Tim Severin - Sworn Brother

'And the voudman?'

'That was the thicket that kept turning you back when you were walking. Our hunters were watching you. I hear you tried to leave the trail several times. You made much noise. In fact they nearly lost our prize boazo who was frightened by your approach and ran off. Luckily they recaptured it before it had gone too far.'

I recalled the hunting technique Edgar had showed me in the forest of Northamptonshire, how he had placed me where the deer would be directed towards the arrows of the waiting hunters. It seemed that the Lopar did the same, building thickets of brush to funnel the wild deer in the place where the hunters lay in ambush.

'I apologise for spoiling the hunt,' I said. 'I had no idea that I was in Lopar hunting grounds.'

'Our name is not Lopar,' said Rassa gently. 'That word I heard when I visited the settled peoples - at the time when I learned to speak some words of your language — we are Sabme. To call us Lopar would be the same as if we called you cavemen.'

'Cavemen? We don't live in caves.'

Rassa smiled his crooked smile.

'Sabme children learn how Ibmal the Creator made the first men. They were two brothers. Ibmal set the brothers on the earth and they flourished, hunting and fishing. Then Ibmal sent a great howling blizzard with gales and driving snow and ice. One of the brothers ran off and found a cave, and hid himself in it. He survived. But the other brother chose to stay outside and fight the blizzard. He went on hunting and fishing and learning how to keep alive. After the blizzard had passed over, one brother emerged from the cave and from him are descended all the settled peoples. From the other brother came the Sabme.'

I was beginning to take a liking to this forthright, homely little man. 'Come,' he said, 'as you are to be my guest, we should find out a little more about you and the days that lie ahead.'

With no more ceremony than Thrand consulting the rune tablets, Rassa produced his own prophecy drum. It was much bigger and more intricately decorated than the one I had seen before. Rassa's drum had many, many more symbols. They were drawn, he told me, "with the red juice from the alder tree, and he had hung coloured ribbons, small amulets and charms of copper, horn and a few in silver round the drum's edge. I carried copies of the same charms in my trade pack.

Rassa dropped a small marker on the drum skin. This time the marker was a brass ring. Before he began to tap on the drum, I intervened.

'What do the symbols mean?' I asked.

He gave me a shrewd glance. 'I think you already know some of them,' he replied.

'I can see some runes,' I said.

'Yes, I learned those signs among the settled peoples.'

'What about that one? What does that signify?' I pointed to a wavy triple line. There were several similar symbols painted at different places on the drum skin.

'They are the mountains, the places where our ancestors dwell.'

'And that one?' I indicated the drawing of a man wearing antlers on his head.

'That is the noiade's own sign. You call him a seidrmann.'

'And if the marker goes there what does it mean?'

'It tells of the presence of a noiade, or that the noaide must be consulted. Every Sabme tent has a drum of prophecy, and someone to use it. But only a noiade can read the deeper message of the arpa, the moving marker.'

Abruptly he closed his eyes and began to sing. It was a thin, quavering chant, the same short phrase repeated over and over and over again, rising in pitch until the words suddenly stopped, cut off mid-phrase as if the refrain had fallen into a pool of silence. After a short pause, Rassa began the chant again, once more raising the pitch of his voice until coming to the same abrupt halt. As he chanted, he tapped on his drum. Watching the ugly little man, his eyes closed, his body swaying back and forth very slightly, I knew that I was in the presence of a highly accomplished seidrmann. Rassa was able to enter the spirit world as easily as I could strike sparks from a flint.

After the fourth repetition of his chant, Rassa opened his eyes and looked down at the drum. I was not surprised to see that the arpa was resting once again on the antlered man. Rassa grunted, as if it merely confirmed what he had expected. Then he closed his eyes and resumed tapping, more urgently this time. I watched the track of the brass ring as it skittered across the face of the drum. It visited symbol after symbol without pausing, hesitated and then retraced a slightly different track. Rassa's drumming ended and this time he did not look down at the drum but straight at me. 'Tell me,' he said.

Strangely, I had anticipated the question. It was as if a bond, an understanding, existed between the noiade and myself. We both took it for granted that I possessed seidr skill and had come to Rassa for enlightenment.

'Movement,' I said. 'There will be movement. Towards the mountains, though which mountains I do not know. Then the drum spoke of something I do not understand, something mysterious, obscure, a little dangerous. Also of a union, a meeting.'

Rassa now looked down at the drum himself. The brass ring had come to rest on a drawing of a man seated on horseback. 'Is that what you meant by movement?' he asked.

The answer seemed obvious, but I answered, 'No, not that sign. I can't be sure how to interpret it, but whatever it is, it concerns me closely. When the ring approached the symbol and then came to rest, my spirit felt strengthened.'

'Look again and tell me what you see,' the noiade replied.

I examined the figure more closely. It was almost the smallest symbol on the drum, squeezed into a narrow space between older, more faded figures. It was unique. Nowhere else could I see this mark repeated. The horse rider was carrying a round shield. That was odd, I thought. Nowhere among the Sabme had I seen a shield. Besides, a horse would never survive in this bleak cold land. I looked again, and noticed that the horse, drawn in simple outline, had eight legs.

I looked up at Rassa. He was gazing at me questioningly with his bulging eyes. 'That is Odinn,' I said. 'Odinn riding Sleipnir.'

'Is it? I copied that sign from something I saw among the settled folk. I saw it carved on a rock and knew that it had power.'

'Odinn is my God,' I said. 'I am his devotee. It was Odinn who brought me to your land.'

'Later you can tell me who is this Odinn,' Rassa answered, 'but among my people that symbol has another meaning. For us it is the symbol of approaching death.'

With this enigmatic forecast I began my time among the forest Sabme. My days with them were to be some of the most remarkable, and satisfactory, of my life, thanks almost entirely to Rassa and his family. Rassa was no ordinary noiade. He was acknowledged as maybe the greatest noiade of his time. His unusual appearance had marked him out from his earliest childhood. Ungainly and clumsy, he had differed from other boys. Trying to play their games, he would sometimes fall down on the ground and choke or lose his senses entirely. Norse children would have mocked and teased him, but the Sabme treated him with special gentleness. No one had been surprised when, at the age of eight, he began to have strange and disturbing dreams. It was the proof to the Sabme that the sacred ancestors had sent Rassa as their intermediary, and Rassa's parents unhesitatingly handed over their son to the local shaman for instruction. Thirty years later his reputation extended from the forest margins where his own people lived as far as the distant coast, to those Sabme who fished for seal and small whale. Among all the Sabme bands, the siida, it was known that Rassa was a great noiade, and from time to time he would come to visit them in his spirit travels. So high was his reputation when I arrived among them that no one questioned why he decided to take a lumbering stranger into his tent and instruct him in the sacred ways. His own siida believed that their great noiade had summoned me. Their drums told them so. For my part, I believed sometimes that Rassa was Odinn's agent. At other times I thought he might be the All-Father himself, in human guise.