Jo in the Seaholms

Jonas Lie

1891

I
n the days of our ancestors, when all
the boats were abysmal in Nordland, and they
had to aid themselves by buying favourable
conditions by the sackful from the gand-Finn,1
it was not easy to survive on the ocean seas in the winter
weather. Fishermen did not grow old back then. It was
mostly just women and children and the disabled who
were buried ashore.
So there was a boat crew from Tjøtta in Helgeland,
which was out to try their luck up in east Lofoten. But that
winter there were no fish. They lay and tarried and waited
1
The Sami form of black magic is called gan(d)ing.

1
for one week after the next, and the rest of the month
too, but finally they admitted that there was nothing for
it other than to return home with their gear in an empty
boat. But one Jo in the Seaholms just laughed, and said
that, were the fish not there, they would probably be fur-
ther north; they had not rowed out just to eat their food
supplies. He was just a young boy and had never been out
fishing before, but his talk was just as good, thought the
skipper. And so they set sail northwards.
At the next fishing bank, things went the same way.
They brought up just enough to give them sustenance
through the day. And now every one of them wanted to
turn. But, are there no fish here, then they are further
north, said Jo. And since they had come so far, they might
just as well try some more. In this way they tried their
luck from fishing village to fishing village, until they came
all the way up to Finnmark.
But there they met bad weather, and try as they might
to find shelter in lee of the headlands, they finally had
to set out to sea. Things went no better than that the
troublesome boat put its prow under the sea instead of
above it; and it filled the boat during the course of the day.

2
 There they sat, helpless on the keel in the wild sea.
And all of them raised complaints against Jo, who had
coaxed and brought them to disaster.
When it grew dark, their hands began loosen, and
they were taken by the sea, one by one. But all Jo heard,
until the last one screamed and was gone, was their com-
plaining that he had brought them to ruin, and for their
wives and children who would starve from the loss of their
breadwinner.
He would sit there anyway, thought Jo; things would
be no better if he too slipped into the sea. And so he
squeezed with his knees against the keel, and held fast
until he could no longer feel his hands or feet. In the coal-
black stormy night, he thought he heard another boat
crew screaming. They have wives and children too, he
thought; he wondered if they also had a Jo to blame.
As he lay drifting, thinking that soon it must be dawn,
he felt the boat jerk in the backwash from land.
And the one who came up from the sea was Jo.
But he saw nothing nothing more than the black sea
and the white snow, wherever he turned. As he stood,
seeking and looking, he saw smoke far away, from a Finn

3
gamme2 before a bank, and he scrabbled over to it.
The Finn was so old that he could barely move. He
just sat inside in the warm ashes and mumbled into his
beaska,3 and neither talked nor answered. Large yellow
bumble bees buzzed in and out over the snow, as if it
were midsummer, and there was none but a young girl
to tend the fire and give him food; his grandsons and
granddaughters were with the reindeer, far inland over
the mountains.
Here he was allowed to dry his clothes and rest. Seimke
did not know how well she was to look after him; she fed
him both with reindeer milk and marrowbone; and he lay
on silver fox skins.
Good and warm it was in there in the smoke.
But as he lay, not knowing if he was awake or dream-
ing, he thought many strange things happened. There
stood the Finn in the doorway, counting his reindeer,
though they were far away in the mountain mark. He
headed off wolves, and threatened bears. He opened his
2
A gamme is a traditional, semi-permanent Sami dwelling, built
of earth and turf over a wooden frame.
3
A beaska is the traditional reindeer-skin overcoat worn by the
well-heeled Sami.

