This journey had been a long time coming for me. I had met Laila
Spik, Sami wise woman, a year ago in Millemont, Paris. The Sami are the last
unbroken indigenous tradition of Europe, spread across the north of Norway,
Sweden, Finland and Russia. They are a nomadic people, herding reindeer across
the Arctic mountains since time immemorial. She had invited me to visit her
there, in the winter town of Jokkmokk, just above the Polar Circle. I didn’t
know what to expect, but the calling to the north was unambiguously strong.
Since moving to Sweden in the summer, I had been mentally preparing for it.
And so while most of our classmates went home over the holidays to
take a break from things, me and my close friends and (adoptive) housemates Brendan,
Benni, and Hanne traveled in the other direction, digging yet deeper into our
transformational MSLS year. Before going, we had shared our personal significance
and intentions for the journey. And so, clad in our many thermal and woolen
layers, we also got to bring our inner layers on the trip. Our four-headed
expedition crew was one of loving openness and resilience.
---
Brendan and I arrived a day early. After traveling through the night, we stepped off the real-life Polar
Express into the deserted darkness, light snow coming down in complete silence. In an
instant, we felt the slowing down of time. It wouldn’t speed up again until
back in the south. Without a second thought, we stepped into the Arctic rhythm,
where the days felt like forever, because they were being carved so deep into
us. Getting up when we woke up, napping when tired, eating when hungry. Day and
nighttime had lost their conventional meaning anyway. The four hours of
daylight were just enough for a walk in the hills of the pine forest, playing
and ploughing through the deep powder snow, before being enveloped again by
darkness and spending the rest of our waking hours, often till 4 in the morning,
talking over unending cups of tea at the kitchen table.
That kitchen table was the beating heart of our journey. With
unbelievable hospitality and generosity, Laila welcomed us into her life without
any reservations. During the many many hours we spent with her, from breakfast until
deep into the night, not once did I discern even a hint of impatience with us.
That sentiment was not even in her book of options. She set the tone for how we
lived together that week, in her tiny little house filled with treasures. During
naptime in the 2PM dusk on our first day, I had kept the bedside light on just
to take it all in. The pictures and paintings on the walls. The sculptures and
ancient tools and stacks of books covering every surface. We barely had space
to roll out our sleeping bags, and knocked things over left and right, but the
household the five of us created together was characterized by love and joy and
care for each other. So far away from our homes during Christmas and New
Year’s, we became family. Our affection for Laila was like for a grandmother, and we were home with her.
She spoke to us nonstop for a week. For hours and hours on end we
listened, eagerly drinking in the nourishment of wisdom and knowledge. And if
we weren’t listening, we were all journaling ferociously, capturing her
lessons. Laila was fully present every waking minute she spent with us, sharing
her stories and answering our questions. She spoke in the name of her family,
and we met her father and mother, their spirit still so wholly present and alive through her. She told extensively of the
history of her people, and we traversed the mountains with the reindeer in the Arctic summer, through her. And through her, we learnt also about the more recent history of
the Sami, reminiscent of that of any oppressed indigenous people. Forced
Christianization, boarding schools, hospitals and parking lots constructed on
top of ancient burial sites. Family names changed, Sami music – the joik –
forbidden. Ridiculed for their clothing, their food, their language. The tragic
end of the Sami shaman tradition in the 17th century. And the Sami’s
sustained pride in their surviving culture, despite it all. She showed us the
artifacts that filled her house: heirlooms from every century, dating back a
1000 years. Old smoking pipes and wedding garments, smooth birch knot bowls and Sami knives with delicately carved reindeer antler sheaths. And she knew the stories
that accompanied each of these objects, safeguarding the soul in them. She shared her wisdom of how to live one’s life,
her extensive knowledge of plant medicine, and how to prepare the most incredible meals
from the forest.
Every night was a feast, with cheese courses and rich veggie dishes
from us, complemented by her with everything from salted reindeer meat to
smoked grouse, wild pig and horse hair lichen soup, fish eggs from the
mountains, bark flour flat breads and grilled cheese, powdered nettle, birch
sugar and angelica syrup, cloudberries and roasted lingonberry leaf and pine
needle tea. Have you ever eaten something that lived to be 500 years? We ate
her moss soup, and it was one of the most delicious soups I ever tasted. The
king of Sweden thought so too. She served it to him three times.
To witness Laila's deep connection to her family,
her people, and her land, made a profound impression on us. Through her, we all felt the presence of our own
lineage stirring in us, and the desire to connect with our own ancestry and
legacies, wanting to be known. Stories of our grandparents, great aunts, and parents drifted to the
surface. At the heart of my experience of our time there was how much Laila
brought my own grandmother back to me. The parallels were uncanny. A hundred
similarities followed each other day after day. One of Laila’s jumpers, the
brass duck head on her kitchen table, her trouble with the DVD player, all
reminded me of my grandmother. Her scent was similar to my grandmother’s. I
smelled my grandmother’s breakfast by her dishwasher on our first morning
there. The life lessons and the worldview Laila was given by her father, are
exactly how my mother and grandmother raised me. She lives with the forest the
same way that my grandmother taught me to live with her garden. Utterly, I am my grandmother’s and my mother's continuation. And through them I connect back into the human family. Being there
with Laila, I was remembering who I am.
---
So rich and full were those days. I long back to the sensory
richness: the flavor of pine needle tea and smoked reindeer meat. The scent of
the morning frost and our woolen jumpers. The sight of the snow covered pine
branches, the night sky over the frozen lake that we visited on our nightly
‘aurora checks’, snow magically sparkling in the dark. The touch of my feet sinking into the
crunchy snow and the softness of reindeer fur. Like from a dream I can recall the
graceful silent dances of the Northern Lights, emerging suddenly as a thin band
of color above the city rim, or as a sharp, vertical blade of a green flare,
quivering on one edge before swaying into pink, lilac, white swells, with
animal and human figures galloping in the coursing waves of light. The deep
nourishment of Laila’s stories, the example of her life, and the delicious food
every night. I miss the slow pace, the simple, unplanned days, and the
companionship of our expedition crew. I haven’t felt homesick all this time for
the Netherlands, but now I feel homesick for Jokkmokk.
The words an elder gave us in Millemont have echoed in me for days:
“Walk slowly the first four days after ceremony,” she said, “or else your
feelings may get all mixed up.” I’m feeling the consequences of the involuntarily
rushed transition back into the MSLS grind. Submitting an assignment within 20
hours after getting off a 22 hour train ride. Straight back to classes every
day. All our projects starting up again, our days booked full by meetings. With
stubbornness I’m managing to keep some space free for stepping back into the
Jokkmokk energy and savoring it some more while it settles in my soul. But there’s no
time to walk slowly. I’ve felt flushed by anger, frustration, and sadness. The
band of travelers is dispersing into our school lives again, where we have to
share each other with our other housemates, friends, and classmates.
In the true fractal nature of my year here, coming back from
Jokkmokk into MSLS is a precursor of what I can expect when emerging from
MSLS into the wider world again. As much as I love and learn profoundly from my MSLS life,
I feel disconnected from it now, wanting to hold on to the deeper and more
condensed magic of Jokkmokk. I will treasure this week in the Arctic Circle
like a nugget of gold, embedded within the broader MSLS journey. And I will
need much more than the four days of walking slowly to process all that I have gained
from our stay with Laila. It resounds throughout my depths and has stirred things into motion. For months and years to come I will be feeding off
this journey. And the ripples it has cast in my water, who knows what they may
give rise to down the line.
