OLAF

“Olaf may not have been the most eccentric of men, but he was different. He was over seven feet tall with bright golden red hair that fell in waves to below his waist and he had a glorious beard to match. Standing in the sun he looked like a god. Who gave him the right to be so tall and so fair?

"He never bothered about what others did, nor considered what others thought of his doings. None had ever seen his still, although the authorities had looked hard enough for it, and his aquavit made the sailors’ spirits seem impotent at a mere eighty percent. He could out drink and out fight any three men.

"He had his own ship and crew by the time he was twenty and spent the season at the fishing. The rest of the year he spent in the far north with the hunting. He excelled at the fishing and the hunting. He never had a house. What need had a man such as he for a house when he had a ship?

"He was a vigorous man and needed a woman to warm his furs in the winter. He brought her back to Kristiansund, and, laughed at the outrage she caused. She, with the outlandish name with its impossible spelling. She, of the reindeer herders who lived and fornicated with their animals. She, of the Sámi who killed their elderly in hard winters and ate their winter-born at their unclean spring ceremonies. She, the tiny witch from the tundra who had cast spells to bind Olaf to her bed. She, Sjkwasjkwatinija. Her.

"The priest, though cautioned by all to leave well alone, told Olaf he had to take her back and leave her with her own people. His broken bones healed in six months or so, and he did recover most of his memories after three years. Olaf was sentenced to six months in prison, but that was just to appease the church, and all knew he would never serve any of his sentence.

"The fish would be running within the month, and the community needed him at sea because he was the best captain the fleet had ever had. He knew where the fish would be. He was the one who chanced sleeping with the witch which maybe gave him the luck, and after all, a priest wasn’t a proper man, but of the church which was just a woman’s thing.

"True, a pious wife to keep things right between the Almighty and himself could possibly be helpful to a man, but the fishing was a man’s affair, and a wise man appealed to the old gods for help there. The matter soon blew over. Whatever Olaf did he excelled at. He was his own man, never forget that, Saija, and he was her man. Ja, ja! What a drinker! What a fighter!” Her voice softened, “What a lover!”

I had heard it all before, and much more besides, many times before, but I loved her, and I loved listening to her. Even when speaking Norwegian, when she told of the past she used Sámi story telling traditions, and, oft spoke of herself in the third person. She sounded exotically archaic and delightfully poetic. She was, however, at her best, as that day, when she used her own language, and I could listen to her all day, as oft I had.

I gazed at Sjkwasjkwatinija sitting up in the vast bed with its two in-curved legs neath the larboard hull shaped side that she had shared for so long with Olaf, who had had it made to fit his cabin. At four feet and a half inch tall she looked like a doll in it.

I could see she still had far more left than just traces of the beauty that my great grandmother Hedvig’s brother Olaf had fallen for all those years ago. The ivory skin still flawless and unlined at well over the age of eighty, even she didn’t know exactly how old she was, the luminous jet eyes, undimmed by time, shining with the memories of her lover who had died nearly twenty years before.

Barely embarked on my voyage to womanhood, even at twelve and two years from my bedding I knew how lucky Uncle Olaf had been.

“She’s been talking a long time now. Tell them she’s tired, and has need of nothing. Thank you for coming to see her, Saija, you always were a good child. She’ll sleep now.”

Those were her last words. Like Olaf, she was buried at sea, to join her lover, as she had wanted.