4
leather sack so the weather howled and whistled, and the
ash flurried around the gamme. And when it grew still,
the bumble bees swarmed and sat in his beaska, whilst he
milked and mumbled, and his four-winds hat nodded.
But Jo had things to think about other than wondering
at the Finn. No sooner had the sleep left his eyes than that
he swept down to his boat. There it lay overturned like
a trough, butting against the rocks, and the waves swept
along the garboard strakes. And he barely managed to
bring it up on to land, so that it escaped the backwash. He
looked over it for so long during the day that he began to
think that those who built them would rather have the sea
inboard than without. The front end was no more than a
pig’s snout to bear under with, and the garboard strakes
were as flat as the bottom of a coffin. There had to come
different traditions and -craft for everything, if they were
going to be of use at sea. The bow would need to be lifted
by one or two boards, be both sharp and supple, so that
it would simultaneously bend off and cut through, and
the boat would behave well at sea. He thought on this
both night and day. There was barely any respite when he
spoke and talked of it with the Finn-girl in the evenings.

5
 He noticed well that Seimke had grown fond of him.
She went after him, wherever he went, and her eyes always
grew so sad when she saw him go down to the sea; she
understood well enough that he longed to leave.
The Finn sat drawing in the ashes, and the steam and
smoke rose from his beaska. But Seimke enticed and lured
Jo with her brown eyes, and heaped as many sweet words
upon him as quickly as her tongue would work, behind
the old Finn’s back, until she got him so far into the smoke
that the Finn could not hear.
The gand-Finn turned his vision behind him.
“My eyes are foolish, and they water in the smoke,” he
said. “What does Jo hold there in his lap?”
“Say that it is the ptarmigan you have snared,” she
whispered. And yes, Jo felt how she pressed against him,
shivering. Then she told him, as quietly as the thought that
lies in your chest, that the Finn was evil and conjured and
joiked 4 against the boat that Jo would build. If it came to
completion, then the gand-Finn would never again be able
4
A form of singing also used in the Sami form of shamanism.
In times past, joiking was thought by Norwegians to be a means of
conjuring the devil.

6
to sell favourable conditions across Nordland. And she
warned him that he must take care never to get between
the Finn and his gand-flies.
Then Jo understood that the boat might cause him
trouble. But the worse things went, the more he ached to
launch it. And down to the shore he went, before the Finn
had arisen in the grey light of morning. But things went
strangely on the snow banks. There were so many, and
they were so long; and there he went, wading through the
deep snow, but he never reached the shore. Never had he
seen the northern lights so late in the day. They sparkled
and burned, and long tongues of fire licked and hissed
at him. He was unable to find the shore or the boat, and
neither to place himself by sighting the landscape. Finally
he realised that, in a daze, he had been going inland, over
the mountain instead of down to the sea. But when he
turned around, the fog came so dense and grey towards
him that he could see neither hand nor foot.
As evening fell, he had almost given up hope from
weariness. Just as helpless as he was, he remained.
Night fell, and the blizzard increased. As he sat on a
rock, reflecting and thinking of how he might come from

7
this with his life, a pair of skis came gliding so nicely out
of the fog, and stopped at his feet.
“Have you come, then you can also show the way,” he
said.
And so he let the skis take him where they would, over
peaks and slopes. He did not look before him or try to keep
his balance, and the driving snow blew harder against him,
the quicker he went, until the wind threatened to take him
off the skis. Downwards and over, his way went, where
he had been during the day; and sometimes he thought
he flew through the air. Suddenly the skis stopped, and
he found himself just outside the entrance to the Finn’s
gamme. There stood Seimke, looking out for him.
“I sent my skis for you,” she said, “for I understood that
the Finn had bewitched the land, so you would not find
your way to the boat. Your life is safe, for he has given
you shelter, but it is ill-advised that you should see him
this evening.”
Then she secreted him inside, so the Finn did not notice
in the thick smoke, and gave him food, and got him to
rest.
But when he awoke in the night, he heard a strange

8
noise, and it droned and sang, far away in the night:

Finn-man can the boat not bind,

The fly the voyager cannot find,
Buzzing in a circle inside.

