Chapter 19 – First Understanding
Anne had travelled to Stockholm yesterday. With the jetlag she had spent last night in a hotel near the airport. She had kept herself awake for the long flight west from Australia but, with the extra seven hours added to the day, she was really tired by the time the taxi had brought her to her hotel. It was ten pm local time; the sun was low but still not set in this mid-summer time. The light had that peculiar softness that she associated with the northern latitudes, similar to the couple times she had gone with Susan to her aunt’s home in Scotland.
It brought a wave of nostalgia for those lost childhood years which she realised they could never recapture. Life had been simple and joyful then. She found herself longing to see her own family again. They had visited a couple months ago in Australia, but now she had that desire for familiar comfort, the bedroom of her childhood, her mother’s cooking. Well she would be there inside a week, after she left Sweden and before she went up to Scotland then on to France to meet other families and get to know about their daughters. She felt very privileged to be given this intensely private access to these girls’ lives.
Tomorrow she was meeting Mr Axel Torborg, father of Elin, whose passport they had found in the box and who it was thought was the Elfin of Mark’s diary. She would also meet his second daughter, Freya, who she hoped might also shed some light on the more personal aspects of her sister’s life, things like men friends which her father may not know.
Axel Torberg collected her from her hotel in the mid-morning. He was someone she had met on his trip to Sydney for the appeal; he was a tall powerfully built, but slightly stooped, man. He was in his mid-fifties, but seemed to have aged prematurely and now walked with a slightly shuffling gait. He brought Anne to the family home, where Freya was also waiting, offering Pankaka, with whipped cream, blackberry jam and coffee.
Axel’s English was limited but Freya’s was good so she did most of the talking. It seemed that with Elin’s prolonged absence from the family Freya had taken the older daughter role. After making polite conversation for a few minutes Freya began to tell the story of their family.
They lived their early life in a village in the far north of the country, until their mother had been struck down by breast cancer. At that time Freya had been only five so her memories of her mother and before were not very good, but both her father and Elin had been very devastated at their mother, Elle’s, early death. Elin had been very close to both parents and had taken the loss hard. She had become quite wild after that. Here Axel came in, with Freya helping with the translation
“She always was wild; I filled head with stories of Viking ancestors, the heroes who sailed the world’s seas. They were also a great love of my Elle. In the Arctic winters, way up there, for more than a month the sun never rises. On those days, when there was not a blizzard, I would take Eli out in the lunchtime half-light. We would tell of and imagine our brave ancestors venturing out from the Norse Coast to the furthest regions of the world. I would call her my Viking Princess, daughter of my Viking Queen Elle. We would imagine that one day she would be a queen herself and sail out to unknown places like her ancestors had done.
“I do not think those dreams ever left Eli, she lived a life where most of the world was a place she created in her imagination. As she became an adult she tried to live that life too.
Axel then handed Anne two photos. The first was a family photo of a time long ago. To the side stood a boy next to his father, similar but unremarkable. A proud young Axel, hair dark without grey, stood with his arm around a truly beautiful golden haired woman. In her arms was a small child, clearly grown into Freya, hair dark like her father’s, with her mother’s face of beauty. Between her parents stood a child of perhaps eight, flaxen golden hair the image of her mother’s though her face was sharper and more Elfin, perhaps from her father or an earlier generation. She was striking if not with the classical beauty of her mother. And already she had the most penetrating eyes, eyes that seemed to be looking beyond somewhere that others could see, to a place in another world.
Anne realised that Freya was talking to her, telling her who was who: she already knew. Then Freya passed her another photo, this was a recent one taken of an adult Elin and her father on the deck of a small yacht, arms around each others shoulders.
Freya said, “That is the last picture we have of Eli, she was home for a holiday from Greenpeace about a year before she vanished. She and my father, who both loved to sail, spent two days sailing out around the Stockholm Archipelago, one of the world’s beautiful places which they both loved. That was their shared passion. Unfortunately I have never liked sailing so now my father sails alone.”
Anne looked at the woman in the photo. No child now, she was truly striking, there was a resemblance to some movie character that Anne tried to place. It came to her, she was the Elf Queen of the Lord of the Rings movie, the role played by Cate Blanchet. Anne had seen and loved all these movies; she tried to think of the name, was it Arwen? No that was the dark haired one, a Freya look alike. She had it now, it was Galadriel, only Eli face was, if anything, more pointed and pixie like. But that golden cascade of hair which framed her face gave her the look; she really was the Elf Queen.
Now Anne felt almost sure she had found the Elfin of Mark’s diary. Small wonder he had given the name Elfin. She realised that both Freya and Axel were looking at her strangely as she gazed rapt at the picture. She turned to them and said. “I think I have read about her and what happened to her in this man, Mark’s diary, she is the one he calls his Elfin Queen. Perhaps I could give you both that part of the story to read and when you have done so you can tell me if you agree it is her. It will be a hard story for you to read but it is also a beautiful love story which I think you will be happier for knowing.”
They both nodded.
She said, “It is in my bag, a photocopy. I am not really supposed to show it to you. But if I was you I would want to know. I have decided that I must give it to you. Perhaps I should leave it here now. Tomorrow after you have read it I will visit again and you can tell me what you think.”
