her, a new wonder of creation came about:
The cow suddenly licked some long hair from one of the stones! The next day, a head and face came forth from this stone! And on the third day, the cow eventually managed to lick the whole body free. . . . It was a man. He was tall and handsome. He was called Buri and from him all the gods are descended, those we call Aesir.13
Ymir fathered some children all by himself, from his own sweat, and these were the origin of the “clan of the frost trolls,” who were known as Jotuns. The relationship between Aesirs and Jotuns was part conflict, part coexistence—the way it often is between heat and cold. In the end, though, the Aesirs had a showdown with the Jotuns and killed Ymir:
The Aesirs drag the dead Ymir out into the middle of Ginnungagap—the huge vacuum. They place him like a lid over the abyss. Here, they create the world—out of the giant’s corpse. His blood becomes the sea; his flesh, the land. His bones become mountains and cliffs. His teeth and the crushed splinters of his bones become rocks and scree. His hair becomes trees and grass. His brain the gods hurl high up into the air. Thus the clouds come into being. And the sky? It is the skull itself . . . set like a vault, a dome, above all creation. After that, the gods trapped sparks from the heat of Muspellsheim and fastened them to the heavens. There they hang to this day and sparkle.14
And so the world and its creatures were born from the conflict between heat and cold. Perhaps this was a myth that came naturally to those who lived where it was written down, in Iceland, a land of both ice and fire. However, it isn’t so far from the newer stories modern science has given us: chunks of ice containing organic molecules strike a blazing hot Earth, causing life to come into being.
In one respect, however, Finnmarksvidda differed from the White Witch’s eternal winter: winter always ended. The snow melted each spring, and even though it might last until May, it vanished quickly once the thaw had set in. The big event in spring was when the ice broke up on the great river, the Kautokeinoelva, whose name changes to the Altaelva farther downstream. Mighty forces came into play then, when the ice shattered and huge ice floes were hurled around, often far inland. Fortunately, it was safe to watch from up on the bridge, which was built to bear the brunt of it. The spring thaw was far from silent, and this, too, could make you feel kinship with Nansen, who wrote the following description of the havoc caused by pack ice in the Arctic Ocean (something his polar research vessel, the Fram, was fortunately built to withstand):
First you hear a sound like the thundering rumbling of an earthquake far away on the great waste; then you hear it in several places, always coming nearer and nearer. The silent ice world re-echoes with thunders; nature’s giants are awakening to the battle. The ice cracks on every side of you, and begins to pile itself up; and all of a sudden you too find yourself in the midst of the struggle. There are howlings and thunderings round you; you feel the ice trembling, and hear it rumbling under your feet; there is no peace anywhere.15
But then it calmed. The river could once more flow down toward Alta, people could take out their riverboats, and on the hills around the river the vegetation began to peep out again after the cold winter. It wasn’t long before the greenery started to appear, as the midnight sun ensured that photosynthesis—and therefore growth—continued night and day. Just a month later, you could swim in the river it was possible to drive a car across in winter. And then, after the first proper summer rain, came the invasion: billions of mosquitoes. We who grew up here became pretty much immune to their bites, but that didn’t stop them from invading every cavity of your body, making it difficult to breathe. It was worst of all out on the cloudberry marshes, the fruit orchards of the plateau where I earned my summer wages. One benefit of the mosquitoes, though, was that they made autumn—and the frost—feel like liberation.
We northerners are alone in experiencing such stark changes between the seasons—from totally white to almost totally green. Farther south, the only alterations are in temperature and humidity—when the dry season is relieved by the rainy season, for example—and to some extent, the colors of the vegetation. But, with the possible exception of the moment the first rains of the monsoon come sweeping across India’s brown-scorched fields, you will never experience anything so absolute as the shift from white winter to green summer up there in the north. Those of us who grew up with it yearn for the changing of the seasons; we sing songs about it, and we feel and believe this is something that all of nature experiences along with us. Or that’s what we used to think before, at least, when we still spent time out in the fields and open country.
— 5 —
LIFE BENEATH THE SNOW
Leaning toward the snowdrift, bent to the blind driving snow A reindeer stood and sniffed the air, scraped with a cloven toe, And all at once, as deep it dug into the frozen snows A blue-green mossy cluster leapt toward its questing nose16
NORDAHL GRIEG MADE only a quick visit to Finnmarksvidda, but even so, he managed to grasp something essential: the way living creatures—in this case a reindeer—managed to survive in this wintry land. It looks so barren and merciless, but there is, in fact, life beneath the snow—not least the reindeer’s favorite food, reindeer lichen.
The reindeer (caribou to North Americans) was the reason people lived in Norway’s only relatively large area of permafrost. Permafrost is the ground that doesn’t thaw entirely in the summer, but only in the upper, “active” layer. A bit further below, the earth is still frozen and this makes it difficult for any vegetation other than reindeer lichen, heather, and dwarf birch to thrive. Originally, people followed the reindeer herds as they headed north after the last ice age in order to hunt them—just as they had during the ice age, although farther south in Europe in those days. Traces of the hunt are visible in the wealth of rock paintings, especially near the Pyrenees, where reindeer and people lived during the ice age.
Several hundred years ago the Sami people (formerly known as Lapps or Laplanders), thought by many to be the first humans to settle here in the north, began to domesticate reindeer instead of hunting them. In other words, they followed the reindeer on their annual migrations: from the plateau, where they fed on reindeer lichen in the wintertime, to the grassy pastures near the coast in spring, and back to the plateau again in autumn. Gradually, the reindeer got used to the humans, although they never became totally tame. This is how a lifestyle that anthropologists call “semi-nomadic” came about, in which humans follow the animals’ seasonal migrations between two fixed grazing areas—one in winter and one in summer. The pattern of migration is now so established that Sami reindeer herders have permanent homes for both winter and summer use but spend several weeks of each spring and autumn living, literally, on the move. Particularly in spring, when you never know quite when the snow and ice on the lakes and rivers will melt, it can be pretty demanding, and sometimes dangerous, especially for the reindeer. For many reindeer, the migration also involves swimming across a sound in ice-cold water, which is generally the most critical point in the journey.
Contrary to what the schoolbooks used to tell us, however, only a minority of Sami people, those known as flyttsamer, live this way. Most live “normal” lives as farmers and fishermen (“sea Sami”), and as nurses, machine operators, teachers, newspaper editors, job seekers, pensioners, and clothes designers (“city Sami”). But the nomadic group are the “prototypical” Sami who, in many ways, keep the traditional Sami cultural traits alive. Most important of all these is reindeer herding and the related cultural practices: the lavvu (the tent used during the migration); the clothes and tools they carry with them, which are optimally designed for this purpose and are generally made of reindeer hide, antler, or bone; the traditional reindeer races now held at Easter; the meals of bone marrow; the lasso throwing. We can see many examples of reindeer herding as a motif in the work of the best-known Sami artists: John Savio, Iver Jåks, and Nils-Aslak Valkeapää.
For