In the ash sat the Finn, joiking and drawing so that

the ground trembled. And Seimke lay bowed forwards
with her forehead on the floor and her hands clenched
together behind her neck, praying to the Finn god. Jo
understood then that the Finn was still searching for him,
far out in the blizzard and the driving snow, and that his
life was in danger. So he dressed himself before daylight,
and came traipsing in with snow on him, and said he had
been looking for bears in hibernation. But never had he
been out in such a blizzard; he had wandered both far
and wide before he found his way home to shelter again.
The Finn sat with his beaska full of yellow flies like a
swarm of bumble bees. He had sent them out in every
direction to search, but back they had come, and swarmed
and buzzed around him. When he saw Jo in the doorway,
and understood that they had shown him right, his anger

9
subsided, and he laughed so that he shook in his tunic,
and mumbled:
“The bear we bind here under the cauldron-hollow;
for his boat I have a watchful eye, and the sleeping stick I
will set for him in the spring.”
But the same day, the Finn stood in the doorway and
hurredly made magic signs and strange strokes in the
air. He sent out two ugly gand-flies, which rushed, each
on a different errand, over the snow, scorching a ray of
sunshine beneath them as they flew. One should cause
pain and sickness in a cabin down in Salten, and the other
should cause a shooting pain that burned like the plague
in a young bride in Bodø.
But Jo thought of nothing, by night or by day, other
than how he might get the better of the gand-Finn.
Seimke coaxed and wept and begged him, for the sake
of his life, not to go down to the boat any more. But finally
she saw no other remedy than that he would be on his
way. So she kissed his hands and sobbed. He merely had
to promise to wait until the gand-Finn had gone in to
Jokmok in Sweden.
But on the day he was to travel, the Finn went in a ring

10
around the gamme with a firebrand, to protect his home.
There stood the mountain mark, full of reindeer and dogs
and folk, brought near. The Finn counted the animals and
admonished his grandsons not to slip the reindeer too far
while he was away and unable to guard them from the
wolf and the bear.
Then he took a sleeping draught and began to spin
around and dance until the breath left him and he fainted
away. There was only his Finn tunic left of him. His spirit
had left to go to Jokmok.
There sat the troll-folk together in the darkness, whis-
pering of everything that was profitable and hidden, blow-
ing the spirit into their apprentices.
And the gand-flies swarmed and buzzed like a yellow
ring around the tunic, keeping watch.
In the night, Jo was awakened by something far off,
pulling and dragging at him. It was like a draught in the air,
and out of the flurries of snow came threats and shouts:

Before you can swim like an eider or drake,

Never shall you hatch your egg,
Difficult for wind and closed for weather,

11
 The Finn-man will never let you go south.5

Finally the gand-Finn stood uncomfortably close to

him. His face hung, its skin limp and loose and full of
folds, like an old reindeer skin; and in his eyes there was
dizzying smoke.
Then his limbs began to freeze and grow numb, and he
felt how the Finn began to bewitch him. So he set himself
against it, so the magic would not take hold; and so they
fought until the Finn grew green of face and began to
choke. But away from Jokmok, they fired a shot for him
and shot for his mind.
And so strange did it become that when Jo considered
the boat, and improved one thing, then something else
went wrong, until his mind was falling to pieces. Then he
was very sorrowful. He could not understand how to put
the boat together, and it looked as if he would never be
able to go south again.
But out in the summer, Jo and Seimke sat together
on the headland one warm evening, and the mosquitos
hummed and the fish leapt quietly off shore, and the eider
5
This bit will rhyme, one day.

12
drake swam.
“Oh to be the one to build a boat that was as quick and
agile as the fish, and bore its gunwales above the water like
a seabird,” he sighed in complaint. “Then I could leave!”
“Do you want me to give you passage to Tjøtta?” it said
from up on the shore. There stood a fellow in a squashed,
flat leather cap, whose face they could not see.
And just off the rocky shore, there where they had
seen the eider drake, there lay a boat, long and narrow,
with high fore- and aft posts, and the tarred planks were
reflected in the clear sea beneath, without so much as a
knot in the wood.
“I would be grateful for any passage I can get,” replied
Jo.
When Seimke heard this, she began to sob and carry
on. She fell on his neck and would not let go, begging and
weeping. She promised him her skis, which carried her
through any hinderance, and she would steal the bone
skin from the gand-Finn, so that he could find all the old
bond dollars that were buried, and could repair the salmon
nets, and call the reindeer far out on the mark. He would
be as rich as the gand-Finn, if only he would stay, and not

