Bergtagen
Mountain-taken
The story below is my submission to the STSC Symposium, a monthly set-theme collaboration between STSC writers. The topic today is “Superstition”. I wanted to incorporate something from my home country, Finland, and some of the ancient and lost memories and things that might still lay hidden in the granite mountains and moss.
Bergtagen
When the Wolf Cave objects were found in the Bötombergen Mountain in Finland, beginning in 1996, Evert was 15 years old. He wasn’t particularly interested in archeology or geology, and didn’t either take an interest in reading the newspapers or listening to the local radio news. Sure, like all young kids in the area, he had played around the Wolf Cave when little but he was now a teenager and fantasy stories were things that occupied little kids. His main focus and interest nowadays was his moped and creating intricate forest trails with his friends in the pine forest near his parents’ house which happened to be located near the Wolf Cave.
This moped trail had to be developed from scratch through bilberry and lingonberry brush, around granite rocks dispersed by the retreating Ice Age thousands of years ago, and young tree saplings. This took hundreds of repeated rides along the same windy path so that a trail could be formed. The boys took on this project as soon as the snow had melted in May, and they spent most afternoons in April and June zipping through the forest on their souped up mopeds. To an outsider it looked like a trio of motorized acrobats with uncanny coordination and synchronicity. To them it was just an appetizer to what was to come after the toil.
One Saturday in June, right around midsummer, the boys decided to meet up in the morning to finish the trail. It was pretty flat already but Mattias and Stefan convinced Evert they needed it to flatten out more in a few specific spots. There were a few large boulders up on a ridge, and their trail nudged the rocks on the left.
On the ground right next to the closest rock was a nasty root system of an old pine tree. The boys had already been thrown off their bikes a few times when that one pesky root had catapulted them into the nearby moss. Whenever they’d fly off their mopeds they would shout out a swearword with a loud teenage zest. No one was there to listen so they tried out all bad words they could think of, and it did help them feel a bit better as it calmed the pain when they distracted themselves by shouting and laughing together.
Evert had quickly stopped Stefan’s idea of chopping the root to the smithereens with an axe. They were not going to harm nature in that way. Evert knew about forestry and how to care for forests. His father and grand-father had taught him. He convinced the boys to fix the trail so it curved around the root system, and reluctantly they agreed. Mostly because they’d accumulated so many bruises that it was getting painful to ride the mopeds. It was getting late and they decided to call it a day.
“They’re going to empty the Wolf Cave,” said Mattias while repositioning his helmet. None of the others offered any response so he continued: “And no one’s going to be able to go near the cave for who knows how long.” And then he squeezed in: “Want to go take a look? I brought the bone…”
Mattias’ question hung in the air like sticky sap from an injured spruce, and it sounded a bit like when a child who asks a friend if they want to play with toys deep inside knows this might be the last time they ever play with toys together. That a new time is coming. Something that will never be possible ever again.
Evert and Stefan stopped moving and instinctively stared out over the landscape, past the pine trees and moss covered boulders, over lakes and marshes, beyond the sky and its reaches. The bone… They were fifteen years old now. They knew about how the world works. They were almost adults. But Mattias’ words stubbornly hung in the air like a silent crow can glide on invisible air. The bone…
The Wolf Cave was a natural cave formation in a limestone mountain in the southwest of Finland. It was actually a crack in the mountain which over the millennia had been gathering organic matter, leaving only the lowest part open which had turned into the Wolf Cave. The boys had grown up hearing stories about the Wolf Cave and one rainy fall evening, when they were about nine or ten, Mattias’ great grandfather got the idea to scare the boys and told them about the people of the Old.
The Story of the Wolf People According to Mattias’ Great Grandfather
So the story was that long ago, thousands of years before Finland was inhabited and the forests felled and the marshes tamed and tilled for real, there lived a people here called the Wolf People. This was before the ice age. According to historians people moved into the Finnish areas after the ice age, but Mattias’ great grandfather said this wasn’t true.
The Wolf Cave was a remnant of that pre-ice age people, and he claimed he had found an artifact from that time in the cave. The old man reached up above the roaring fireplace for a small and old snuff tin. He opened it and carefully, with a pincer grip of an 87-year old, he lifted up what looked like a small, perhaps the size of his thumb, flat piece of bone. With great reverence the old man held up the flat bone so the boys could see. All of them had seen bones before. Tons of times. Cow bones, moose bones, chicken bones, sheep bones, rabbit bones, fish bones. You name it. This bone looked old, very old.
