by Tim Severin
Allba, who was listening, gave a little scornful hiss. 'If I ever meet the staallu, he will regret the day. That's just a story to frighten children.'
'Don't be so sure, Allba. Just hope you never meet him,' her father murmured, then turning to me said, 'The staallu roams the forest. He's big and a bit simple and clumsy. We say he's like those coarse traders who come to acquire our furs in the springtime, though the staallu's appetite is even more gross. He eats human flesh when times are hard, and has been known to carry off Sabme girls.'
That same week I gave away the rest of the contents of my trader's pack. I had lost any ambition to barter with the members of the siida for furs and I was ashamed to hold back items which could be useful to the band. The Sabme were so generous and hospitable to me that it seemed wrong not to contribute my share to their well-being. Apart from mending nets and doing some primitive metalwork, I was useless to them, so I handed the pack over to Rassa and asked that he distribute the contents to whoever needed it most. The only item I kept back was the fire ruby — and that I gave to Allba as a love token. The jewel delighted her. She spent hours in the cabin, sitting by the fire with the ruby in her fingers and turning the gem this way and that so that the red light flickered within the gem. 'There is a spirit dancing inside the stone,' she would say. 'It is the spirit which brought you to me.'
The effect of giving away all my trade goods was the reverse of what I had expected — instead of ending my chances of obtaining furs to take to Miklagard, I was deluged with them. Nearly every day a hunter left outside Rassa's cabin the frost-stiffened carcass of an ermine, a sable, a squirrel or a white fox, whose luxurious pelt Allba would skin and prepare for me. There was no way of knowing which hunter was responsible for the gift. They came and went silently on their skis. Only the blizzards stopped them. When the blizzard spirit raged the entire siida would disappear inside their underground shelters and wait for the terrible wind and driving snow to end. Then, cautiously, the Sabme dug themselves out of the snow-covered lairs and, like the animals they hunted, sniffed the wind and set out to forage.
Of course we ate the flesh of the animals we skinned. Some were rank and disagreeable — marten and otter were particularly unpleasant. But squirrel was tasty and so too was beaver. Whatever meat was left over we placed in the little larders each Sabme family had built close to their cabin, a small hutch on a pole or set on top of a rock, so as it was out of reach of animals. The food never spoiled in the bitter cold. If a hunter was lucky enough to kill a wild boaz, he stored wooden bowls of the fresh deer's blood in the same place. Within hours it had frozen hard and could be chopped in pieces with an axe and brought within the cabin as required.
Rassa was called away by the spirits from time to time, though not always when he wanted. Without warning he would begin to twitch and writhe, then lose his balance and fall to the ground. If the spirit call was urgent, he foamed at the mouth. He had told us to press a rag into his mouth if his tongue lolled out, but not to restrain him if he was in spasms because, as his body writhed, his spirit was entering the saivo, and soon all would be calm. Rassa's family were accustomed to these sudden departures. They would lay the unconscious noiade comfortably on his face, place his drum beneath his outstretched right hand in case he had need of it in the saivo, and then await his return to our world. When Rassa did rejoin us, his mood depended on what he had experienced in his absence. Sometimes, if he had been fighting evil spirits, he would come back exhausted. At other times he was elated, telling us of the great spirits that he had encountered. Ibmal the Sky God was untouchable and unknowable, but Rassa sometimes met Biegg-Olbmai, the God of Wind, and wrestled with him to prevent a three-day blizzard. On another occasion he had asked the God responsible for hunting, a spirit he called 'Blood Man', that the siida's hunters should be rewarded. Two days later they tracked and killed an elk. The Gods and spirits whom Rassa revered were new to me, but his words aroused a faint recollection of a spirit world far older than the Elder Faith. I sensed that my own Gods, Odinn, Frey, Thor and the others, had all emerged from Rassa's saivo to take the shapes in which I knew them.
