Pelle Molin

Nämforsen, painting by Pelle Molin c.1891

[Image source: Wikipedia .]

HARDY FOLK

Two red hill-villages stood opposite, each on its own high cliff; far down between them ran the strong black river, brawling and roaring through rapids and waterfalls on its way to the sea.

Directly between the villages lay a stretch of calm water, but above it and below it the rapids ran foaming and white. 

This tale begins with the moo-stone.

When the river ran high the moo-stone lay far below the surface of the water, but at low water it sometimes thrust its sharp black head out of the depths. Like all larger obstacles in a current it formed a backwater behind it.

The local name for it was the eddy. Whenever there was a drop in the powerful spurting of the lower fall, and the mountain wind Åk-vissla wasn't rushing down the dale, then you could hear a mooing sound from the stone on still and quiet nights, as the water ran over it. Thus it got the name "moo-stone". 

Now, as everyone knows, the salmon rest up in such places, when they are tired of swimming against the current, and here they may easily be caught.

The farmers on the southern bank had fishing nets there, because the moo-stone lay within their part of the river. Those who dwelt on the northern side looked on enviously and put out nets on their own side, but they caught nothing to speak of.

The biggest farmer on the south side was called Zakris, and he had a half share in everything that was taken. The biggest farmer north of the river was called Kerstop and he took a half share in all the northern farmers' sense of grievance.

And every time he came down to find nothing he brooded on an effective means of making the salmon take the northern channel.

Late one half-lit summer night he rowed out on the river, and he had a strange contraption in the boat. 

Now the moo-stone was so formed that its upper edge was narrow and high; below it there was a walled hollow and in this he placed a paddlewheel, lodged it in place, saw that it  could turn, and with a little smile rowed his boat back north until it dipped within the cliff's deep shadow.

The next day he stood behind a barn and watched the southside farmers pull in their nets. Not one living creature! "Aye aye," said Kerstop. The next day he did the same. Not a single fin! "Fancy that," said Kerstop. He heard how they invoked the prince of darkness. 

The third day he had his own net out, but first he watched the others' catch. Not a thing! "Yes, but damn it," said Kerstop. He heard how their curses crossed each other.

Only when he saw the last blue cotton jacket disappear over the brow of the hill did he row out and take from his own net a heap of silver-scaled salmon.

*

The beginning of a story by the Ångermanland artist/author Pelle Molin (1864 - 1896), rather approximately rendered. The original is in old spelling with lots of northern dialect.

The feud continues into the next generation, until the day that Kerstop's son survives Zakris' wicked challenge to cross the river before the ice has set fast, and thus wins Zakris' daughter. 

The story was published in the posthumous collection Ådalens Poesi (1897). Ådalen is the valley of the big river Ångermanälven. Molin was born beside the river in Tjäll, just east of Sollefteå, but during his most productive years (1890-94) he lived further upstream at Näsåker, his mother's birthplace. 

[Internationally the name Ådalen is mostly known for the infamous shootings of striking workers in 1931. That was in the broad lower part of the valley at Lunde, south of Kramfors.]

On an 1895 trip in search of a painting subject Pelle Molin was trapped for several days in terrible weather on the Sulitelma massif. (At the time Sulitelma was thought to be the highest mountain in Sweden.) He died the following year in Bodø (Norway), shortly before his 32nd birthday.

*

Ådalens Poesi, complete online text. 

https://runeberg.org/adalen/

Contains page images as well as transcript; useful as there were a couple of transcription errors in the page I translated.

Swedish text of the above extract:

KÄRNFOLK.

Två röda fjällbyar lågo midt emot hvarandra på hvar sin höga nipa; djupt nere och emellan dem gick den kraftiga svarta älfven med larm och dån i forsar och fall, på sin väg mot hafvet.

Mellan byarne gick älfven i sel, som är spakvatten; men ofvan och nedan gick forsen skummig och hvit.

Vid råmstenen börjas denna historia.

Då floden gick hög nådde råmstenen på långt när icke vattenytan, men vid lågvatten stack han ibland sitt svarta slipade hufvud upp ur djupet. Som alla kraftigare hinder i en ström gjorde han nedanför sig ett bakvatten.

I bygden kallades detta eda. Bar ej sunnan det kraftiga hväset från nedra fallet eller fjällvinden Åk-visslans breda ljudström ned genom dalen, råmade stenen i vindstilla och tysta nätter, då vattnet gick öfver honom. Af detta hade han sitt namn.

Nu, som hvar man vet, hvilar laxen på dylika ställen, då han tröttnat i strömmen, och där fångas han gärna.