The boys leaned closer so they could see better. The old man was quiet. He let the boys think for themselves, build themselves an image and story of what they were looking at. The birch wood spat and hissed in the fireplace and everything smelled pleasant of burning wood.
“The lines,” said Stefan and instinctively reached out his hand to touch the bone, but the old man was quick and moved it away.
“Careful, careful — this is no ordinary bone, see. This is no ordinary bone, no.” He quietly rotated the flat bone in his leathery palm with a burnt match that he’d grabbed from the mantlepiece. He was surprisingly agile. The bone flipped over and now they all saw the lines. Chevron lines ran from top to bottom of the surface. With a bit of imagination one could see the shape of a rudimentary spruce tree, or so thought Evert.
“What is it? How long have you had this? How come you’ve never shown this to me before?” Mattias sounded impatient and frustrated. His own great-grandfather had kept such a secret from him!
The old man didn’t answer but instead flicked the bone back into the snuff tin and quickly closed the lid.
“It’s not good to keep it out too long at a time. You see this bone is from the Wolf People. You know the ice age covered all this land and we’re living on the land that appeared when the ice melted. But the Wolf People lived here before the ice age. We don’t know much about them, but when I was a little boy, about your age, I found this bone.” He tapped gently on the snuff tin with his right index finger and looked at each of them in turn. “I found this bone when I was hiding from the butcher’s son, Vild Benny.
Vild Benny would always beat me up, even on days when he seemed nice. He always had to end every meeting with a fist in my eye. So I was hiding. We’d play up in the forest there by the entrance to the Wolf Cave. A whole bunch of us. Our folks would warn us of holes in the ground and that those boulders up on the ridge would start rolling if we climbed on them — and our grandparents would say the old people could come and grab us if we crawled into the cave. I didn’t believe any of it. So when Vild Benny came after me I crawled under the willow bush and into the cave. See, I was more scared of him than of any old people in caves.
I was very quiet and waited until he had passed the area before I stood up. I didn’t think, so I hit my head and a whole bunch of stuff fell on me and I fell to the ground. Thankfully I wasn’t hurt but I had to dig out my legs to free them. That’s when I felt something hard, not a rock but something lighter. It felt interesting and so I put it in my pocket. I don’t know why, I just did. And I crawled out. It was sunset and the light of the sun shone exactly into the cave opening. I looked at the object I had picked up.
Those lines you saw. They shone. They shone bright orange and then the bone felt hot in my palm. I dropped the bone on the ground and looked at my palm. It had left a burn mark! That mark was there for a week and I had to lie to my own mother and made up a story that I had held a hot fireplace poker. But I picked up the bone again, this time it felt cool again, and put it in an empty snuff tin I used to carry in my pocket. We boys thought we were something if we carried snuff tins. Then I started jogging home, but couldn’t!
Something held me back! Imagine an enormous invisible elastic waistband and you run into it. That’s what it felt like. A few meters away from the cave was all I could move. Then full stop. I quickly figured it had something to do with the bone, so I looked at it again and listened for my friends. I heard nothing. Not even birds. I shouted to see if I could hear it echo across the valley below. It didn’t. My sound stayed near me only.
The bone began to shiver! It was now in the snuff tin of course, and it had enough room to spin around — and it spun around several times until the pointy part of the chevron marks pointed toward me!
Now, you’re clever fellows. You can figure things out. I see you come up with all kinds of remarkable things when you’re out there playing. So you have to believe me when I tell you that I knew, well, had a feeling, that this bone wanted something from me. Like a payment or something. You know, if you give Evert here one of your favorite John Deere caps you better believe you want something in return, right Mattias? Right!
So I dug around in all my pockets. A tiny seashell that my uncle, the captain, had brought home from the Caribbean. I walked over to the cave opening and placed the seashell on the ground and bowed sort of as if to show respect. For what? I don’t know. I functioned on a hunch. Then I started jogging home. And hit the invisible elastic waistband again.
Once again I dug around in my pockets. I had avoided it the first time around but I actually had a 10 mark bill. That was a lot of money for a little boy back then. I was very reluctant to let go of it but it was money. Maybe it would work. The sun was setting and the blue twilight was creeping along the forest floor. I walked again over to the cave and placed the 10 mark bill next to the seashell. This time I bowed and said: “Here, now let me go.” And I started jogging home. I was so confident it would work that I fell flat on my back when I hit the invisible elastic waistband! This was also when I got scared. And I mean not just a little scared. I was trembling and couldn’t think straight scared.