13
leave her.
But Jo had eyes only for the boat.
So she cast herself on the ground, undid her black hair,
and tied it around his leg so that he would have to tear it
first.
“If I stay here to play with you and the reindeer calves,
then many a fellow will sit with split nails upon the keel
of their boat,” he said. “You decide whether to hug me
farewell, or whether I will go without.”
So she threw herself into his arms like a kitten, and
stared through her tears into his eyes, and shook and
laughed, as if losing her mind. But when she understood
there was no way of changing his mind, she left, waving
her arms, all the way back to the gamme.
Then Jo understood that she would seek counsel from
the gand-Finn, and that he should seek the safety of the
boat, if he was not to be hindered. And such had the boat
lain too by the shore that he merely needed to step on
to the thwart. The tiller slipped into his hand, and across
from him, behind the mast, was one sat in the bows, who
hoisted and spread the sail; but his face he could not see.
Off they rushed.

14
 And such a boat for sailing had Jo never seen. The sea
stood around it as if it were in a deep trough, despite the
weather being nearly calm. But they had not come far be-
fore the wind began to howl terribly. The birds screeched
and sought land, and the sea had risen like a black wall
behind them.
“We should show a lot of sail here, in Finneknipa,” it
said behind the mast. The master of the boat took so little
care that he did not so much as tie an extra reef.
Then the gand-Finn sent twisting knots6 after them.
They went in a wild dance up the fjord, and the sea
whirled itself into white columns of mist up to the clouds.
If the boat did not now fly like a bird, and more quickly
than one, then they would be lost.
Then came a terrible laugh from larboard:

Anfin the gand-Finn decides the weather

and blows us southwards
the crack in the sack
is right for three reefs.7
6
Literally “granny knots.”
7
This bit will rhyme, one day.

15
 And heeling under three reefs, and the big fellow in
the bows with his sea boot over the side and down into the
seafoam, they fared through the blinding spray, out into
the open sea in the howling and roaring wind. The sides of
the waves were so tall that Jo could barely see the light of
day above the yard, and he knew not whether they went
over or through the crests of the seas. The boat let out the
sea so easily and lightly and smoothly, as if it were the tail
of a fish, and its boards were as finely set as the shell of a
tern’s egg. But never could he see one of them all the way
to the end; they were all of them half-length, and finally
it dawned on him that the whole fore end disappeared in
the seafoam, as if they were sailing away in a half boat.
When the night fell, the boat went through the seafire
like embers; and from larboard the wind howled, long
and terrible. There were replies, cries of distress, death-
screams from all the boat hulls they sped past, and they
took hideously pale folk in on the thwarts. The light from
the seafire shone blue on their faces, and they sat and
glared and gaped and howled at the weather.
Straightway he awoke to the cry: “Now you are home
at Tjøtta, Jo!”

16
 And it did not take him long to sight his position and
recognise the rocks of home, close by his boathouse. The
wash went so far up on land that the edge of the breakers
lit all the way up to the potato field, and he could hardly
stand in the gusts.
He sat there in his boathouse in the pitch darkness, and
scratched and marked out the draug boat on the boards
until sleep overtook him.
When the light of morning came, his sister came down
to him with a pail of food. She did not stop to talk, but
behaved as if she was used to coming like this every morn-
ing. But when he told her of his voyage to Finnmark, and
of the gand-Finn, and of the draug’s boat that he had trav-
elled home on in the night, he noticed that she merely
giggled and let him talk.
He tried long enough during the day to tell his sister
and his brothers and his mother up in the cabin that he
finally grew wise to the fact that they thought he had
half-lost his wits. If he mentioned the draug’s boat, they
chuckled amongst themselves, though they spoke warmly
and nicely and kindly to his face. But they could believe
what they liked, since he could do as he pleased and be