It was when Bolive, the Sabme Sun God, had begun to appear regularly over the southern horizon that one of our neighbours came to the entrance of Rassa's cabin and called excitedly down the tunnel. He gabbled his words so fast that I could not understand what he was saying, though Allba had spent many hours teaching me a working knowledge of her language. Whatever the hunter's message, Rassa immediately put aside the drum he was repainting and rose to his feet. Reaching for his heavy wolfskin cloak, he gestured for me to follow, and the two of us emerged from the cabin to find a group of eight Sabme hunters, looking towards him, impatient for instructions. One of the Sabme said something about 'honey paws', and when Rassa replied, the hunters began to disperse towards their cabins, calling out to their families excitedly.
'What's happening?' I asked Rassa.
'The time has come to leave our cabins and live in our tents again, though this is much earlier in the season than is usual,' he said, 'but the Old One wants it to be that way.'
'The Old One? Who's he?'
Rassa would not answer directly. He asked his wife and Allba to get ready to leave the cabin. So uncomplicated was the Sabme life that our entire siida was on the move within the time it took for the men, women and children to load our belongings onto light sledges, strap infants to their mothers' backs in tiny boat-shaped cradles lined with moss, and fasten on skis. I had no sledge to pull as I was so clumsy on skis, nor was I given a pack because I was already heavier than the Sabme and would have broken through the crust of snow.
We returned to the camp that we had left before we went into the cabins, and once again triple-covered the standing tent frames with deer hides. Everyone seemed in great good humour, leaving me confused as to what was going on.
'What is it?' I asked Allba, 'Why did we leave the cabins so quickly?'
'It's time for the most important hunt of the entire year,' she replied. 'The hunt that will ensure our siida's future.' 'Are you going on the hunt?' 'That is forbidden.'
'But you're almost our best hunter,' I objected. 'You will be needed.'
'Brothers are needed, not women,' she replied enigmatically as she tugged the final layer of the tent's deerskin into position.
I was still bemused the next morning when I woke up to find myself covered with a layer of snow a hand's breadth deep. The smoke hole in the top of the tent had been left open, and a late heavy fall of snow had half-buried the camp. No one seemed perturbed.
'Here, wear these,' said Allba, handing me a pair of shoes she had been working on all winter.
I turned them over in my hand. 'Can't I wear my usual shoes?'
'No,' she said. 'I stitched those with the seams inside so that the snow does not gather on them and I made them from the skin from a boaz head. The thickest and strongest hide, it is fitting that you should wear them today.' She also insisted that I put on my best winter garment — a heavy wolfskin cape — though it looked strange on me because the cape had previously belonged to Rassa, and Allba had lengthened it with a skirt of reindeer hide to make it fit my extra height. Rassa himself was donning his noaide's belt hung with the jawbones of the various fur-bearing animals we hunted, a cap sewn with sacred amulets and a heavy bearskin cloak. I had never seen him wear all these items at the same time, nor the short staff wound with red and blue ribbons and its cluster of small hawk's bells. When I offered to carry his sacred drum for him, Rassa shook his head and gestured for me to leave the tent ahead of him. Outside I found every hunter in our siida already waiting and dressed as if for a festival. Some had put on dark blue surcoats made of cloth acquired from the traders, and their wives had sewn the hems with strips of red and yellow ribbon. Others wore the familiar deerskin hunting garments, but had added colourful hats and belts and tied sprigs of spruce to their sleeves. They all looked excited and eager, and it took me several moments to realise that they were not
equipped with their usual hunting bows and arrows, throwing sticks and wooden traps. Each man was armed with a stout spear, its shaft of rough wood, the tip a broad metal head.
I had no time to ask the hunters why they had changed their equipment because Rassa now made his formal appearance. He emerged from the tent and tramped through the snow to the flat boulder at the centre of our camp. With each step he softly jingled the bells on his noiade's wand and chanted a song I had never heard before. The words were very strange. They came from a language which bore no relation to that I had learned over the winter. When Rassa reached the rock he placed his magic drum on it, then faced towards the south. He raised the wand three times and called out what I took to be an invocation. Then he reached inside his cloak with his right hand and pulled something out from under his left armpit. He held it up for all to see. It was an arpa ring, but not of brass. From where I stood, I guessed that it was of gold and was sure of it when Rassa tossed the ring onto the drum skin. It fell with a dull and heavier thud than a token made of baser metal.
