Cilla raised her arms. “I’m ready,” she whispered. In the silence that followed, she thought she could hear snatches of music. She closed her eyes and waited. When she opened them again, the vittra had arrived.
They came out from between the pine trees, walking in pairs, all dressed in red and white: the women wore red skirts and shawls and the men long red coats. Two of them were playing the fiddle, a slow and eerie melody in a minor key.
A tall man walked at the head of the train, dressed entirely in white. His hair was long and dark and very fine. There was something familiar about the shape of his face and the translucent blue of his eyes. For a moment, those eyes stared straight into Cilla’s. It was like receiving an electric shock; it reverberated down into her stomach. Then he shifted his gaze and looked beyond her to where Sara was standing wide-eyed by the corner of the house in her oversize sleeping T-shirt. He walked past Cilla without sparing her another glance.
The beautiful man from the mountain approached Sara where she stood clutching the edge of the rain barrel. He put a hand on her arm and said something to her that Cilla couldn’t hear. Whatever it was, it made Sara’s face flood with relief. She took his hand, and they walked past Cilla to the rest of the group. The fiddle players started up their slow wedding march, and the procession returned to the mountain. Sara never looked back.
—
Cilla told them that Sara must have taken the dress, that she herself had gone to bed not long after the others. She told them of Sara’s doomsday vision and her belief that she could tell the future by decoding secret messages in the newspaper. When the search was finally abandoned, the general opinion was that Sara had had a bout of psychotic depression and gone into the wild, where she had either fallen into a body of water or died of exposure somewhere she couldn’t be found. Up there, you can die of hypothermia even in summer. Cilla said nothing of the procession, or of the plastic bag in her suitcase where Märet’s dress lay cut into tiny strips.
She kept the bag for a long time.
Cloudberry Jam
I MADE YOU IN A TIN CAN. It was one of the unlabeled mystery cans the charity in Åre village handed out. Most of the time it would be sausages or split pea soup.
This is how I did it: I waited until it was my time of the month. I took the tin can from the shelf under the sink. I filled it halfway with fresh water and put half a teaspoon of salt in it. Next I put in a small, gnarled carrot from last year’s garden. I had saved it because it had two prongs, like little legs, and armlike stumps. Then I held the can between my legs and let some blood trickle into it. Finally, some of my spit. I put some plastic wrap over the opening. The rest of the night, I sat with the can in my lap and sang to you. That’s how you were made, in October, as the first snow fell.
—
You grew steadily through the winter months. I sang to you and fed you small drops of milk. By Yule you were big enough that I moved you to a larger container, an old bucket. You started kicking then, I suppose because you finally had room to move around. You didn’t need any nourishment other than milk, which was good because the charity in Åre had closed. I wouldn’t go and ask for welfare money. I lived on last year’s potatoes and roots, a bird here and there, cotton grass from the bog, and whatever I managed to steal from the shops.
The snow was slow melting that year. It wasn’t until late May that the last of the snowdrifts at the back of the house finally disappeared. The little mountain birches were unfolding their first leaves. I lifted the cloth and saw that you were ready to come out. You were curled up in the bucket, perfectly formed, the liquid around you cloudy and brown. I lifted you out and dried you off with a towel.
It was perhaps half past three in the morning. On the porch, the air was sharp and clear. I could see all the way to the Norwegian border, to the Sylarna Mountains. Sunlight trickled over the worn mountaintops. I held you up.
“Welcome home,” I said.
You opened your tiny eyes and looked out over the bog. We stood like that for a while.
—
Once out of the bucket, you grew quickly. The cloudberries ripened in August, covering the bog in flecks of gold. We picked them together. By then you were walking, your skin becoming thicker and darker in the sun. Although you couldn’t carry anything with your stumpy arms, you were good at snagging the berries with your mouth and dropping them in the basket. I made cloudberry compote and jam. You could never have enough of the cloudberries. I remember you sitting at the kitchen table, golden jam everywhere, smacking loudly.
