by Stefan Spjut
With the plane he could reach in a few hours places that it had taken him days to get to before, or else had been completely inaccessible. It was revolutionary. The world saw the Swedish fells from above for the first time, and it was entirely thanks to Dad.
Reindeer appeared as small dots on the blindingly white mountainsides. Distant, silent hordes, such as only the hawks had seen before. The valleys were filled with shining, black, meandering water courses, veiled in driving clouds of rain. Remnants of snow appeared as lines on the hillsides, like white scratch marks. The bogs changed colour, as if a red-brown wind was blowing over them.
Dad demonstrated that he was a fully-fledged pilot by landing on the top of Kebnekaise—or, to be more accurate, immediately below the summit, because of course no plane can land on the actual mountain top—and he was the first person in history to do it.
He took a picture of himself up there, to capture the moment.
It was 1 May 1967.
Dad has his hands raised to the heavens and is leaping for joy. Landing on Sweden’s highest mountain meant he could land anywhere. He was not too old for the world of the fells.
I look at that photograph often. Very often.
It is a moment of happiness.
If only it could have stopped there, I think.
The aircraft’s wing casts a long shadow, and the trail Dad has trampled in the permanent snow cover is littered with small shards. The mountain tops in the background are disappearing in a milky-white haze that is growing larger, hurtling forwards.
I call it the troll mist.
Here it comes.
But it would take twenty years before it reached its destination.
There is an aerial photo from Rapadalen dated 18 April 1987. A bear is lumbering among the birches, but there is nothing remarkable about that: it has just woken up and is looking for something to fill its belly. It is moving away from the low-flying plane, probably driven on by the sound of the engine as it grows louder.
On the bear’s hunched back is a lighter patch, and if you focus your gaze or, even better, look through a magnifying glass, you can make out a naked body with spindly arms and legs.
It looks like a monkey, but of course it most definitely is not a monkey.
It is not an animal.
And it is not a human being.
It is something else.
Something in between.
Dad sat for ages at the desk, staring at the bear’s inexplicable rider. As he was flying through the valley he thought he had seen something strange on the bear, but decided it was just the sun illuminating the bear’s fur. It was not until he was in the darkroom that he managed to see what the camera had captured. It gave him his first heart attack.
If only his eyes had seen it, well, that would have been different. Then he could have dismissed it as an apparition. But it was impossible to believe that his camera, his reliable Hasselblad, had been fooled. It was the model they had sent to the moon, the most reliable camera on the planet.
He banged the handle of the magnifying glass against the desk’s green imitation-leather underlay. Then he put his eye against the lens and glided over the boggy ground, trying to get around the bear to see from the other side.
I could see him through the crack in the door. Sitting there, wanting to get inside the picture.
Could it be a Nordic monkey, unknown to science? A shy and lethargic creature, a kind of weasel, living off new spruce shoots and extremely averse to being on the ground or even, in fact, fearing the ground. A dark mass in the fork of a spruce, moving between the trees so carefully it is almost motionless.
But the naturalists Dad approached dismissed the idea of such an animal. Quite simply, it could not possibly exist.
And suddenly, there it was.
The word.
The thing clinging to the bear was a troll.
It was only a word, after all.
A name for something extraordinary and elusive.
A troll is quite simply something that will not allow itself to be categorised.
A hybrid that has not been given a scientific description or a habitat.
No one could explain what Dad had photographed, and that frightened him. He had developed heart trouble and could no longer fly alone. To save the business my stepmother Gunilla studied for a pilot’s licence, as did my husband Arne.
But the truth was that he did not want to fly any more.
He did not dare.
The plane remained in the hangar.
From time to time he went off on the snowmobile and photographed the light that floated on the surface of Vassijaure. Slowly he made his way around the area, staring down at the points of his skis. He kept the lens in a cone-shaped leather case hanging across his shoulder, and the Hasselblad protruded like a growth under his winter overall.
And then he was gone.
We were taking a walk alongside the railway line, me, Dad and Arne, on a beautiful day in October with a high blue sky. Dad grew tired and slowed down. When we asked if we should turn back, he told us to go on ahead and he would follow at his own pace.
I will never know what it was, a premonition perhaps, but after we had walked a short distance I turned round to see how he was getting on. He had grabbed hold of a small birch tree and I saw the leaves shaking as he tried, but failed, to keep himself upright.
I ran to him and watched him sink to the ground.
‘Don’t be afraid, Gudrun,’ he said to me. ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m not afraid.’
And then he died. With a smile on his lips.
It was a heart attack. His second.
We travelled up to Vassitjåkka by helicopter to cast his ashes to the wind, because that was his wish. There was me and Arne, Gunilla and Susso—Cecilia couldn’t come because she was living abroad at the time. The pilot flew us there for free. He said it was an honour, and he looked as if he meant it.
