Mikael Niemi - Popular Music

One day Niila and I made up our minds to test Laestadius Hill. Straight after school we strapped on our wooden skis with cable bindings and took a short cut through the children’s playground. It was getting dark, the skis sank about a foot into the loose, deep top covering of snow. Niila led the way, and I followed in his tracks, two blurred figures in the murky gloom. Over by the Laestadius House loomed two rows of sky-high giant spruce firs like church steeples. Silent, ancient, holy trees, preoccupied with greater thoughts than ours.

We crossed over the ice-covered Laestadiusvägen, our skis clattering on the road surface; the street lamps were on already. We clambered over the piled-up snow by the side of the road and slunk into the darkness that sloped steeper and steeper down towards the river. We skied in silence past the statue of Lars Levi: he was staring out into the birch trees, his head covered by a cap of snow. Soon the street lamps had faded away behind us, but it wasn’t completely dark even so. Light was reflected by millions of ice crystals, and grew until it seemed to be hovering over the ground. Our eyes slowly became used to it. The slope stretched out in front of us, swishing away down to the river. But it was impossible to ski on as yet, covered knee-deep in soft snow. We turned our skis at right-angles to the slope, and started stamping. Ski-width by ski-width we worked our way down the hill. Compressing the snow, pounding it down with all the weight our young bodies could bring to bear, making a furrow between the masses of snow on either side, all the way down the long slope to the ice-covered river. We worked away, side by side, sweat pouring off us under our clothes. And when we finally got to the river, we turned back again. Stamped our way back over our own tracks, with bull-like obstinacy. Compressed the snow still more, made it as hard and smooth as we possibly could.

And finally we’re standing there. Back where we started, after all that strenuous effort. Our legs are shaking, our lungs heaving; but stretching out below us is the tightly-packed slope. A broad, smooth path, the result of thousand upon thousand stamps with our skis. We stand side by side, Niila and me. Gaze down into the darkness. The slope points us down into a blurred, murky dream world, disappears like a fishing line dropped through a hole in the ice. Vague shadows, silent movements down in the depths. A thin thread plunging down into our dreams. We glance at each other. Then we crouch forward, dig in our bamboo poles. At exactly the same moment we thrust ourselves forward.

We’re off. Glide away. Surge faster and faster through the night. Swishing. The cold burning our cheeks. Two steaming young boys, two newly-cooked black puddings thrown into the freezer. Faster and faster, wilder and wilder. Side by side, mouths open wide, warm holes sucking in the winter. Perfectly stamped, couldn’t be better! Knees flexible, feet firm in tightly laced boots. A roar penetrates our flesh, our speed approaches the impossible, snow flashing, wind howling, everything swirling.

And then it happens. A thunderous explosion rolls over the ice down Tornedalen as far as Peräjävaara and the air is smashed like a mirror. We break through the sound barrier. The sky is as hard and sharp as gravel as we hurtle down through it, side by side, each in our twirling cloud of snow, whirling round and round in powdery bounces, arms outstretched, our ski poles pointing to the sky, at outer space, at our shining stars.

— how an old biddy takes her place on the right hand of God, and on the hazards involved in distributing worldly goods

One bleak day in spring Niila’s grandma took her leave of this earthly life. Still mentally alert, she had lain on her deathbed and confessed her sins in a barely audible whisper before licking the bread with the tip of her leather-brown tongue and having her shrivelled lips sprinkled with wine. Then she said she could see a bright light, and angels drinking curdled milk from ladles, and when she drew her last breath her body became half an ounce lighter, that being the weight of her eternal soul.

Close relatives were summoned to the ulosveisu the same day as she died. Her sons carried her coffin round all the rooms in the house, with the foot end first and the lid open so that she could take farewell of her home; hymns were sung, coffee was drunk, and the corpse was eventually driven off to the freezer at the mortuary.

Then the funeral arrangements were made. The Pajala telephone exchange glowed red hot, and the post office started distributing invitations all over Norrbotten, Finland, south Sweden, Europe and the rest of the world. After all, Grandma had filled as much of the world as she could manage and had time for. She had borne twelve children, the same number as the apostles, and like them they had gone off in all possible directions. Some lived in Kiruna and Luleå, others in the suburbs of Stockholm, and some in Växjö and Kristianstad and Frankfurt and Missouri and New Zealand. Only one still lived in Pajala, and that was Niila’s father. All of them came to the funeral, including the two deceased sons – the ladies of the parish in touch with the other side had seen them. They had wondered who the two boys were, standing with heads bowed by the coffin during the introductory hymn, but then had realised they were rather bright round the edges and that their feet were hovering a finger’s breadth over the ground.

Also present were grandchildren and great-grandchildren from all over the globe, strange elegantly dressed creatures speaking every Swedish dialect you could think of. The grandchildren from Frankfurt had German accents, while the Americans and New Zealanders chattered away in Swenglish. The only ones from the younger generation who could still speak Tornedalen Finnish were Niila and his brothers and sisters, but they didn’t say very much anyway. There was a whole host of languages and cultures assembled in Pajala church, a very tangible tribute to what a single fertile Tornedalen womb could give rise to.

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