lopar,’ said Rassa gently. ‘That word I heard when I visited the settled peoples - at the time when I learned to speak some words of your language — we are Sabme. To call us Lopar would be the same as if we called you cavemen.’