Freya took the sheets of paper, about ten in all, with a mix of tightly spaced writing and occasional other scribbles. She said, “I will need to help my father, his English is not that good, but it will be good for us to read and remember together, even to cry if we must.”
Anne said, “I think it was written about a year after he met her, it is better if I tell you no more and let you discover it for yourself.”
She said her goodbyes; she arranged to return for morning coffee at the same time the next day. In the afternoon she bought a ticket to the port and took a sail cruise out amongst the islands of the archipelago. It was, as Freya had said, one of the world’s beautiful places.
She found the trip bittersweet, the beauty breathtaking, the image of the girl and her father sailing together poignant, then of her no more and him sailing only alone. Why had Elin not stayed here and instead gone to the furthest reaches of the world, the vast Antarctic Ice sheets, always putting herself in danger’s way. And then her final almost sailing trip across the empty bed of the world’s largest salt lake, followed a few days later in a home-made boat along an ephemeral river which almost never flowed, now she was the Elf Queen of a Desert Kingdom.
When she returned to her hotel in the late evening the concierge passed her a telephone message. It was from Freya Tolgron. It asked that she ring Freya and left a short message that she and her father would like Anne to come to their home village by train. The return journey would take three days.
She rang immediately and Freya explained that she and her father would like her to join them tomorrow morning for a train trip to Sweden’s far north, a trip which left tomorrow evening and ran through the night arriving at the town of Gällivare the following morning. From there it was a half hour by car to the town where the family had first lived. Freya said simply, “We would like you to visit our home villag
e. There is something to see which will help you to understand.”
Freya said it was best if she not to come around in the morning as they had other things to do. Instead she arranged to collect Anne from her hotel at five o’clock In the evening and bring her with them to the train.
Next day Anne spent sightseeing as there was nothing further she could do regarding her search for now. She was waiting back at the hotel at the due time and within half an hour they were settled into their sleeper compartment.
Anne went to pay them for the fare but Freya shook her head. “You have travelled across the world to help us find Elin. The story you have given us tells us it is so. Now for this final part of your journey you are our guest. As we travel I will tell you more of my sister.”
Soon the train was sliding smoothly across the northern countryside. As it rolled away Freya pulled out a folder of clippings and postcards, Elin arrested confronting the Russians; Elin in an inflatable confronting the a Japanese whaler and being hosed with water canon; Elin on the Antarctic Peninsula amongst penguins, and the final postcard she had send from Adelaide. Across the back were scrawled some Swedish words which Freya translated.
“On my way across the bottom of Australia.
Heading for Albany and Perth.
Hoping to discover the Australian Outback.
Love to you all. Eli”
As they slid into night Freya told her of this girl and her endless series of brief liaisons, never finding anything beyond one night stands, sex just a biological act without any deeper meaning. She also heard of her sense of fun and fearlessness, ever searching but never finding whatever it was she was looking for.
Anne found a real person slowly emerging from the pages and faces. Now she felt as if she could hear her voice and tell her story.
They talked for hours, until finally the yawning overtook Anne.
Just before she went to bed Freya said, “My father found his great love in my mother, Elle. I have found a great love in my husband and children and joy in my ordinary work and life.
“As we read of Elin, the person who we saw forever searching, we knew she had finally found a great love. Even if it was short and not in the place and way we would have chosen for her, we are glad for her that it happened. In the end she found what she was searching for. We only wish it could have lasted longer, that we could have met him and that we could have seen her again. But we know she died happy. For that we owe you a great debt.”
In the morning they came to the town where they left the train and collected a hire car which they drove through the countryside. Anne wondered if they were going to visit their childhood house or something of that sort. Instead they drove to a graveyard. They came to a patch of ground many times the size of an ordinary grave. On the ground small white stones formed the shape of a boat.
Anne walked over to the headstone and looked at it. It had a picture of a boat, a faded photo behind glass and a symbol carved in the shape of an old Viking boat. Underneath was writing. She could not read the writing but Freya and Axel came and explained it.
Axel spoke, with Freya adding the odd word which he could not find.
“Here is the place where is buried my Elle, love of my life. We knew each other as children in the village school and as adults we married and had our children, Theodor, Elin and Freya. Most of our courtship was spent in a timber boat I built, sailing the lakes and fiords of this land. Then when our children came they sailed with us too. Those are the happiest memories of my life and they were the happiest memories of my Elle. There is an old Norse custom, passed down from our ancestors, that when a great sailor dies they are buried in their boat so that it can forever carry them to the new and promised land. When my Elle died I dug the hole below where we stand and buried my wife in our boat as befits a great sailor. For more than a day I dug until I had made this hole. I would let none other help me. It was only for me to do this, as the man who loved her. Now the boat carries her ever onward until one day I join her.”
He continued, “When my beloved daughter died the man that she loved buried the boat he had made and they had sailed in together. He placed her in it in the same way as I placed my wife in our boat. Now my daughter too makes her journey to the next world.
“This man who did this must have loved her as she loved him. What he did was a great deed and is good. If he was alive I would have liked to thank him. Now you can tell his story and that of my Elin. Tell the story of my daughter, the Viking Elf Queen, and of the man who loved her, her desert warrior king.
“Such a story will live long after we are gone as do the stories of our heroic ancestors. It is enough and for this I thank you with all my heart.”
Part 3 - Belle
Lost Girl Diary Page 21