17
left in peace down in the old boathouse.
One had to set sail according to the wind, thought Jo.
And were he mad and from his understanding, then it
was best that he play it up, so that they would be wary of
him, and not get in his way as he worked.
So he took a reindeer skin down to the boathouse,
and slept there at night. But during the day, he sat up on
the roof, on a beam, and screamed that he was setting
sail. Once in a while, he rode astride the ridge of the
roof, and stabbed his knife into the beam, so they thought
he imagined himself still out at sea, clambering fast to
the keel. When folk passed, he stood in the boathouse
doorway, rolling his eyes terribly so that only the whites
showed, and they were frightened; it was such that hardly
anyone at home would bring his pail of food to him.
So then they sent his little sister.
Little Malfri was allowed to sit and talk to him from
the pile of planks, and thought it fun when he made her
games and toys, and told her of the boat that would go
like a bird, and sail like no other boat in the world.
If it happened that someone came unexpectedly over
him, and looked in to see what he was about there in the

18
boathouse, he climbed up on to the heap of boards, and
heaved and flung offcuts and uncut logs around him, so
that no one knew where they might land, and they were
glad to leave again. But each and every one had to make
their way back up the hill, listening to him laugh at them
until he could hardly stand. In this manner, Jo earned
peace from folk.
His best work was done at night, when the weather
ripped and tore at the rocks and at the bark on the turf
roof of the boathouse, and the breakers reached all the
way up to the boathouse door. When the wind whined and
shrieked through the leaky planking, and the snow flurried
nicely in through the cracks, the form of the draug’s boat
stood most clearly in his mind.
The winter days were short, and the wick of the train-
oil lamp hung over the work, from the early fall of dark-
ness until late in the morning, when he sought to sleep on
the reindeer skin and lay down in all the wood shavings.
He saved himself no trouble or effort; was there a board
that did not run the correct course, no matter how little it
was off, he would knock it out both once and twice, and
do it again and again.

19
 Then there was one night before Christmas that he
had no more than the uppermost row of planks, and the
kabes left to do. He worked so hard now that he had
no sense of time. The blade of the plane flew along the
plank, when he suddenly stopped, for some black thing
had moved along the plank. It was an big ugly fly crawling
around, searching and examining every rivet of the boat
along every plank. By the garboard strakes, it shook its
wings and buzzed. Then it lifted, and remained hovering
in the air above it until it suddenly twisted away into the
darkness.
Jo’s heart sank into his belly.
An anxious doubt came upon him. He knew it was not
for good that the gand-fly had buzzed above the garboard
strakes. So he took his train-oil wick and his mallet, and
began to sight from the ends of the planks, and light and
knock along the planking, and went along the boat, plank
by plank. And thus he went over the whole boat, and
tested it from bow to stern, both above and below. He
no longer believed there was a rivet or a scarf that was
dependable. But neither the measurements nor the shape
could be knocked any tighter. The stern was too big, and

20
the gully that ran along the bottommost planks had shifted,
and turned and twisted so that it looked as if the fore did
not match the aft. As he continued, in a cold sweat that
seeped out of his hair roots, he ran out of train-oil, and he
stood in profound darkness.
Then he knew not what he did.
He cast away his mallet and ripped open the boathouse
door and began to swing and ring and chime out with the
cowbell he suddenly had in his hand.
“Are you ringing for me, Jo?” it asked. It sounded like
the backwash behind him, and a cold air blew into the
boathouse. On the keel sat one in grey worsted sea dress,
and a woollen hat pulled down over his ears, so that his
head was like a pompon. A chill went through Jo. It was
precisely he of whom Jo, in his bewilderment, had been
thinking. Then he took his biggest baler and threw it at
him. But it went strainght through the draug and bounced
off the wall and returned towards Jo’s ears, so that he
would have been knocked flat, had it hit him. The old one
merely squinted, only the whites of his eyes showing.
“Hoi!” screamed Jo, and spat at the creature. He re-
ceived a stinging, soft jellyfish back in his eyes.