It certainly is a little strange up there at the top. The mountain is steep and completely untouched, and there, right in the middle, is a small hut, or at least that’s what it looks like. Susso went into the hut and sat down. She was annoyed about something, I don’t remember what, and it is only looking back that I realise it was because she was feeling sad and for some reason had the idea she mustn’t show it. Because no one else cried, not even me. It was probably because Gunilla was there.
Afterwards I regretted taking her up there. It was as if the ash was flung back on itself in the strong wind raging up the mountainside and blew into her. As if Dad was carrying on his quest through her eyes. I know that’s sentimental and irrational, but that is how I see it.
We stayed at Riksgränsen for almost ten years. Then Arne cheated on me with Susso’s boyfriend’s mother. I discovered them myself, in Dad’s old workroom, of all places. They had not undressed or anything but were standing close together, and when the door opened they sprang apart and acted as if nothing had happened.
But I knew what I had seen and when I confronted Arne he confirmed it with his silence. When I carried on asking he shouted at me to stop.
It was a real mess, I can tell you. It was one thing that our marriage came to an end—it hadn’t been particularly good for many years—but it also meant the end for Susso and her boyfriend Torbjörn. They were thrown together in a kind of sibling relationship and Torbjörn especially couldn’t handle it. He told Susso he thought the whole thing was sick, and I comforted her by saying that if that was the case, the feelings weren’t right anyway. But it was a pity they had parents who behaved like that, who didn’t think!
The worst thing was not being able to move straight away. There was so much to sort out. Arne part owned the company and I was forced to buy him out. I did that by giving up my share of the properties, and in the autumn of 2003 I moved down to Kiruna. By that time Siv had already moved up and taken my place. It was like a slap in the face. Fifteen years younger than me and fifteen centimetres taller. She is a good-looking woman—slender limbs
and raven-black hair—and I can’t help seeing her in Torbjörn.
Susso was thirteen when Dad died and she didn’t show any particular interest in the troll initially, at least not as far as I can recall. It was a strange but natural part of her upbringing, but we seldom mentioned it, especially in the years immediately after Dad passed away. We thought it was about time to bury the troll—Gunilla even suggested that we destroy the photograph. If anyone was to blame for Dad’s death, it was the troll.
But then one day Susso told me she thought it was odd there was nothing about trolls on the internet. She thought other people would have seen something similar and written about it. She understood why reports of things like that didn’t appear in the newspapers, but wasn’t it weird that you could find no mention of it online?
That was in the mid-nineties, when I knew nothing about the internet. I knew it was something that existed on computers but that was as far as my knowledge went.
Susso started searching, and in actual fact she did it like Dad.
Because the search engine she used was called Altavista.
And that means ‘view from above’.
She didn’t find any trolls but she did come into contact pretty quickly with other people who were looking for the same things as herself, more or less. They were cryptozoologists. She introduced the word to me, wanting me to accept it. I didn’t. To be honest, I was irritated by her lively interest in that troll. It had only brought unhappiness. I thought it was childish of her not to understand that. But she hadn’t known Dad before he’d seen it. Before he became the person he became.
It was Cecilia who came up with the idea of setting up a website for the troll. It was Easter, and Susso had come up from Kiruna. We were sitting on the terrace, all three of us, and Cecilia’s daughter Ella was sleeping in her pushchair. The sun was floating on the lake and we were drinking coffee and eating biscuits we had baked using Dad’s recipe. The wind rustled playfully among the willows down the slope. The mountain tops were sharp against the sky. There was a constant dripping from the roof, and from time to time huge sheets of snow came sliding down the roof tiles. I enjoyed every minute of it. Until Susso started talking about the troll, that is.
She wanted to know what we really thought about it.
I didn’t say I didn’t believe it, but that’s the not the same thing as believing. It’s something more evasive and perhaps cowardly, and she latched onto that. You could say she had my back against the wall.
‘But do you think he forged the picture?’
The look I gave her made her understand that obviously I didn’t think that.
‘So what do you think then?’
‘I don’t know, Susso.’
‘You don’t know what you believe?’
‘No. Actually I don’t. Sometimes it’s like that.’
Cecilia had been sitting quietly but now she moved, making the recliner creak.
‘If there’s one,’ she said, ‘there’s got to be more.’
‘More trolls?’
She shrugged under the fleece blanket she had wrapped around herself.
‘Granddad can’t be the only one to have seen something. That means there are more people out there thinking about it. Really thinking.’
‘So why haven’t they written about it on the internet then?’
‘Well, you haven’t.’
The answer silenced Susso.
‘You can search, Susso. And you also can make people search for you.’
Susso was sitting in a ray of sunshine. She screwed up one eye and looked at Cecilia with the other.
‘A website, Susso. That’s what you ought to have.’
Once Susso had made up her mind things happened quickly. She has always been like that. She probably got it from Dad. When something interests her she puts all her energy into it, and her energy is considerable. It took no more than a couple of weeks for her to learn the programming language, buy a domain name and create a website.
I was worried at first, I have to admit. How would it affect our business if it became common knowledge that Dad had believed in trolls? It could only be positive, according to Cecilia, but I didn’t like the idea of everyone knowing. I thought that a website could attract a lot of critical attention, which would be bad for business.