Rassa struck the drum's wooden rim with the end of his noiade's wand. The golden arpa skidded across the taut deerskin and came to a halt. Everyone craned forward to see the symbol where it rested. It lay on the serpent sign of the mountains. A shiver of delight ran through the crowd. The small, nimble men glanced at one another and nodded happily. The ancestors were observing and approving. Again the noiade rapped the drum with his staff and this time the golden ring came to rest on the figure of a bear. Now I detected that the onlookers were puzzled, almost doubtful. Rassa sensed their hesitation. Instead of striking the drum a third time with his wand, he snatched up the golden arpa and with a cry like a heron's angry croak he tossed it in the air so that it landed on the drum skin. By chance the ring landed on its edge, and began to roll, first to the edge of the drum, then rebounding it began to trace its path erratically. It wobbled along as if uncertain until it finally slowed, remained for a heartbeat on its edge, then toppled gently to one side and settled with the gentle reverberation that a coin makes as it falls upon a gaming table. Again all the spectators leaned forward to see where it had come to rest. This time the arpa lay upon the sign of my saivo companion — the bear.
Rassa did not hesitate. He picked up the ring, walked across to the nearest hunter and took away his heavy spear. Next he placed the golden ring over the spear tip. Finally he turned to where I stood and, with a formal gesture, placed the spear in my hand.
The drum had decided. The hunters dispersed to their tents to collect their skis and Rassa led me to where his wife and Allba were standing by our tent, watching. Allba knelt down in the snow to tie on my skis and, as she rose to her feet, I made a movement as if to embrace her. To my chagrin, she leaped back as if I had struck her and moved away from me, making it plain that she wanted nothing to do with me. Puzzled and a little hurt, I accompanied her father to where a little procession was forming up. It was led by the man who had first called Rassa from our cabin. I recognised his voice. He was the only one without a heavy spear in his hand. Instead he carried a long hunting bow of willow bound with birch bark. The bow was unstrung and a spruce twig was fastened to the tip. Behind him came Rassa in his bearskin cape, then myself, and finally the remainder of the brightly dressed hunters in single file. In complete silence we left the camp and began to ski through the forest, following the man with the bow. How he picked his way I could not tell, for the snowfall had obliterated all tracks. But he did not falter and I was hard put to it to keep up with the pace. From time to time he slowed so that I could catch my breath, and I marvelled at the patience of the Sabme hunters behind me who must have thought me half-crippled on my skis.
At mid-morning our leader abruptly came to a stop. I looked around, trying to see what had made him halt. There was nothing different. The forest trees stretched away on all sides. The snow lay thick on the ground and clung in little piles to the branches. I could hear no sound. There was utter stillness apart from the sound of my own breathing.
Our leader bent down and unfastened his skis. Still holding his bow, he stepped to one side and began to walk in a wide circle, sinking deep into the snow with each step. The rest of us waited, watching him, not saying a word. I looked across at Rassa, hoping for some guidance, but he was standing with his eyes closed, his lips moving as if in prayer. Slowly the bowman walked on, leaving his footmarks in the snow and finally coming back to his starting point. Again I tried to understand the significance of his actions. Everything was done so quietly and deliberately that I knew it had to be a ritual. I scanned the circle of footprints he had made. I still saw nothing. The circle enclosed a small rise in the ground, not even large enough to be called a knoll. For want of any other explanation, I presumed that it was a sieidde place. We had come to pay homage to the nature spirit.