21
 “There you have your spitball in return!” it laughed.
But when Jo opened his eyes again, he saw a whole
boatyard on the strand. And ready and rigged out on
the calm water there lay an åttring so fine and long and
symmetrical that he was lost in the sight.8
The old one winked, good naturedly. His eyes shone
brighter and brighter.
“If I have given you passage to Helgeland, then I can
also give you a living,” he said. “But a small fee must you
pay. In every seventh boat you build, I will be the one to
set in the garboard strakes, with a breach and a weakness
in them.”
Jo’s breath caught in his throat. He understood that
the boat would drag him into the gape of the devil.
“Or did you think you would lure my pattern from
me for nothing?” it grinned, gaping. Then there was a
scouring, as if something huge moved and rose in the
boathouse, and it laughed. “If you want the sea-boat, you
will have to accept the death-boat! If you knock three
8
Nordland boats are categorised according to how many oars they
have, or how many “rooms” there are between the ribs. There are
several types mentioned in the text: åttring, fembøring, and seksaring.

22
times with your mallet on the keel, then you shall have
help to build such a boat the like of which has never been
seen in Nordland.”
Twice Jo lifted his mallet that night and would knock
on the keel, and twice he put it away again. But the åttring
lay playfully, mirroring itself before his eyes, such as he
had never seen: new and light with pitch, with freshly
rigged sheets and tackle.
He tried to rock the fine, slim boat with his foot, to
see how lightly and high it carried itself, and how nicely
it would run in the water.
And the mallet knocked once, twice, and thrice on the
keel.
In this manner, the first boat was built in the Seaholms.
The folk stood as densely as birds, innumerable on
the headland in the autumn, and watched as Jo and his
brothers launched the new åttring. It went through the
water so that the foam washed along it. It disappeared,
and then bobbed like a seabird, and past promontaries and
reefs it flew like an arrow. Out on the fishing banks, folk
lay on their oars and gazed. Such a boat had they never
seen.

23
 But if the first year brought forth a long åttring, then
the next produced a great, broad fembøring for the folk in
the fishing villages to gaze upon. And lighter beneath its
oars and better sailers and finer to behold was one boat
after the other. But the finest and biggest was the last,
which stood on struts on the strand.
This was the seventh.
Jo went back and forth; but when he went down to it
in the mornings, it was strange, as if it had been waxed
each night. Thus it grew so unreasonably beautiful that
he was simply entranced.
Finally it lay finished. And there were enough folk to
bid for it.
But there was a bailiff who ruled over all Helgeland at
that time, who collected tax by double weight and measure
of both fish and down, and he was no cheaper with tithe
or almsbox. Where his fellows were it was cleansed and
left desolate. He had no sooner heard a rumour of the new
boats than that he sent out folk to investigate the truth
of the matter. He fished with a large crew himself, out
on the banks, and when they came home and told him
of what they had seen, the bailiff grew so eager that he

24
straightway set off for the Seaholms, in the summer.
And there he came like a hawk over Jo. Neither tax nor
tithe had he paid from his business, and now he would pay
as many half-marks of silver as he had built boats. He cried
ever bitterer and harsher that Jo should be clapped in irons
and transported north of Skrova and be confined such
that he would never again see sun or moon. But whilst
the bailiff rowed around the fembøring, and his eyes shone
from its fineness and beauty, things were finally arranged
such that he would reluctantly let mercy go before justice,
and take the fembøring in lieu of the fine.
And Jo doffed his cap, and said that if there was one
sho deserved such a boat, then it surely was the bailiff!
And so the authority sailed away.
His mother and his sister and his brothers wept in
competition with each other for the beautiful fembøring.
But Jo stood up on the roof of the boathouse and laughed
until he could hardly stand.
And out in the autumn, word came that the bailiff,
with all eight of his men on board the fembøring, had been
lost out on Vestfjord.
During these days, there was a change of boats all over