—
As autumn slid into winter, you learned to talk. Your voice was low and a little raspy, and you couldn’t roll your Rs. We read together: old magazines, children’s books I had saved. We played in the snow. I had a kneading trough that we rode down into the valley and I dragged back up. You burrowed into the drifts, shoveling the snow aside with your arm stumps and wriggling tunnels through the snow. On the eve of your first Yule, you wondered about your origins.
“Where did I come from?” you asked. “Where’s my father?”
“You don’t have one,” I said. “I made you myself.”
“Everyone has a father.”
“Not everyone.”
“Why did you make me?” you said.
“I made you so that I could love you,” I said.
—
The snow melted, and we celebrated your first birthday. The frost left the ground. The days lengthened. You reached me to my waist and didn’t want to sit in my lap or let me hug you. We had our first argument when you started digging in the kitchen garden just outside the house. I found you in the bottom of a crater of upturned earth and seedlings, rubbing the soil into your skin. I yelled at you for ruining my plants, and why would you do this.
“But it’s because the soil is good here,” you said.
“Dig wherever you want,” I said. “But stay the hell away from the garden, or we won’t have anything to eat.”
“The soil isn’t as good anywhere else. You don’t get it.”
Without another word, you waddled off to the birch copse and dug under the trees the rest of the morning while I tried to salvage the kitchen garden. It was as if you dug away your anger, because after a while you came back with your little arms outstretched. We went inside and made lunch together and got soil and mud all over the floors.
You kept digging every day. Over by the bog, down on the slope toward the valley. It looked like we had voles or rabbits. You’d come home with things you’d unearthed: a broken saucer, part of a ski pole, little bits of bone, fool’s gold.
When the weather became warm enough, I took you to Kall Lake to go night swimming. I used to go swimming in Kall Lake as a child. That was the best thing about summer.
You squealed in delight when you saw the rocky shore and the gray lake mirror. Once in the water you became frightened. It was too big and loose you said, too loose. You sat on the shore while I swam. You didn’t like the rocks, either—they were too hard. You wanted to go home and dig. We didn’t go back to Kall Lake.
The new batch of jam takes up a whole shelf. I think it’ll stay there. I can’t eat jam anymore. I’ll still keep it here, though, just in case.
—
I suppose it was bound to happen. I woke up from an afternoon nap to find the cottage empty. I looked behind and inside the shed, in the copse of mountain birch huddling next to the house. You were nowhere to be found. Finally, I started calling for you. There was no answer. I thought perhaps you had fallen into a hole on the bog. New ones open every spring. I put my rubber boots on and went to look. I walked from the cottage and west toward Sylarna. I walked until the cottage disappeared from view, and then I turned north. I walked back and forth, calling you, until the sun dipped below the horizon. Then I turned back to the house.
You must have been digging all day. I found the hole by accident, kicking the kneading trough in frustration where it lay on the ground by the front steps. As it moved, I saw the hole.
I called your name.
“Please come out,” I said.
“I don’t want to,” you said, muffled.
“What are you doing down there?”
“Digging.”
“Won’t you please come out? I’ll make us supper.”
“I don’t want to.”
I went and got the shovel, setting it to the edge of the hole. But as soon as the shovel broke the ground, you screamed. I looked down. The soil was riddled with white root tendrils.
“You’re hurting me!” you wailed.
I understood then.
“I’m so sorry, love,” I said. “I am so sorry. I won’t hurt you anymore, I promise.”
I went back into the house and sat down at the kitchen table. I cried a little. Then I got the watering can from the garden and filled it with fresh water. I poured it over the ground by the hole. I could hear a giggle down there. That was the first time I’d heard you make that sound.
—
August is here. The cloudberries are still red; in a little while they will ripen to gold. I will pick as many as I can, for jam and compote. You haven’t spoken since that day you burrowed into the ground. But there’s a clutch of green leaves growing by the hole. When I water them, I can still hear faint laughter.