Bönderna på södra sidan hade nätfiske där, därför att råmstenen låg inom deras vattenrätt; norrborna tittade afundsjukt på, satte sina nät på sin sida, men funno ingenting att tala om.

Största bond’ på södra sidan hette Zakris och hade halfparten af allt som ficks. Största bond’ norr om ån hette Kerstop, och han tog åt sig halfparten af all norråböndernas förargelse.

För hvarje gång han gick ner till “inget“, funderade han på talande utvägar att få laxen att gå efter norra fåran.

Sent en halfljus sommarnatt rodde han ut på älfven och hade en konstig maskin i båten.

Nu var råmstenen så bygd, att öfre kanten stod smal och hög; nedanför var en fördjupning med väggar och i den satte han en kvarnkall, gjorde den godt fast, såg till att den var rörlig och rodde småflinande sin snipa norröfver, till denna dök in i nipans djupa skugga.

Dagen därpå stod han bakom en lada och åsåg söråböndernas vittje. Inte ett lif! “Jojo“, sa’ Kerstop. Följande dag på samma sätt. Inte en fena! “Betänk“, sa’ Kerstop. Han hörde hur de åkallade afgrunds-fursten.

Tredje dagen hade han sina egna nät ute, men såg först på de andras vittje. Inte ett lif! “Ja, men besitta“, sa’ Kerstop. Han hörde hur förbannelserna korsade hvarandra.

Först då han såg den sista blå bomullsjackan försvinna bakom nipkrönet, rodde han ut och tog ur sina egna nät en hop silfverfjälliga laxar.

Kärnfolk....  Kärn means "core". The term (often used in military contexts, though not here) connotes toughness, genuineness, reliability.

Sel ..... A Norrland term meaning a smooth, broad, calm stretch of river (hence possible to row across). The word appears in place-names dotted round Ångermanälven: Åsele, Långsele, Ramsele, Junsele...  A "sel" was then an important river feature, because infrequent. Nowadays the appearance of Sweden's big northern rivers has changed. They have become one long "sel", interrupted only by hydroelectric dams. The treacherous brawling river as described and painted by Pelle Molin belongs to history. 

Talande ..... "weighty" SAOB 10b, approximately. 

Kvarnkall.... the drive wheel of a mill, with paddles round the rim. Of course it wouldn't spin when totally immersed, but perhaps it would jiggle enough to frighten the fish.

Åkvisslan, painting by Pelle Molin

*

I heard of Pelle Molin via another Ångermanland author, Bo R Holmberg in his YA novel Spådomen (The Prediction, 1988). 

Here Lasse's artist uncle Arne has shown up.

He usually came home once a year, but no-one knew when he was coming. 

Suddenly he just turned up, as a rule in a taxi from the station at Nybystrand [nb = Nyland].

But this time he had come on a Vespa.

-- I'm renting a cottage in Nordingrå, he said. I've been there a few weeks trying to capture the light. I borrowed the Vespa.

He was different. He had his own times. He sat up half the nights and read or drew, but in the morning when everyone else got up he slept on and dragged himself up only in time for elevenses.

Arvid had some downtime for a bit now. All the hay was in the barns. He sat at the table too, but in jeans and work-shirt.

-- I just got here, Arne said. Riding a Vespa was an experience, with the wind in my face all through this monstrous nature that God created when he was both angry and smiling, as Pelle Molin put it.

He really spoke like that. It was hard to believe he was Dad's and Arvid's brother.

-- He's always been like that, Arvid used to say. He's flaky* and has never done a day's work in his life.

Arvid poured coffee in the saucer and slurped it.

Arne got up and stretched. He patted his stomach contentedly, pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket and flipped it around in his hand.

-- Here time stands still, he said and lit the cigarette. Here you walk between the cowshed and the cabin day after day. You've done it for thirty-forty years and you'll carry on the same for maybe twenty more.

-- There are those who will do it too, said Arvid and his jaws tightened. There are those who understand about responsibility. 

* "en slingbirum". As often happens, most online occurences of this dialect word come from Holmberg's own books.

Lasse appreciates Arne's free and easy ways, the way he talks to the boys just the same as the adults. But he bristles at Arne's reductive view of village life. This chapter becomes a meditation on Lasse's own thoughts of being a writer.

(Arne's quote comes from Pelle Molin's lyrical prose piece "Gamla Ådalen".)

*

[Image source: https://www.svenskfilmdatabas.se/sv/item/?type=film&itemid=4223#plot-summary .]