I dug through my pockets once more. Nothing. I felt around on my clothes for anything that could work as a… payment? gift? offering? Remember, I was a little boy, just like you. No, you’re not little, but you know. Young. Young, and so I finally sat down and cried. I cried and tried to blow my nose, and when I lifted up my trembling hand it got tangled in my necklace around my neck!
This was my mamma’s gift to me before she passed away. The only thing I had from her. It was no necklace for a little boy. It was a pearl on a gold chain. An elegant woman’s necklace. But I wore it every day under my shirt, and it was the greatest thing. It made me feel like a pirate! Strong and powerful with a magical pearl around my neck! As soon as I touched the necklace I knew. That was what the cave wanted. What the bone had wanted all along.
Against my own will my arms and hands unclasped my treasured necklace and against my own will my legs walked me to the cave. I placed the necklace next to the 10 mark bill and the seashell. A wind hit me in the face. It came from the cave and went up my nostrils and shut my eyes. Then silence. I was too scared to open my eyes. I heard heavy steps. Slow steps. Something big. It stopped next to me and something heavy pushed down on my head. It felt like a hand. I opened my eyes.
Boys, it was one of the Wolf People. As real as you and I. It was a man about twice as tall as I was and he had long hair, and hairy arms and legs. He smiled but it was no human smile! He smiled and let go of my head because in his other hand was my necklace. He looked and looked at the pearl, and I took the opportunity to back away a bit. I still had the bone piece with the chevron markings, and I got the notion to show it to the Wolf Man.
I held up the bone so the man could see it. He saw it but shook his head and sort of motioned for me to keep the bone. And then the Wolf Man held the pearl necklace close to his face and nodded. I took that as a sign that a fair transaction had taken place, and I ran. I ran faster than I have ever ran before. I didn’t stop until I was inside my home, and no one was able to get a word out of me for three days.”
Evert finally said: “Why not?” and Stefan didn’t have any choice because Mattias and Evert already set off on their mopeds toward the Wolf Cave. The zipped through the forest like motorized angry mosquitos. When they arrived at the cave Mattias suggested that they leave the mopeds a good distance away from the cave. No one thought it was a bad idea. When they were about ten meters away from the cave opening Mattias took out the snuff tin and opened it. They waited.
Little by little the bone began to shiver. It spun, as it always had done when they were younger, and the chevron pointed toward Stefan. He took off his helmet, and walked toward the cave with it under his left arm. When he arrived at the cave opening he remained standing with his back toward them and was quiet for a long time.
“What is it?” yelled Evert.
Stefan bent down to pick up something. Then he turned around and held it up. The pearl necklace! He began to walk back toward the boys with the necklace in one hand and the helmet under the other. Stefan made it halfway before he hit the invisible elastic waistband! A panic spread on his face and he dropped his helmet and fell to his knees with shaking shoulders. He looked up at his friends, and he was no longer a mere 15 year old. He instantly knew more about life than any of his friends. He knew what was coming next.
“Catch it!” he yelled and before Mattias or Evert could protest or say anything, Stefan tossed the pearl necklace toward them and Mattias caught his great grandfather’s pearl necklace and it left dangling on his right thumb. Everything happened so fast. “They want something in exchange, of course,” muttered Evert, as if to better process what he was seeing. And a split-second later he understood exactly what was about to be exchanged! He let out a scream: “Don’t do it!”
Mattias threw the necklace and the snuff tin with the bone to the ground and began running toward Stefan. It was no use. Mattias ran into the invisible elastic waistband from the other side. Stefan was trapped. His two friends watched him slowly get back up on his feet and hold his right palm up against the invisible shield.
For a moment they all held up their hands so they almost touched. Then, when a wind swept through the crowns of the pine trees so that it made a swoosh, Stefan turned away from them and walked to the opening of the Wolf Cave. And then he bowed down, and crawled in.
Resources:
Neanderthals, Scandinavian Trolls and Troglodytes
Neanderthal Carving Discovered in Germany’s Unicorn Cave
Another cave…
After I finished this story I began to wonder one thing. Had my mind been on caves because I had recently read a splendid story about another cave far away in the Weird Weird West? I would not feel entirely at peace if I didn’t mention this, and that it is entirely possible that The Legend of Si-Te-Cah by theThe Pulp Vitalistsomehow wrapped its tentacles around an invisible spot in my brain and nudged it towards a cave opening. Was I mountain-taken?
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A great read… hooked me in and I couldn’t stop:-))
The "Wolf Cave"!! Great story, backstory, and links to history, my favorite, plus a bonus link to Frank Kidd's fantastic tale.