Pyret
[pyːret]
Description, Behavior, and History
WHEN NOT APPLIED to small and defenseless creatures, the word “pyre” describes a mysterious life form: Pyret, Swedish for “the little tyke.” The word has all the characteristics of a euphemism, but nothing resembling an older name has turned up—possibly because it was taboo and in time forgotten, as is often the case. A name that evokes an image of something benevolent and harmless indicates both a form of worship and an underlying fear of its powers: an expression of love and an appeal for benevolence.*1 During the years I have spent researching Pyret, it seems more and more likely that this mix of adoration and fear stems from its extremely alien nature.
A mimic and an infiltrator, Pyret mingles with and assumes the form of pack or herd animals, changing color and shape to match the others. From a distance it will look like an ordinary animal. It does not grow actual fur, eyes, or other extremities—the features are completely superficial, making it likely that its skin is covered by chromatophores, much like octopi and chameleons.
Although its feeding habits remain unknown, one thing is certain: Pyret does not behave like a predator. There are no records of it causing physical harm, although it insists on physical contact, which has traumatized a number of witnesses. Accounts of Pyret invariably describe a creature that tries to get close, cuddle, and sometimes even mate with the animal or person in question. The adult size of Pyret seems to be anything between a human and a cow. As for life span, no Pyre has been observed to die of old age; it has either wandered off or been slain by humans.
Pyret seems to have sought out and coexisted with the farmers of the Nordic countries for centuries. Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish folklore is rife with stories about farmers discovering a fledgling Pyre in a litter of domesticated animals (Tilli, Pia: Nordic Cryptids, Basilisk Förlag, Helsinki 1989, p. 68), indicating that the parent places its spawn with other litters, cuckoo-style. However, Pyret is just as likely to appear in its adult form: there are numerous mentions of strange cows, goats, or sheep appearing in a flock overnight, rubbing up against the other animals. Their presence is often described as having a calming effect. Cows and goats will start producing prodigious amounts of milk, sheep will grow silky soft wool, and pigs fatten up even if food is scarce.
A Gift from the Gods
The earliest mention of Pyret occurs in the Icelandic saga Alfdís saga, in which Alfdís Sigurdardóttir divorces her husband Gunnlaug because he accidentally sets fire to their barn while drunk, “killing six cows and also Freyr’s pyril,*2 thereby ruining their family” (Jónsson, Guðni: Íslendinga sögur, Reykjavík, 1946, book 25, p. 15). Alfdís complains bitterly about the loss of the pyril that she had reared from infancy, and which had kept her cattle happy and fat (Jónsson, p. 16). Because of the death of the pyril, Alfdís is exempt from the normal divorce penalty and retains the family’s remaining possessions, while Gunnlaug is cast out of the community and left destitute (Jónsson, p. 18). Gunnlaug’s punishment and the attribution of the pyril to Freyr, a god of fertility, indicate that it was considered a sacred creature.
This is the first and last mention in Icelandic literature. Afterward and up to modern times, stories and accounts of Pyret are confined to the northern and middle Scandinavian Peninsula, as far south as the pyril of Stavanger (Tilli, p. 69) and as far east as Carelia under the name of pienokainen*3 (Tilli, p. 72). The majority of accounts, however, come from the sparsely populated countryside of northern Sweden.
“The Devil’s Cattle”
The Christianization of Scandinavia dethroned the Norse gods but did little to wipe out belief in supernatural creatures, due in part to all the attention they were given by the Church. The pyril of Norse faith moved into folklore, where it became the cattle of the vittra, powerful beings that live underground and in hills, similar to the daoine sidhe of Ireland. The Church, seeing it as a very real threat, called Pyret “the Devil’s cattle” and warned the populace not to have dealings with it. Doing so was considered witchcraft. This had the opposite effect, as folklorist Ebbe Schön conjectures: “If the Church made so much noise about them, these creatures must indeed be powerful and therefore worthy of worship” (Schön, Ebbe: Älvor, vättar och andra väsen, Rabén Prisma, Stockholm, 1996, p. 16).
Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, roughly four hundred people were tried and executed for witchcraft and witchcraft-related crimes.*4 Twelve instances mention involvement with Pyret (Leijd, Carl: Rättsprocessens avarter, Gothenburg: Meli Förlag, 1964, p. 223). Extensive notes from a court case in 1702 concern one Anders of Kräkånger, who was sentenced to death for harboring Pyret. To my knowledge, it is also the only trial where Pyret was present. Usually, Pyret would be killed on sight, but Anders of Kräkånger had reared his to such a monstrous size that no one dared touch it. Shaped like a bull, it strode into the courtroom together with Anders and refused to leave his side. The trial was very short, as during the proceedings, “the unholy creature constantly rubbed up against its owner, emitting warbling noises and upsetting those attending, causing many to weep with fear” (Leijd, p. 257). The court decreed that Anders’s death sentence be carried out immediately but was not quite sure how to deal with Pyret. Anders himself solved this conundrum, offering to go willingly if the court in turn promised to set Pyret free after his death. Considering what he might otherwise command his beast to do, the court accepted this. Whether it intended to keep this promise, we will never know.
Anders of Kräkånger was taken to the block; his beast followed him like a dog and we dared not touch it, not even the priest. The moment the prisoner’s head was severed from his neck, the creature let out a terrible howl, and all who heard it cowered in horror. The creature then fell over and did not move again. When evening fell, it had started to shrink, as when one pours salt on a snail. The remains were shoveled into a trough and burned along with the prisoner’s body (Leijd, p. 258).
As Pyret constantly seeks out the company of other mammals, I suspect that sometimes it forms an attachment so strong that, like Anders of Kräkånger’s bull, it cannot survive separation. Companionship—belonging to or with someone—seems an intrinsic part of its being.
The case of Anders of Kräkånger was to be the last in the history of Pyret-related trials. The arrival of rationalism changed the face of Scandinavian faith and superstition in a way Christianity had not. Scientist Carl Linnaeus held a lecture in 1762 during which he reached the conclusion that belief in “Pyret, nixies, vittra and their ilk” is a warning sign of what happens to a people that do not concern themselves with science:
These creatures would lurk among cows and goats, haunt every nook, live with us like hous
e cats; and superstition, witchcraft, and warding swarm around us like gnats (Levertin, Oscar: Carl von Linné. Lectures, Albert Bonniers Boktryckeri, Stockholm, 1910, p. 50).
Pyret was officially wiped out of existence. This did not stop it from appearing.
Sjungpastorn: The Singing Pastor of Hålträsket
Accounts of Pyret assuming human shape are nearly nonexistent. There are three possible reasons:
It is non-sentient. Observations of dead specimens may support this, as they universally mention gelatinous bodies with nothing resembling a brain, nervous system, or inner organs (see, for example, Widerberg, Emilia: Folk Tales of the Macabre, Bragi Press, Oxford 1954);
It prefers non-sentient mammals (see all aforementioned cases);
It is sentient and does frequently take human shape, but witnesses identify it as something else entirely, for example, a vittra, changeling, or troll.
One remarkable exception is documented in an eerie account from the nineteenth century about the entity known as Sjungpastorn.
Margareta Persson (1835–1892) was the schoolmistress of Hålträsket, a village located in the mid-north of Sweden. She kept a diary for most of her life, meticulously cataloging events and people of the village. After her death the diaries were donated to Umeå Heritage Museum.
In late November of 1867, during the last great famine in Scandinavia, Persson documented the passing of the local priest. No replacement came, and there was no easy way to travel elsewhere for Mass.
The cold deepened and the days shortened as the year drew toward its end. Two villagers killed themselves, one by hanging and one by shooting. Three died of starvation. The desperation is evident in Persson’s diary: “School is closed, because the children are too weak or sick to attend. I spend most of the day in bed. I do not quite want to die. I am just not sure that I have it in me to live” (The Diaries of Margareta Persson, Umeå Heritage Museum, book 8, p. 65).
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