by Tim Severin
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 t
o 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.’
‘Cavemen? We don’t live in caves.’
Rassa smiled his crooked smile.
‘Sabme children learn how Ibmal the Creator made the first men. They were two brothers. Ibmal set the brothers on the earth and they flourished, hunting and fishing. Then Ibmal sent a great howling blizzard with gales and driving snow and ice. One of the brothers ran off and found a cave, and hid himself in it. He survived. But the other brother chose to stay outside and fight the blizzard. He went on hunting and fishing and learning how to keep alive. After the blizzard had passed over, one brother emerged from the cave and from him are descended all the settled peoples. From the other brother came the Sabme.’
I was beginning to take a liking to this forthright, homely little man. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘as you are to be my guest, we should find out a little more about you and the days that lie ahead.’
With no more ceremony than Thrand consulting the rune tablets, Rassa produced his own prophecy drum. It was much bigger and more intricately decorated than the one I had seen before. Rassa’s drum had many, many more symbols. They were drawn, he told me, with the red juice from the alder tree, and he had hung coloured ribbons, small amulets and charms of copper, horn and a few in silver round the drum’s edge. I carried copies of the same charms in my trade pack.
Rassa dropped a small marker on the drum skin. This time the marker was a brass ring. Before he began to tap on the drum, I intervened.
‘What do the symbols mean?’ I asked.
He gave me a shrewd glance. ‘I think you already know some of them,’ he replied.
‘I can see some runes,’ I said.
‘Yes, I learned those signs among the settled peoples.’
‘What about that one? What does that signify?’ I pointed to a wavy triple line. There were several similar symbols painted at different places on the drum skin.
‘They are the mountains, the places where our ancestors dwell.’
‘And that one?’ I indicated the drawing of a man wearing antlers on his head.
‘That is the noiade’s own sign. You call him a seidrmann.’
‘And if the marker goes there what does it mean?’
‘It tells of the presence of a noiade, or that the noaide must be consulted. Every Sabme tent has a drum of prophecy, and someone to use it. But only a noiade can read the deeper message of the arpa, the moving marker.’
Abruptly he closed his eyes and began to sing. It was a thin, quavering chant, the same short phrase repeated over and over and over again, rising in pitch until the words suddenly stopped, cut off mid-phrase as if the refrain had fallen into a pool of silence. After a short pause, Rassa began the chant again, once more raising the pitch of his voice until coming to the same abrupt halt. As he chanted, he tapped on his drum. Watching the ugly little man, his eyes closed, his body swaying back and forth very slightly, I knew that I was in the presence of a highly accomplished seidrmann. Rassa was able to enter the spirit world as easily as I could strike sparks from a flint.
After the fourth repetition of his chant, Rassa opened his eyes and looked down at the drum. I was not surprised to see that the arpa was resting once again on the antlered man. Rassa grunted, as if it merely confirmed what he had expected. Then he closed his eyes and resumed tapping, more urgently this time. I watched the track of the brass ring as it skittered across the face of the drum. It visited symbol after symbol without pausing, hesitated and then retraced a slightly different track. Rassa’s drumming ended and this time he did not look down at the drum but straight at me. ‘Tell me,’ he said.
Strangely, I had anticipated the question. It was as if a bond, an understanding, existed between the noiade and myself. We both took it for granted that I possessed seidr skill and had come to Rassa for enlightenment.
‘Movement,’ I said. ‘There will be movement. Towards the mountains, though which mountains I do not know. Then the drum spoke of something I do not understand, something mysterious, obscure, a little dangerous. Also of a union, a meeting.’
Rassa now looked down at the drum himself. The brass ring had come to rest on a drawing of a man seated on horseback. ‘Is that what you meant by movement?’ he asked.
The answer seemed obvious, but I answered, ‘No, not that sign. I can’t be sure how to interpret it, but whatever it is, it concerns me closely. When the ring approached the symbol and then came to rest, my spirit felt strengthened.’
‘Look again and tell me what you see,’ the noiade replied.
I examined the figure more closely. It was almost the smallest symbol on the drum, squeezed into a narrow space between older, more faded figures. It was unique. Nowhere else could I see this mark repeated. The horse rider was carrying a round shield. That was odd, I thought. Nowhere among the Sabme had I seen a shield. Besides, a horse would never survive in this bleak cold land. I looked again, and noticed that the horse, drawn in simple outline, had eight legs.
I looked up at Rassa. He was gazing at me questioningly with his bulging eyes. ‘That is Odinn,’ I said. ‘Odinn riding Sleipnir.’
‘Is it? I copied that sign from something I saw among the settled folk. I saw it carved on a rock and knew that it had power.’
‘Odinn is my God,’ I said. ‘I am his devotee. It was Odinn who brought me to your land.’
‘Later you can tell me who is this Odinn,’ Rassa answered, ‘but among my people that symbol has another meaning. For us it is the symbol of approaching death.’
WITH THIS ENIGMATIC forecast I began my time among the forest Sabme. My days with them were to be some of the most remarkable, and satisfactory, of my life, thanks almost entirely to Rassa and his family. Rassa was no ordinary noiade. He was acknowledged as maybe the greatest noiade of his time. His unusual appearance had marked him out from his earliest childhood. Ungainly and clumsy, he had differed from other boys. Trying to play their games, he would sometimes fall down on the ground and choke or lose his senses entirely. Norse children would have mocked and teased him, but the Sabme treated him with special gentleness. No one had been surprised when, at the age of eight, he began to have strange and disturbing dreams. It was the proof to the Sabme that the sacred ancestors had sent Rassa as their intermediary, and Rassa’s parents unhesitatingly handed over their son to the local shaman for instruction. Thirty years later his reputation extended from the forest margins where his own people lived as far as the distant coast, to those Sabme who fished for seal and small whale. Among all the Sabme bands, the siida, it was known that Rassa was a great noiade, and from time to time he would come to visit them in his spirit travels. So high was his reputation when I arrived among them that no one questioned why he decided to take a lumbering stranger into his tent and instruct him in the sacred ways. His own siida believed that their great noiade had summoned me. Their drums told them so. For my part, I believed sometimes that Rassa was Odinn’s agent. At other times I thought he might be the All-Father himself, in human guise.
Our siida (as I soon came to think of it) shifted camp the morning after my arrival. They did not trouble to dismantle their birch-bark tents. They merely gathered up their few belongings, wrapped them in bundles, which they slung on rawhide cords over their shoulders or tied to their backs, and set off along the trail that followed the river bank. The fishing had been disappointing, Rassa explained. The local water spirit and the Fish Gods were displeased. The reason for their anger he did not know. There was a hole in the bottom of the river, leading to a subterranean spirit river, and the fish had all fled there. It would be wise for the siida to move to another spot, where
the spirits were more friendly. There was no time to waste. Soon the river would be frozen over and fishing – on which the siida depended at least as much as hunting – would become impossible. Our straggle of twenty families, together with their dogs and the six haltered boazo, walked for half a day before we came to our destination, further downstream. Clearly the siida had occupied the site previously. There were tent frames already standing, which the Sabme quickly covered with deerskins.