25
Nordland, and Jo could not manage to build a tenth of all
the boats there was a demand for. Folk from both near
and far hung on to his boathouse wall, and it was purely
grace that allowed someone to buy or order a boat. More
than a score stood under sheds down over the strand.
He could no longer follow which would be counted
as the seventh boat. Neither did he care about it. If some
got water in their gullets from the one, then many more
were made to prosper by sailing the others, and the bill
would be paid by someone, in any case. Folk could look
them over themselves, and choose the one they liked best.
And Jo grew great and powerful, and it was not wise
for anyone to get in his way, where he controlled and
ruled. Silver coins stood in rows of pouches in the loft;
and his boatyard spread all over the Seaholms.
Then one Sunday, his brothers and little Malfri had
gone to church in the new fembøring. When they did not
return home in the evening, the boatswain went in and
said that it would be best that someone sailed out for them;
the weather was turning.
Jo sat by the plumb and the pattern for a new boat that
would be even bigger and finer than any of his others, and

26
he was no good to approach.
“Do you think they are sailing in one of the old up-
turned troughs?” he shrieked. And out the boatswain was
sent, as quickly as he had come in.
But during the night, Jo lay listening to the wind howl-
ing along the walls, and long calls from out at sea. Just
like that there was some knocking and some calling for
him.
Go back where you came from, he said, and merely
turned himself over in his bed.
A little while afterwards, there came a tapping and
knocking at the door, from small fingers
He wanted some peace at night, he thundered, even if
he had to build himself a new cabin.
But outside it continued to reach and touch the latch,
and rub against the door, as if there was someone there
who could not reach up. And higher and higher towards
the latch it stroked.
But Jo merely laughed. The fembørings from the Sea-
holms did not sail themselves full, no matter how it blew,
he taunted.
Then the latch clicked and jumped open.

27
 And in the doorway stood little Malfri and his mother
and his brothers.
The sea-fire shone around them, and the water ran.
They were pale and grey of face, and their teeth were
gritted together, as if they had just gone over into the
throes of death. Malfri held an arm, ripped open and stiff,
around her mother’s neck from her final grasp. She sobbed
and complained and demanded from him for her young
life.
Then he understood what had become of them.
And out he went into the black night and weather,
to search with boats and folk. They sailed and searched,
but it was in vain. But out in the day, the fembøring came
drifting in, with its bottom in the air, and a gaping hole
aft on the garboard strake.
And then he also understood who had caused it.
But after the night that Jo’s whole kin was lost, things
changed in the Seaholms. During the day, as long as the
hammering and knocking and planing and riveting sang
about his ears, things went well, and rib by rib the boats
rose as densely as birds on a nesting ground. But as soon
as it grew quiet in the evening, he gained company. His

28
mother wondered and pottered about the house, and opened
and closed drawers and cupboards, and there were heavy
footfalls on the stairs, as if his brothers sought up to their
bedrooms. During the nights, he got not a wink of sleep.
Just like that, little Malfri would come to the door and
sigh and groan.
So he began to lie and reflect and count how many
boats with false garboard strakes he had on the sea. The
longer he calculated, the more draug-boards there were.
Then he jumped and crawled in the black darkness
down to the sheds and boathouses. There he lighted under
the boats, and knocked and followed the garboard strakes
with his mallet, to see if he could find the seventh. But he
did not hear and he did not feel that one plank sounded or
moved any differently from the next. They were all fine
and tight and light with fresh wood, where he scraped
beneath the pitch.
One night, he grew very uneasy about the new seksar-
ing that lay off the quay, ready to sail on the morrow. He
could find no peace; he had to go down to prove its gar-
board strakes. However, while he sat in the boat, leaning
over the side with the lamp, the sea gulped and let out a

