Ulla-Lena Lundberg - Ice

At home they’ve made the traditional twigs-and-feathers, and Sanna has searched for and found her first Easter egg. It can be opened and is full of small candies. Seeing it is a reminder that the war is really over. Sanna learns to go around and offer candy to everyone else before taking any herself. She’s had a birthday and is now two years old, mature and verbal for her age, with an insatiable hunger for conversation and being read to. When Grandpa leaves in the spring and they themselves are fully occupied with their springtime labours, they plan to hire one of the confirmation-class girls to keep Sanna company.

Grandpa himself is into the starting blocks and listens constantly for signs of the ice breaking up. When there is open water, he can travel home and take care of himself for a good month before Mama arrives with all her possessions. The sun is right, the wind is right, he tells Sanna. Everything that gets the ice moving is good. And once it starts moving, it goes fast. Movement is good. Relocation. Life!

This is the time when the ice neither bears nor breaks. My mare has had a good rest for a week while I labour with the sledge. I set off very early in the morning when the ice is hardest, and there’s not much mail in my bag, thank goodness. If I keep up a good pace, I’ll get to Mellom before I start sinking into the ice too far.

You have to move fast so you don’t fall through in the worst places, but not so fast that you rush ahead like an angry bull without seeing where you’re headed. You have to pay constant attention to the look of the ice ahead so you don’t go steaming into an area that you can’t get out of. The interesting thing about such ice is that even though you’ve made it far into a field of that kind, the ice won’t hold if you try to go back the same way.

You can’t ever turn and go back. That’s why it’s so important to have a clear picture of where you’re headed. Across Örland Sound I try to take a straight course, though it’s a strain if the wind pulls me to one side. Once you’ve come across and have the large islands in sight, you’ve covered the longest stretch, and then I usually go into the outermost farms where there are warm stoves and a cup of coffee and maybe a letter to put in my bag.

When you’re in a boat on open water, you’re over the worst once you get in among the islands, in the lea of the wind. But when you’re sledging bad ice, you have every reason to be careful. Because that’s where the currents run, and that’s where cracks open up in unexpected places. You don’t always see them, because the water flows and floods under a thin layer of ice, and if the sun is in your eyes you can’t always see the difference between those patches and bearing ice. At this time of the year, I always wear sealskin shoes, because I can feel through the soles how far under the surface the water is moving, so I know when to take care.

You need to prick up your ears so you can hear how the water murmurs and moves. And so you can hear how the ice is alive beneath your runners. Also when your speed slackens on wet ice you should listen to the way it sounds in front of you and be on your guard for when the ice starts to pull apart beneath your feet. You must continue forward no matter how heavy the going and not even think of turning back. Your whole body must be an instrument to register the consistency of the ice. You hold your breath sometimes, and fear can make heat blossom like a rose beneath your furs, and then you kick forward as fast as you possibly can. Your whole body is a gauge, making constant judgments as you move.

And then of course I know that I’m not making my way across the ice alone. Before I leave, I see how the journey will be, and I’m forewarned the whole way. There is nothing odd about that, but neither is it a thing that I can describe in common words. I don’t know what they look like, and even though I often joke with them and tell them to get off the sledge and lighten the load, I don’t believe they have weight in the sense that we do. They exist in the world in a different way, although they once were like us. That’s why they help me and lead me forward. If they had never been like us, they would not understand the kind of guidance I need.

So for the moment I have made it to the Mellom pier and into the waiting room, where I usually boil myself some coffee and have a sandwich and sleep under some furs for an hour or so until it starts to be time to expect the steamer. The Mellom postman and I take turns going up on the hill to watch for it. When it comes, that’s when we have our best chance of getting wet, the postman and I, when we collect the mailbags out at the channel. The boat brings necessities to Mellom and a few passengers, so the ship stops its engines and glides into the edge of the ice and throws out its gangway. The mailbags come tumbling across, and I take mine and head in towards land off the quaking ice. Maybe for the last time this year, or so it begins to feel.

Yes, it has happened that I’ve come with a sledge and had to get myself home by boat. One of the closest calls I ever had was when all of Örland Sound broke up behind me with a great crash and roar just as I came in among the large islands. I knew that day that I had to hurry and I sledged along for all my life was worth while the ice thundered under my feet and floes shot up across one another behind my back. I made it dry-shod to the outermost farms and had to borrow a boat to get home.

The outlook has never been so bad that I didn’t dare go. Julanda has told me many times that I’m not right in the head, going out in all sorts of weather and ice conditions, but I have to say that the salary I’m paid makes it my duty. The ones out there understand that it’s not just about me. The mailbags must also get through. Through all these years, I’ve never lost a mailbag, so I know that they worry about my burden, not just about me, as I travel the ice where they’ve staked out the way.

When the ice is at its worst, the two island priests talk to each other on the telephone. The experienced Fredrik Berg has warned Petter Kummel that they can’t speak freely from the heart, because the operators listen. Petter suggests that they speak Finnish when discussing sensitive matters, but when he spoke to Central about another matter, Edit tactfully let him know that she understands Finnish quite well after her years as a housemaid in Åbo. So they have to watch their words although there is much to discuss. Work first, but then …

“So how are things otherwise?” Petter asks. “Out here we’re completely isolated until the ice has gone. The seal hunters are out, and Anton goes to Mellom once a week with his sledge. We’re stuck where we are. I don’t know how Anton does it. He doesn’t come back until night when the ice has frozen hard, because by then his sledge is weighed down with all the newspapers he brings out, mostly ours, I’m afraid. I’m ashamed every time I open them. Anton risks his life for them over and over again. ‘The mail must go through, whether it bears or it breaks,’ he says, proudly.”

“Yes, it’s a deed worthy of Finland’s White Rose. Did you know he’d won it? The postmen out here usually do—if they survive. It’s easier here, what with the steamboat channel going right past us. If you need to, you can leave Mellom twice a week. But you need to have a good reason. It’s a job getting out to the channel and a job to get on board. Nothing anyone does for the fun of it.”

“No, we’re very happy just to be able to stay at home. People wonder how we’re going to get through the winters here, but we don’t get cabin fever or even get restless. We’re completely content that our world has shrunk. What’s remarkable is that it’s big enough. All the human types in the world at large exist right here on the Örlands. And every kind of conflict and problem. How is everything there?”