As it was, nothing much happened. The website came up and you could read about Dad’s photo and trolls and wraiths and everything Susso had unearthed through the year, but the business was not affected in any way, as far as I could see.
Not many people visited it. Susso could see that on a web counter.
There was a bloke from Gunnarsbyn who sent an email about a wraith that had saved his life in the forest, and then there were some people in Östersund who said they had ‘excavated’ an authentic wraith burrow in their garden. Susso actually went there but she was convinced they were hoaxers, so she didn’t write anything about it.
Nothing much happened after that.
She went out and set up wildlife cameras a couple of times, but that didn’t result in anything.
Not until Edit Mickelsson from Vaikijaur got in touch.
The icy wind whipped in grainy blasts along Adolf Hedingsvägen. It tugged at the tassel of Susso’s hat and made her eyes water. The moon was dissolving like an ice floe in a black ocean and her footsteps were heavy as she trudged along Gruvvägen. She really should have stayed at home because the walk had exhausted her. She was not completely better and there was a risk she would pass it on to the old folk. Turn up like an angel of death. But she could not afford to be ill, and anyway she had brought ginger biscuits for Lars Nilsson.
She took off her hat in the lift, straightened her hair and pulled a strip of tinsel out of her jacket. She wound it a couple of times around her head and after ringing the doorbell she opened the door, singing the traditional Lucia Day song:
‘Outside it’s dark and cold . . .’
Lars Nilsson was sitting in an armchair watching the Channel Four morning news. He was dressed in a tobacco-brown leather waistcoat and a green and black checked shirt. The light from the TV fell on his lined face like a mask. When Susso strode into the room he picked up the remote and lowered the volume, greeting her with a smile which spread into the grid of wrinkles surrounding his eyes.
‘Good morning, Lars!’
She broke open the lid and held out the box.
‘Ginger biscuits.’
The old man took a star-shaped biscuit from the tin, and half of it disappeared immediately between his teeth.
‘So you’re out spreading festive cheer . . .’
‘Why haven’t you lit the candles?’ she asked, walking over to the window where the electric Advent candleholder stood, with a yellowing geranium on one side and an amaryllis on the other. It had seven carved arms and an impressive base of unvarnished wood. Around each candle was a small ring of fake lingonberry leaves. Susso twisted the top of the bulb furthest to the right. The reflection in the window made two candleholders light up the dark room.
‘Have you eaten breakfast?’ she asked, pinching off a geranium leaf.
After thinking for a moment Lars held up the ginger biscuit. Only one corner of the star remained.
‘What would you like?’ Susso asked, walking into the kitchen and opening the fridge. When there was no reply she called:
‘Shall I fry a couple of eggs?’
While she stood by the stove under an extractor fan roaring away at storm force, the old man sat at the kitchen table with the palms of his hands resting flat on the Norrländskan newspaper, waiting. When the silence had gone on for too long Susso had to bring it to an end.
‘Well, Lars?’ she said, knocking the spatula against the frying pan.
‘Why not?’ came the reply.
Susso put salt and pepper on the eggs, slid the two glistening eyes onto a plate and, after moving the newspaper out of the way, placed them in front of him on the table.
After the coffee had been brewed and po
ured into the cups she read the newspaper out loud to Lars. Slumped at the table, the old man studied his fingers. They were well worn, gnarled and the colour of bronze, with cracks around the nails. He had owned reindeer once and also worked as a reindeer herder for many years.
Susso soon tired of her voice, which was nasal from her blocked nose, and put down the paper. What about doing the crossword? Lars nodded and Susso turned the newspaper so that they could both see the puzzle. They sat for a while, thinking, Susso wiping her nose repeatedly on sheets of kitchen roll. Eventually she sat up straight. This was not a good idea. She could pass on her cold to him if they sat like this, almost cheek to cheek. They would have to do the sudoku instead because numbers were not as hard to read upside down, or so she thought, and they could sit opposite each other. Lars had the paper the right way up, but to compensate it was closer to Susso. It was a compromise.
From time to time the old man’s hand came inching over the paper and his index finger scraped against a square where he thought a number might fit, but he never said which number he was thinking of, so it wasn’t much help. It confused her even more.
After a while she said:
‘Have you ever been to Vaikijaur, Lars?’
She had to repeat her question, and he slowly shook his head and whispered something she couldn’t hear. Perhaps it wasn’t even in Swedish.
‘I was there yesterday,’ she said.
‘Yesterday?’ he said. ‘No . . .’
‘I was there,’ she said, raising her voice. ‘Yesterday. I met someone who had seen a little old man in her garden. Really little, I mean. About one metre tall. She thought he might be a gnome.’
Lars nodded.
‘I set up a wildlife camera. So with a bit of luck I’ll get a picture of him and then I can show you what a real gnome looks like. If he comes back, that is.’
‘Oh, he will.’
‘Do you think so?’
She reached out for the coffee pot and filled the cups.
