by Mikael Niemi
The pellet had hit me right between the eyes. What had blinded me was the blood.
War was called off for the rest of the day. Niila managed to prize out the pellet with a red-hot needle, and when I got home I told them I’d been hit by a stone flung up by a passing truck. The wound healed eventually, but I still have the scar.
That marked the end of my participation in the air rifle war.
CHAPTER 18
On messing about making music and other more or less manly activities
Our first public performance took place during morning assembly in the Pajala school hall one bleak, chilly day in February. The aims of morning assembly were high-flown, namely that for twenty minutes every Friday morning the senior school would be crammed together in order to inculcate morality, raise the spiritual tone, and reinforce the feelings of camaraderie among pupils. It was no doubt an idea from southern Sweden that had spread up to the far north as a result of some school principals’ conference, but which over time had turned into something more like a seura, a prayer meeting. The role of preacher was played by the well-combed and anxious-looking careers counselor Henrik Pekkari or the velvet-eyed principal Sven-Erik Klippmark, who tried to convert all the sinners who had scrawled graffiti, spat out snuff, kicked in cupboards, smashed bottles, carved on desk lids, or raised the bill for local taxpayers in some other way. They would no doubt have had more effect if they’d used their Tornedalen Finnish and threatened the young devils with a good hiding and injuries that would be with them for the rest of their lives, which was the way most of them had been brought up.
There would occasionally be a musical interlude. The church organist and choirmaster, Göran Thornberg, had pluckily played a Bach prelude on the piano, apparently oblivious to the fact that his audience’s concentration had left much to be desired. The school’s girls’ choir had sung a canon with their silver-haired conductor Birgitta Söderberg trying to ignore the sexy wolf whistles from class nine’s special needs group. A lad from Peräjävaara had played the trumpet with the elan of a man bent on suicide, and he’d made so many mistakes that even the teachers joined in the laughter. But he survived, and eventually became a music teacher.
Friday came around, the village boys from class nine yawned, sat down in the back row, burped loudly, and started flicking erasers around. The rest of the pupils filled up the space in front. The stage was hidden by a curtain. Greger had received permission from the Head to arrange the morning assembly however he liked, having submitted a proposed theme based on responsibility and creativity in young people. It was only when you stood close to the curtain that you heard a strange, low, electrical hum.
The pupils prepared to sit it through or heckle, according to their temperament and reserves of courage. The teachers squeezed themselves into strategic seats. The brave, close-cropped history teacher Gunnar Lindfors took up his position on the back row and switched on his radar eyes, ready to lift up by the scruff of their neck anybody who transgressed.
Greger climbed up onto the stage with a solemn expression on his face and stood in front of the curtain. Nobody took any notice. The teachers called for silence. The chattering and giggling continued as if it had been rehearsed. Teachers glared threateningly at the most active pockets of resistance. New defiant laughter, fits of coughing, an empty bottle rolling down the aisle, a sheet of paper being torn over and over again, very loudly.
Greger raised his deformed hand. Waved with his thumb without saying a word, then disappeared into the wings.
That was our cue to start.
“Djuss letmi eersumutha rokunroal muzzeek!”
The ones in the front row were flung back in their seats. The rest stared uncomprehendingly at the closed curtain. It was swaying and bulging like the lid of a tin of fermented Baltic herring.
“Rokunroal muzzeek! If yoo wonner lav vitmi!”
We bashed away like madmen in the half-darkness behind it. Erkki got stage fright and started hitting out at everything that moved until the speed of the song was doubled. Niila was playing his chords in the wrong key, and Holgeri’s acoustic feedback sounded like the last trumpet. And in front of it all. At the floor microphone. Was me.
I wasn’t singing, I was bellowing. The call of a moose in heat. The death shriek of a lemming. I was doing my own damn thing. Without realizing it, we had invented punk several years too soon. The tune decomposed, more or less; “ended” would be the wrong word, as Erkki was still pummeling away and flashing the whites of his eyes. So I stooped over the mike once again:
“Djuss letmi eersumutha rokunroal muzzeek!”