A still from the 1947 movie Ådalens Poesi, based on the story "Kärnfolk". Olle (Kerstop's son, played by Carl-Henrik (Kenne) Fant) fights with Zakris (played by Adolf Jahr).

the elk

Jacket of Nordic Giant

Here are a few notes from reading Nordic Giant: The moose and its life, a big illustrated book by the naturalist and hunter Tommy Hammarström (2004, translation by Kim Loughran).

The elk has a circumpolar distribution, with six subspecies of which the largest is the Alaskan moose. The densest population is in the Swedish forests: around 300,000 animals. Sweden also has what is possibly the world's largest hunt: it begins in September in the north, and in October in the south. 250,000 hunters shoot around 100,000 elk each year. (Even so, this amounts to only 2% of Sweden's meat consumption.)

These high figures are probably unprecedented in Sweden's history. In general the elk stock has been weak through the past few centuries, especially after 1789 when Gustav III, keen to constrain the power of the nobility, abolished their exclusive rights to hunt elk and other big game. This exposed the elk to a rural peasantry that were growing in numbers and very hungry. The result was mass slaughter, especially in winter on crusted snow. Meanwhile countryfolk allowed to kill edible game now neglected the mandatory wolf-cull. Wolves increased, and in the absence of elk began attacking cattle.

Despite several long moratoriums on hunting and the beginning of modern game laws (which were fiercely resisted; poaching flourished), the elk population remained very weak through the nineteenth century. Not until the mid-twentieth century did the elk recover to something like its "natural" level, around 50,000. Then an unprecedented population explosion occurred in the 1970s, apparently as a direct result of industrial forestry, specifically the practice of clear-felling, which led to a vast increase in Rosebay Willowherb and Wavy Hair-grass, the elk's favourite summer foods. (In 20 years, beginning in the late 1950s, around a third of Sweden's forests were clear-felled.) Even we casual summer tourists began to notice elk now and then; my mother in her youth had never seen one.

Hammarström says that the elk population is already declining from this peak (all these figures, of course, are from 2004).

The hunt, too, is in some danger of decline. It means long, cold hours alone at your post, mostly sitting dead still. With the continuing drift to the towns and a lack of interest by the young, the hunters themselves are now an ageing bunch.

Tommy comments on these age demographics, but not on the fact, unmentioned by him but apparent from both text and images, that the hunt is an all-male affair. On the first page of The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, Stieg Larsson parenthetically remarked: "Even today, it can cause controversy having a woman on a typical Swedish elk hunt."

In autumn, elk eat blueberry leaves, but not lingonberry leaves. They also eagerly eat apples in the south, though these are not a very suitable food for ruminants.

 In winter, they survive only on pine-needles, precariously keeping their stomach bacteria alive by recycling urea into the saliva. (They have no use for spruce, the other main Swedish conifer.) The main drive to cull elk is their damage to young pine plantations. Though another would be the high number of road accidents they cause.

Cow and calf

[A double-page illustration from Nordic Giant. The distortion caused by the guttering is something that we learnt to tolerate but will seem strange to future generations. One of the other illustrations in Nordic Giant is completely ruined because its dramatic but small focal point falls right in the guttering.]

The calves are born in May (one, or two). Another factor in the recovery of the population was the realization, in the 1950s, that hunters had been culling in the wrong way. When they encountered a cow and calf, they shot the cow. They didn't realize that the September calf, though already large, is quite unable to survive on its own. In fact it stays with its mother for the whole of its first year, learning all the time, and is only driven off by the cow when she prepares to give birth the following May. (Even then, the yearlings are disorientated and find this traumatic. Most car accidents occur at this time of year.)

These days the approved practice is to shoot the calf and leave the cow. A single calf, whether she has one or two.

Petroglyphs at Nämforsen, Ångermanland 

In the north of Sweden there are numerous prehistoric petroglyphs. (2,500 at Nämforsen alone.) The vast majority are of elk, with a sprinkling of other animals, birds and human figures.

A curiosity pointed out by Hammarström is that most of the bulls have no antlers (a bull can be identified by its large dewlap, e.g above, top right). This identifies them as "winter elk" (January-April). Yet in all probability the carvings (from around 4,000-1,000 BCE) would have been made in the summer.

In Ådalen the artist-author Pelle Molin noticed something else:

Älgens långa mule och höga manke, hans rörelser och hela staturen äro ypperliga, ehuru intet af djuren har mer än ett framben och ett bakben. (From "Gamla Ådalen")

[The elk's long muzzle and high mane, his movements and whole stature are excellent, although none of the animals have more than one front leg and one hind leg.]

*

Gaskin = muscular part of hind leg, between the stifle and the hock.