Margit Sandemo: The Ice People 13 - The Devil´s Footprint

The Devil's Footprint

The Legend of The Ice People 13 - The Devil's Footprint

© Margit Sandemo 1982

© eBook in English: Jentas A/S, 2017

Series: The Legend of The Ice People

Title: The Devil's Footprint

Title number: 13

Original title: Satans fotspår

Translator: Nina

© Translation: Jentas A/S

ISBN: 978-87-7107-527-4

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

All contracts and agreements regarding the work, translation, editing, and layout are owned by Jentas A/S.

Acknowledgement

The Legend of the Ice People is dedicated with love and gratitude to the memory of my dear late husband, Asbjorn Sandemo, who made my life a fairy tale.

Margit Sandemo

The Ice People - Reviews

‘Margit Sandemo is, simply, quite wonderful.’

- The Guardian

‘Full of convincing characters, well established in time and place, and enlightening ... will get your eyes popping, and quite possibly groins twitching ... these are graphic novels without pictures ... I want to know what happens next.’

- The Times

‘A mixture of myth and legend interwoven with historical events, this is imaginative creation that involves the reader from the first page to the last.’

- Historical Novels Review

‘Loved by the masses, the prolific Margit Sandemo has written over 172 novels to date and is Scandinavia’s most widely read author ...’

- Scanorama magazine

The Legend of the Ice People

The legend of the Ice People begins many centuries ago with Tengel the Evil. He was ruthless and greedy, and there was only one way to get everything that he wanted: he had to make a pact with the devil. He travelled far into the wilderness and summoned the devil with a magic potion that he had brewed in a pot. Tengel the Evil gained unlimited wealth and power but in exchange, he cursed his own family. One of his descendants in every generation would serve the Devil with evil deeds. When it was done, Tengel buried the pot. If anyone found it, the curse would be broken.

So the curse was passed down through Tengel’s descendants, the Ice People. One person in every generation was born with yellow cat’s eyes, a sign of the curse, and magical powers which they used to serve the Devil. One day the most powerful of all the cursed Ice People would be born.

This is what the legend says. Nobody knows whether it is true, but in the 16th century, a cursed child of the Ice People was born. He tried to turn evil into good, which is why they called him Tengel the Good. This legend is about his family. Actually, it is mostly about the women in his family – the women who held the fate of the Ice People in their hands.

Chapter 1

The first sightings of the Devil’s footprints happened a long time ago, after Villemo had finally returned home from her roamings and settled down with Dominic and her newborn son.

But at that time none of the Ice People knew anything about these occurrences. They had never heard of the Devil’s footprints, because the very few who had seen the footprints hadn’t lived long enough to be able to tell people about them.

It was a long time before the people of Norway began to notice that something inexplicable was taking place in their country.

Once the first omens came, they were so far away that not even an echo of them reached Graastensholm. High in a mountain valley in the interior of the country, far to the north of the main Parish of Akershus, something mysterious came down from the mountains ...

This was in 1684. Villemo’s son and his two cousins had all turned seven.

The strange thing that occurred at that time was something only very few people noticed or came to know of. They certainly didn’t include anyone among the Ice People.

Two women were walking along a muddy road in a remote valley. The wind rustled in the dry heather; it was an icy cold, windy day. They wrapped their shawls more tightly about themselves as they shouted to each other, holding their bodies almost horizontal against the wind as they fought their way home.

Then one of them bent down towards the ground and pointed.

“Do you see that? We’ve been following those footprints for quite some time now.”

The other, who had been talking about her rheumatic pain, hadn’t noticed anything, so she also bent down. With a voice betraying a certain unease, she said: “It looks like ... Do you think it’s an animal or a human being that has walked here?”

“Both, I’d say,” the first one said. She felt a strange sensation come over her.

“But it’s only one, after all!”

“Yes, that’s why it’s so strange.”

They turned around to take a closer look at the footprints, only to discover that they had erased them with their own feet.

“The first time I noticed them was right there where the trail comes down from the mountain,” one of them said somewhat helplessly.

Just where they stood the road happened to be firmer and the footprints disappeared. The women had only three pairs of footprints that they could study. Even so they were clear enough: the prints of a naked foot, human – or something that they couldn’t properly identify.

“Barefoot at this time of the year?” the first woman said nervously.

“It resembles ...” the other one muttered. “Heavenly Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth, free us from the Evil.”

Then they both began to run so that their black skirts fluttered about them. With long, frightened strides, they dashed off towards the village.

They reached the first woman’s house, quite out of breath, and dragged her husband back with them. He was sceptical and rather grumpy at having been woken up from his after-dinner nap.

He paled when he came to the spot and saw the footprints. He broke off a spruce twig and wiped out the tracks with it.

Then he drew deep crosses in the mud with the other end of the twig.

“Don’t mention anything about this to anybody,” he whispered. “We can’t have a mass exodus from the village during the spring sowing. Paint tar crosses on your house and outhouse, bar the doors and light candles tonight. We’re off to church to pray!”

These three were the first witnesses to have seen the footprints and survived.

Some years passed.

Then it dawned on the inhabitants of a small valley farther south that someone in their midst was committing evil deeds. They remembered strange deaths that had occurred from time to time over the past two years ... There had to be a connection.

It wasn’t anybody from the village. It was some stranger who came down from the mountain at night to steal food, and if one of the villagers got in the way of the thief, it would always end with a sudden death.

They saw the prints of lumpen footwear, probably made of bark – peculiar footprints that frightened and confused them. One looked normal, even if it was exceptionally large. The other one, the right foot ... they couldn’t decide what it was. It was much shorter, as if part of it had been chopped off ...

Then strong, brave men would lie in wait to catch the thief and the killer. But it was as if he – admittedly, it was a strange expression, but they felt that it was natural – it was as if he scented them. That scenting – such an eerie sensation, which made you think of an animal. They could sense him nearby ... and then he was gone, never to be seen in the village again.

Nevertheless, there was scattered evidence of a being that hid itself from humans but stole from their larders at night. A being that not even the dogs would bark at but slunk away from, whining. You could follow its journey through the country. It travelled southward, albeit not in a beeline, so that its strange footprints appeared here and there. They were dubbed “the Devil’s footprints” – and death and destruction followed in the Devil’s footprints.