I waited for Rassa to begin his incantation to the spirit. But the noiade was now removing his own skis and so too were the other Sabme. I did the same. My hands were stiff with cold and it took me several attempts to undo the knots in the thongs holding the skis to the new shoes Allba had made for me. I was pleased to see that, as she had promised, the snow had not stuck to them. I laid down the heavy spear to use both hands to undo the knots, and fearing that the gold ring would slip off and be lost in the snow, I pushed it more firmly in place. I put my skis to one side and straightened up. Glancing round, I saw that the other hunters had spread out to either side of me. Rassa was standing slightly aside. The only person directly ahead of me was the bowman and he was walking to the middle of the circle he had made with his footprints. He still had his bow in his right hand, but it was not yet strung. Coming almost to the centre of the circle, the hunter took three or four steps to one side, then another five or six steps forward, and turned to face me. Some instinct warned me, and made me grasp the heavy spear more firmly. I wondered if he would string the bow and attack me. Instead he raised the bow with both hands, and plunged it into the snow at his feet. Nothing happened. Two or three times more he repeated the same action. Then, shockingly, the snow directly in front of him cracked open, and a massive shape came bursting out. In the next instant I recognised the snow-covered form of an angry bear charging straight towards me.
To this day I do not know whether I was saved by my natural sense of self-preservation or by following Edgar's hunting instructions given long ago in an English forest. I had no time to turn and flee. The snow would have hampered my flight and the bear would have caught and ripped me in an instant. So I stood my ground, rammed the butt of the crude spear into the snow behind me and felt it strike solid, frozen earth. Scattering snow in all directions, the bear came careering towards me. When it saw the obstacle in its path, its angry warning growl rose to a full threatening roar and it rose on its back legs, its paws ready to strike. If the bear had stayed on all fours, I would not have known where to aim the spear. Now I was confronted with the hairy belly, the small eyes glaring down at me in rage, the open mouth and pink gullet, and I guided the spear point into the open and inviting chest. The bear impaled itself and I did nothing more than hold the shaft firm. It gave a deep coughing grunt as the broad metal spear head entered its chest, and then it began to sink down onto all fours, shaking its head as if in surprise. The end was swift. For a moment the bear looked incredulous. Even as it tried to turn and lumber away and my spear was wrenched from my grasp, the Sabme were closing in from either side. I looked on, shaking with shock, as they ran up and with cool precision speared the bear in its heart.
Rassa approached the carcass where it lay on the blood-smeared snow. The hunters reverentially stepped back several paces to give him space. The noiade leaned down and felt the bear's body. I saw him reach behind the bear's left front leg, against the chest. A moment later the noiade stood up and gave a thin wailing shout of jubilation. Holding up his right hand, he showed what he had retrieved. It was the golden ring arpa.
Pandemonium broke out among the hunters. I thought they had lost their se
nses. Those with sprigs of spruce on their garments snatched them free and ran up to the bear and began to flog the carcass. Others picked up their skis and laid them across the dead animal. All of them were yelling and shouting with joy, and I heard cries of thanks, praise and congratulation. Some of the men kept chanting phrases from the arcane song that Rassa had sung in camp before we began the hunt, but still I could not understand a word. When the hunters had capered and danced themselves to exhaustion, Rassa knelt in the snow, facing the bear and called out solemnly to the dead animal, 'We thank you for the gift. May your spirit now roam happily in the saivo, and be born again in the spring, refreshed and in full health.'
Very soon it would be dark. Leaving the dead animal where it lay, we began to make our way back towards the camp. This time instead of skiing through the forest in solemn silence, the Sabme called out to one another, laughed and joked, and while still some distance from home they sent out long whooping calls that echoed far ahead of us among the trees to announce our return.
I shall never forget the sight which greeted us when we entered the camp. The women had lit a blazing fire on the flat-topped rock, and were standing where the light from the flames flickered across their faces. Every one of their faces was stained a bloody red. For a moment I thought there had been a terrible atrocity. Then I saw the movements of a dance, the gestures of welcome and recognised a song of praise for our hunting skill. I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was lie down and rest, preferably with Allba beside me. But when I headed towards our tent, Rassa took me by the arm and led me away from the entrance flap and around to the back. There he made me drop on all fours, and crawl under the hem of the tent. As I entered I found Allba standing facing me across the hearth. Her face too was stained red, and she was looking at me through a brass ring held up to one eye. As I crawled into view, she backed away from me and disappeared. Too tired to care, I crawled fully dressed to our sleeping place and fell into a deep sleep.