For the second time. The curtain was still drawn. I tried to follow the bass drum, but Erkki’s playing had now turned into something more like an epileptic fit. Niila eventually found the right key, but came in two bars too late. Holgeri played the solo for the second tune, not having realized that we were repeating the first one.
“Djuss letmi eersumutha …”
The same song for the third time. Greger was fiddling feverishly in the dark, tugging at ropes and bits of cloth. Erkki was bashing the drums so deafeningly loudly that I could no longer hear my own voice. Then suddenly the curtain shot up and the spotlights dazzled us. There they sat, the whole bloody school, and I leaned forward and bellowed out Djuss letmi eersumutha for the fourth time.
The inconceivable happened, and Niila came in at the right time. He followed Erkki, and Holgeri and I tagged on as well. Like a runaway train we stormed through the song on the rails all the way, and when we came to the final chord we pulled Erkki back onto his chair so hard that he fell over.
Silence.
I staggered as far toward the side of the stage as the guitar cord would let me, and felt an overwhelming urge to emigrate. My skull felt like a maraca. Greger grabbed hold of my shoulders. Turned me round. Said something, but I’d been deafened by Erkki’s cymbals.
Then I saw. They were applauding. The whole chock-a-block hall. They were clapping their hands, apparently voluntarily, and some of the girls who’d been to pop concerts in Luleå and hence knew what to do were screaming and shouting for an encore.
Eventually the audience trooped out, but we stood transfixed, not really understanding what had happened. Already, after our first concert, we were possessed by the emptiness one feels after every performance, a sort of introverted sorrow. Erkki claimed his mind was a blank, but said his body felt as hot as it was after a sauna. Greger muttered something about the curtain rope needing to be marked with fluorescent paint. In a daze, we started carrying our things back to the music room.
* * *
Reactions afterward were varied. One could hardly call it a success, but we had certainly left an indelible impression. The Laestadian pupils had left the hall the moment we started, but the kids in the back row had immediately stopped throwing balls of paper at the math teacher’s bald head. Some of our pals gave us the highest praise you will ever hear from the mouth of a Tornedalen citizen:
“You weren’t too bad, really.”
Others assured us that it was the biggest load of rubbish they’d heard at morning assembly since the lady accordion player from Sion, and said they’d cut the strings if we ever tried it again. It was also a little worrying that some claimed the second number was best. Others preferred the third, and some even placed the first one at the top. On the other hand, nobody seemed to prefer the fourth number, which was the only time we’d played the song properly. We didn’t have the courage to tell them it was the same song all four times, in various stages of panic. A few girls in class eight started making eyes at Erkki, as he’d had the biggest stage presence, and others ogled Holgeri, as he was the most handsome. Greger, on the other hand, was severely criticized at a rancorous staff meeting for his artistic irresponsibility.
On the whole, then, we survived with no more damage than sheer fright.
* * *
In Tornedalen creativity has generally been linked with survival. You could respect, and even admire, t
he skilled wood-carver who could turn a bit of a tree into anything from a butter knife to a grandfather clock; or the lumberjack whose engine conked out but drove his snowmobile for six miles on a mixture of heart medicine and moonshine; or the old lady who picked fifty pounds of cloudberries and, not having a bucket, carried them home in her ingeniously knotted knickers; or the bachelor who brought back a whole year’s supply of cigarettes in his brother’s coffin, seeing as he’d happened to die on the Finnish side of the border; or the smuggler-widow who cut a horse up into small pieces so skillfully that her sons were able to get it through customs into Sweden and fasten it together again as good as new, then sell it at a considerable profit. Mind you, that last incident took place in the forties, before I was born.
An example of Tornedalen creativity is the fish fanatics. All those men who live for drilling holes through the ice and lying on reindeer skins and jigging their tiny rods and pulling up all those Arctic char, who spend all winter tying salmon flies, whose pockets are stuffed full of dragonflies and blind reptiles, who prefer fishing to sexual intercourse, who have mastered fourteen ways of tying a fly but only the missionary position, who pay a thousand kronor for every pound of salmon they catch instead of buying it from the Co-op for a fraction of the price, who would rather stand around in leaking waders than celebrate midsummer with their families, who abandon a good night’s sleep, ruin their marriage, get the sack, pay no attention to personal hygiene, mortgage their house, and neglect their children the moment they hear that fish are nibbling at Jokkfall.
