by Tim Severin
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.'
'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.'
'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.
'Birch bark is not strong enough to withstand the snows and gales, nor warm enough,' Rassa explained. 'For the next few weeks we will use a single layer of deerskin. Later, when it gets really cold, we'll add extra layers to keep in the warmth.'
His own family consisted of his wife, a married daughter with her husband and their small baby, and a second daughter who seemed vaguely familiar. Then I realised that she had been with the hunting party at the vuodman. With all the Sabme dressed in their deerskin blouses, leggings and caps, it was difficult to tell men from women, and I had not expected a girl to be among the hunters. Nor, during the previous night spent in Rassa's tent, had I noticed that he had a second daughter because the Sabme removed only their shoes before they lay down and they slept almost fully clothed. I had crawled into Rassa's tent to find the place half filled with smoke. There was a fireplace in the centre, and the chimney hole in the apex of the tent had been partly covered over because several fish were hanging to cure from a pole projecting over the fire. Staying close to the ground was the only place where it was possible to breathe freely. Arranged around the outer edge of the tent were the family possessions and these became our pillows when we all lay down to sleep on deerskins over a carpet of fresh birch twigs. There was no furniture of any kind.
Rassa asked me to walk with him to the river bank. I noticed that all the other Sabme stayed well back, watching us. The water was shallow, fast flowing over gravel and rocks. Rassa had a fish spear in one hand and a birch-bark fish basket in the other. Without pausing, he waded out to a large, slick boulder which projected above the water. Rassa scanned the surface of the river for a few moments, then stabbed with his fish spear, successfully spiking a small fish about the length of my hand. He carefully removed the fish from the barbs, knocked its head against the rock and laid the dead fish on the rock. Next he placed the fish basket on his head, and spoke some words in the Sabme tongue, apparently addressing the rock itself. Scooping up water in the palm of his hand, he poured it onto the rock, and bowed three times. With the curved knife which every Sabme wore dangling from his belt, he scraped some scales from the fish. Cradling the scales in the palm of his hand he returned to the camp, where he distributed them to the man of each family. Only then did the siida begin to prepare their nets and fishing lines and approach the water. 'The rock is a sieidde,' Rassa explained to me, 'the spirit of the river. I asked fishing luck for every family. I promised that each family that catches fish will make an offering to the sieidde. They will do this at the end of every day that we stay here, and will do so whenever we return to this place in the future.'
'Why did you give fish scales only to the men?' I asked.
'It is bad luck for a woman to approach the sieidde of the river. Ill luck for the siida and dangerous for the woman herself. It can harm her future children.'
'But didn't I see your daughter with the hunters at the vuodman. If the women can hunt, why can't they fish?'
'That is the way it has always been. My daughter Allba hunts because she's as good as many of the men when it comes to the chase, if not better. They can hardly keep up with her. She's quick and nimble even in dense forest. She was always like that, from when she was a little child. Her only fault is that she likes to talk all the time, a constant chatter. That's why my wife and I named her after the little bird that hops around in summer in the bushes and never stops saying "tik-a-tik".'
With every sentence, Rassa was strengthening my desire to stay among the Sabme if they would allow it. I wanted to learn more of Rassa's seidr and to honour my promise to Grettir by sharing in their way of life. Remembering the store of fish hooks in my trade pack, I went to fetch them and handed my entire stock to Rassa. He accepted the gift almost casually, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. 'We make our own fish hooks of wood or bone. But metal ones are far better,' he said as he began to distribute them among the different families.
'Do you share out everything?' I asked.
He shook his head. 'Not everything. Each person and each family knows what is theirs — clothes, dogs, knives, cooking gear. But they will lend or give that item to someone else if it meets a need. Not to do so would be selfish. We have learned that only by helping one another can we survive as a siida.'
'Then what about the other siida? What happens if you both want to fish on the same river or hunt boazo in the same area of forest?'
'Each siida knows its own territory,' he answered. 'Its members have hunted or fished in certain places down through the generations. We respect that custom.'
'But if you do have a dispute over, say, a good fishing place when there is a famine, do you fight for your rights?'
Rassa looked mildly shocked. 'We never fight. We use all our energy in finding food and shelter, making sure that our children grow up healthy, honouring our ancestors. If another siida is starving and needs a particular fishing spot or hunting ground, then they ask us and if possible we agree to lend it to them until their lives have improved. Besides, our land is so broad that there is room enough for all.'
'I find that strange,' I told him. 'Where I come from, a man will fight to defend what he owns. If a neighbour tr
ies to take his land, or a stranger comes to seize his property, we fight and try to drive him away.'
'For the Sabme that's not necessary,' said the noaide. 'If someone invades our territory, we hide or we run away. We wait until the winter comes and the foreigners have to leave. We know that they are not fit to stay.'
He gestured towards the clothes I was wearing — woollen shirt and loose trousers, a thick travelling cloak and the same ill-fitting leather shoes which had given me blisters earlier. 'The foreigners dress like you. They don't know any better. That is why I've asked my wife and Allba to prepare clothes more suitable for the winter. They've never made clothes so big before, but they will have them ready for you in a few days.'
The unexpected benefit of Rassa's request for clothes that would fit me was that it silenced, temporarily, the constant chatter of his daughter Allba. She talked without pause, mostly to her mother, who went about her work quietly, scarcely bothering to reply. I had no idea what Allba was saying, but did not doubt that I was often the topic of her conversation. Now, as she sat with her mother stitching my winter wardrobe, Allba's mouth was too full of deer sinew for her to keep up her constant chatter. Every thread in the garment had to be ripped with teeth from dried sinew taken from a deer's back or legs, then chewed to soften the fibre and rolled into thread. While the women chewed and stitched, I helped Rassa prepare the family meals. One of the novel features of life among the Sabme was that the men did the cooking.
It must have been in about my fourth week with the siide that two events occurred which changed my situation. The first event was anticipated, but the second was a complete surprise. I woke up one morning at the usual time, just after first light, and as I lay on my deerskin rug I noticed that the interior of the tent was much lighter than usual. I rolled over and peered at the small gap between the edge of the tent and the ground. The daylight was shining through the gap so brightly that it made me squint. Quietly I got up, pushed aside the door flap, and stepped out. The entire camp was shrouded in a covering of heavy snow. The first great snowfall had come upon us in the night. Everything we had left outside the tents - firewood, fish baskets, the nets, the sleeping dogs — were humps in the snow. Even the six boazo had snowy coats. Winter had arrived.