Ulla-Lena Lundberg - Ice

“It was their lucky day, I see,” Elis says, happy to hear she’s in a good mood. And it will get better, because the post has come, and there are the daily papers, weekly magazines, letters and cards! “Look!” he says. “I shouldn’t have shown them to you until we’d eaten!” They laugh. There are crosswords in the dailies, serials in the weeklies, news and greetings in the letters. Plus The Humanitarian , the organ of the Lutheran Evangelical Society, which has two subscribers on the Örlands—the pastor and Adele. The verger can’t afford it, and the organist doesn’t have time to read it after all his other duties. And the members of the vestry, who ought to subscribe, don’t, out of laziness and lack of conviction. It’s sad. Still, the day has had its pleasures, and thanks to the post, these will now stretch late into the evening.

There is a great deal resting on Adele’s shoulders. She is well equipped to manage her temporal obligations. She needs help with the spiritual. This is why it is so important that the priest on the Örlands should be a kindred spirit. Someone who understands why she worries about the thoughtless Örlanders with their slumbering piety, someone who sees the importance of religious revival, a renewal of faith. Someone who can inspire and lead. Someone like this very young priest who preaches a pure and unaffected word of God and by his very example has won the friendship and the respect of his congregation. God grant that he is the instrument the Lord has sent to preach salvation to the whole community!

The parsonage too is observing a devout newspaper silence. The post is collected at the steamboat channel where the icebreaker Murtaja passes Mellom on its toilsome way to Mariehamn, then carried on to the Örlands by Post-Anton and his mare. Much of the mail goes to the parsonage, so Anton stops there and does an initial sorting, since he passes that way in any case. The mare is hitched in the lea of the sauna and given some oats; Anton gets coffee in the house. The two of them are now on their way home, and the pastor and his wife and the pastor’s eager father throw themselves on the mail—several issues of Hufvudstadsbladet and Ålandstidningen , plus The Churchgoer and The Humanitarian . It’s the pile of letters they rake through most eagerly. Official communications are set aside to be opened later, but they grab the private letters at once, slit them open with anything sharp that comes to hand. Three from Mama, a greeting from the Helléns, a letter from one of Mona’s friends at the seminary and one of Petter’s colleagues, a letter in unfamiliar handwriting on thick, luxurious paper with a Swedish stamp that turns out to come from an elderly gentleman who wants to know how best to lend support to the people of the island world which once, in his distant youth—oh, so long ago—gave him indelible, unforgotten revelations of God’s magnificent creation. Definitely a letter worthy of a hearty reply. But now it’s time to read the newspapers! Even at the parsonage, The Humanitarian is set aside till later and winds up in the study in an accusatory half-read pile while the three adults trade issues of Hufvudstadsbladet and Ålandstidningen among themselves. Sanna has to make do with The Humanitarian. She turns the pages attentively, rustling the paper and exclaiming, “My word!” and “I’ve never heard the like” and “Good ice, it says here.”

The advertisements are also worth reading. The Co-operative Central on Åland announces receipt of a shipment of oranges— they hope Adele has her hand in. Maybe there were some boxes in Anton’s sledge already, although he didn’t say anything. It’s worth asking, and getting there early when the store opens in the morning.

Domestic politics, murder, auto accidents, sports and international news, a sprightly column by one of the many Hellén cousins, the film listings in Helsingfors for the preceding week, book reviews, a new play at the Swedish Theatre, engagements, births and deaths, comic strips at the back of the Saturday edition—a world they don’t miss but love to read about. The voice of home. And even though they’ve been happy to shake off their attachment to home, it’s where they have family, old friends, culture, everything!

At the verger’s house, the verger reads aloud to Signe from Ålandstidningen . Many astonishing occurrences in the province, plus some reflections by one of its priests that calls forth a comparison: “Neither life nor spirit. Ours does it better.” It warms his soul. And there is more to read. He has in any case made a good start, whereas the organist for his part has not yet had time to collect his mail. His sons are nowhere to be found. How can such conspicuous boys be so invisible? And what’s the point of their growing up when they spend their time out on the ice, all the way out to the lighthouses, looking for seals, without doing a blasted thing that might be of use here on land. There’s a cow in the barn with strangles, there’s wood needs chopping, hay to bring home from the island barn now that the ice is in perfect condition, drift nets to be mended so you don’t stand there amazed at the end of July wondering where all the holes came from. Inside the house there are petitions and writs to be prepared, bills of sale to be drawn up, wills and estate inventories to be witnessed, the Co-op’s accounts to be examined and audited, the township council’s minutes to be completed and posted on the notice board at the store, an agenda to be proposed for the coming vestry meeting. No limits or end to it all. Not to mention the need to keep his fingers limber and hymns practised now that they finally have a priest who understands church music.

The organist is the eldest child of an able mother and believed when he married, deeply in love, that all women were the same. Capable and energetic, skilful and enterprising. Like Mona Kummel, he thinks admiringly, not like Francine. For Francine, a great many things are overwhelming. The household, for example. Childbearing and child care are exhausting. Animal husbandry, difficult. The organist is the first man on the Örlands to have been seen going into the cow barn with his wife at milking time. Francine is with him, but it’s he who ties up a refractory wretch of a cow so it can’t kick, and it’s he who carries the pails and scrubs them. Indoors at the organist’s, it’s his mother who runs the household. Francine isn’t lazy. She mends clothes and does a little of everything, but she rarely finishes. Without Mama, they couldn’t manage, but he understands that it’s because of Mama that Francine is less enterprising and always ready to give up too quickly, because Mama will always step in and finish a job when she’s half done.

Maybe this is why Francine has bouts of despair and lies in bed and says she wants to die if she has any more children. No one understands that she doesn’t have the strength. There’s no one who can help her. His mother says she’s small and weak. Is a woman supposed to have the strength of a man? Round and round, a circle of despair.

He chose her against his mother’s express wish. He was calm and bold and certain, he who otherwise is so often nervous and full of doubts. People believe that they make correct decisions when they are calm, but calmness can be a form of self-deception. And what is in fact a correct decision? A prudent decision? Or a decision in line with an individual’s deepest hopes and desires? That was the case when he proposed, and because he has had to defend that act to himself again and again, he has also defended his love and bolstered it on all sides so that he is the only man on the Örlands who openly sees to his wife’s comfort, although everyone knows the way things are.