House builders in Tornedalen are a similarly perverse category. Evasive characters, preoccupied when you talk to them, restless, impatient, and with shifty eyes. Only when they have their hands wrapped around a hammer are they anything like normal folk, only then can they possibly say nice things to their wives through a mouth full of nails. It’s amazing what a bloke can manage to build in a lifetime! House and cowshed, signed and sealed. Sauna and shit-house, before your very eyes! Woodshed and barns, no problem! Toolshed and summer house, attaboy! Then garage and dog kennel and cycle shed and playhouse for the kids.
This is about the point at which the local authority decides that the site is fully developed. The husband is devastated, as sour as vinegar, starts shouting at the children, turns to drink, can’t get to sleep, loses his hair, kicks the dog, has sight and hearing problems and is prescribed Valium by a doctor in Gällivare—and then his desperate wife inherits an undeveloped holiday home plot.
And so he can start all over again.
Summer cottage, sauna, shit-house, woodshed, dog kennel. A pause for breath, then boathouse, earth cellar, guest cottage, toolshed, deck, and fantasy house for the kids. Then all the extensions. Up with the lark every day of the holiday. Hammering in nails, sawing and chopping, and feeling good.
But years go by, and inevitably every square inch is filled. The housing committee of the local authority pore over aerial photographs. And the husband becomes so obstreperous, it’s beyond a joke; and his wife is on the point of leaving him.
But all of a sudden, it’s time for renovations. New roof, more modern roof insulation, underfloor heating in the living room, loft conversion, game room in the basement, replace the putty in the windows, strip and repaint, new doors for the kitchen cabinets, fitted carpets, new taps and washbasins, replace rotten timber in the sauna, build a patio and balcony, and glaze in the deck.
But then it’s all finished. Then it’s irrevocable. Then it’s impossible to add anything else, it’s all completed, there’s nothing else to hammer in, and his wife is forced to accept that there’s no alternative. It has to be the psychiatric ward in Gällivare.
But then they change the law and relax the planning restrictions.
It’s amazing how many new sheds can fit into a normal-sized garden. Off we go again. And the marriage is once more filled with something warm, something calm, something one might even call love.
* * *
Our rock music was something else. It was certainly not useful in any way. Nobody could see any value in it, not even us. Nobody needed it. We just played, opened our hearts and let the music come out. Old people saw it as a sign that we were spoiled and had too much free time, typical of the extravagance and waste of the modern era. This was the kind of thing that happened when young people were not sent out to work. It resulted in an excess of energy that buzzed around and raised the blood pressure.
In the early days Niila and I often discussed whether our rock music could be regarded as knapsu. The word is Tornedalen Finnish and means something like “unmanly,” something that only women do. You could say that in Tornedalen the male role boils down to just one thing: not being knapsu. That sounds simple and obvious, but it is complicated by various special rules that can often take decades to learn, something that men who move up north from southern Sweden often come up against.
Certain activities are basically knapsu and hence should be avoided by men. Changing the curtains, for instance; knitting, weaving carpets, milking by hand, watering the house plants, that kind of thing. Other occupations are definitely manly, such as felling trees, hunting moose, building log cabins, floating logs down-river, and fighting on dance floors. The world has been split in two since time immemorial, and everybody knew the score.
But then came the welfare state. And suddenly there were lots of new activities and occupations that confused the concepts. As the knapsu concept had developed over many hundreds of years, as subconscious processes in the minds of generations, the definitions could no longer keep up. Except in certain areas. Engines, for instance, are manly. Gas-burning engines are more manly than electric ones. Cars, snowmobiles, and power saws are therefore not knapsu.
But can a man sew with a sewing machine? Whip cream with an electric mixer? Milk cows with a milking machine? Empty a dishwasher? Can a real man vacuum-clean his car and still retain his dignity? Those are some questions for you to think about.
It’s even more difficult when it comes to new trends. For instance, is it knapsu to eat reduced-fat margarine? To have a heater in your car? To buy hair gel? To meditate? To swim using a snorkel? To use sticking plaster? To put dog poo in a plastic bag?
Besides, the rules change from village to village. Hasse Alatalo from Tärendö told me that where he comes from it’s regarded, for some reason, as knapsu to turn down the tops of your rubber boots.
On the basis of all this, we men can be divided into three categories. First there’s the real macho type. Often from one of the small villages, surly, silent, and dogged, with a knife in his belt and salt in his pocket in case he gets stranded out in the wilds. His opposite is just as easy to recognize, the unmanly man. He is obviously knapsu, under the thumb of his big sisters and useless in the forest or when out shooting moose. On the other hand he is often good with animals, and also with women (apart from the sexual side of things), and hence in the old days he often became a healer or a naturopath.
The third group of men are all the many in the middle. That’s where both Niila and I belonged. What you do indicates how knapsu you are. It could be something as harmless as wearing a red woolen hat. That could drop you in the category for several weeks, during which time you’d be forced to fight and watch your back and submit to death-defying rituals before you slowly managed to climb out of the pit reserved for men who were knapsu.
Rock music is usually played by men. It radiates something aggressively manly. It wouldn’t take an outsider long to decide that rock music is not knapsu. But there again, it has to be said that messing about like that is not exactly real work. Put a rock musician in a forest and give him an axe, and he’d piss blood. And even singing was deemed to be unmanly, in Pajala at least, assuming you were sober. Even worse was doing it in English, a language much too lacking in chewability for hard Finnish jaws, so sloppy that only little girls could get top marks in it—sluggish double dutch, tremulous and damp, invented by mud-sloshing coastal beings who’ve never needed to struggle, neve
r frozen nor starved. A language for idlers, grass-eaters, couch potatoes, so lacking in resilience that their tongues slop around their mouths like sliced-off foreskins.
So obviously, we were knapsu. But whatever, we couldn’t possibly stop playing.
CHAPTER 19
About a girl with a black Volvo, about pucks and fucks and what you can amuse yourself with in Pajala
Our next gig was at the Community Hall in Kaunisvaara, after a meeting of the young Communists, known as the Red Youth. Holgeri had arranged it: he knew a girl on the committee, one of the thirty or so standing around in Palestine shawls, with their bangs and round glasses, beating time with the pointed toes of their Lapp shoes. It would be fair to say that the reception was pretty enthusiastic. It was two months since we’d performed in public for the first time, and we’d got it together much better. We’d written two of the tunes ourselves, and the rest were covers I’d pinched from Top Twenty. A few ancient Red Pioneers came to stand in the doorway and listen out of curiosity, but they soon turned their heels and left. Apart from one old boy who’d been deaf ever since a hand grenade went off by mistake when he was doing his national service. He stood and gaped, adjusting his cap now and then, thinking what a damn waste of electricity it was.
After the last number Holgeri’s girlfriend started clapping and shouting for an encore, and a few others joined in. We were still on stage, and I glanced nervously at Erkki and Niila. We didn’t know any more, we’d exhausted our repertoire.
Then we heard a howl. Holgeri! He was standing next to the loudspeaker with the sound turned right down. An electronic whine filled the hall, the windowpanes rattled. Then he started playing. Solo, maximum distortion. He never so much as glanced at the audience. Went down on his knees and slammed his guitar on the floor, shook it like a newly murdered corpse in front of the funnel-shaped lips of the loudspeaker. Clawed at the screeching strings. The tune seemed familiar. Fragmented, coming and going like a distant radio broadcast, but nevertheless packing a punch. We just stared at Holgeri. He lay down on his back. Thrust his guitar skyward, thrust after thrust. Eyes half closed, sweat pouring off his brow. Then he bent his head back and started playing with his teeth. The same strangely familiar tune.