29
terribly rotten smell. With that he heard wading on to the
strand, as if many folk were coming ashore there. And he
saw a boat crew going upwards, towards the boathouses.
All were crooked figures, leaning forwards, stretching
their arms before them. Anything they met, both stone
and stick, went right through them, and there was no
sound of a step. Behind them came a new boat crew, large
and small, adults and children, jerking and lurching. And
boatload by boatload they landed on the strand and began
to climb the boathouse path. When the moon came out,
he saw in to their ribcages, and in their faces, their teeth
shone and glistened, as they gaped with open mouths, as
if they had swallowed water. They came in droves and
crowds, one following the others so that they swarmed.
Then Jo understood that here were those, all those he
had lain counting and calculating, and a rage came over
him. He rose in the boat and beat the back of his oilskin
trousers at them and shouted:
“You would have been even more, had Jo not built his
boats!”
But like a silent, icy breeze, they all came down to-
wards him with their hollow eyes. They ground their teeth,

30
and they sighed and groaned, each for its life.
Then Jo set off from the Seaholms in terror.
But his sail slackened, and he floated into dead water.
In the midst of the stillness, there floated a raft of rotten
waterlogged boat planks. All of them were worked and
bowed, and all of them were split and broken; and slime
and green mass and ugliness hung there on them. Dead
hands grasped with white knuckles up around the edges,
but could not hold on. They stretched up out of the water,
and sank again.
Then Jo shook all the reefs out, and sailed and sailed
and drove before the wind. He glanced behind him, to see
if they were after him. Beneath, in the sea, all the dead
hands crawled, and from the fog, they would hack the gaff
in him. But then there came a howling, whistling gust,
and the boat sailed between white, roiling banks of foam.
The weather drew in, dense puffs of foam filled the air,
and the breakers grew greener. During the day he saw the
cormorants far off in the grey weather; during the night
they screeched in his ears. And always the birds were on
the move. And Jo sat and looked out at the all the ungly
cormorants.

31
 Then the fog lifted, and shiny black flies began buzzing
in the air. The sun was bright, and flashed on all the snow
fields ashore. He thought he should recognise the headland
and the strand where he could lay to. Smoke rose from
the gamme up in the snowbank.
In the doorway, he saw the gand-Finn. He went with
his pointed hat up and down and down and up on a gut
thread that went straight through him so that his beaska
swung.
And up there was Seimke.
She looked so old and crooked as she bent over to lay
the reindeer skin out in the sunshine. But then she peered
under her arm so strangely, and as swiftly as a weasel, and
the sun shone and lit up her face and her pitch black hair.
She jumped up, animated, and she shielded her eyes
with her hand, and looked down towards him. The dog
bayed, but she quieted it so that the Finn would not notice
anything.
Then there came over him such a yearning, and he
landed.
He stood there with her, and she threw her hands
above her head and laughed and shook, and she pressed

32
herself against him and wept and begged and spoke and
knew not what she did, and dived into breast and encircled
his neck and kissed and caressed him, and would never
let go.
But the gand-Finn had sensed trouble, and sat already
in his reindeer furs and ground and conjured the gand-
flies to him, so that Jo dared not get between him and the
door.
The Finn was evil.
Since there had been a change of boats all over Nord-
land, and he could no longer sell favourable conditions,
things had gone badly for him. He was now so poor that
soon he would have to go begging. And he had no more
than one she-reindeer left, which was fenced in.
Then Seimke came behind Jo and said that he should
make an offer to buy the reindeer. She put the reindeer
skin around herself and placed herself in the doorway of
the gamme, in the smoke, so that the gand-Finn could only
see the grey skin, and would think that it was the reindeer
they brought in.
Then Jo laid his hand on Seimke’s neck, and began to
make an offer.

33
 The pointed hat bobbed and nodded, and he spat in the
fire so that it hissed. The Finn would not sell his reindeer.
So Jo raised the price.
But the Finn threw ash around himself and threatened
and shouted. The flies swarmed so that his beaska crawled.
When Jo offered as much as a whole pouch of silver,
the Finn peered out of his beaska. Then he put his head
completely under, and joiked and ground until the sev-
enth pouch of silver. Then the gand-Finn laughed until he
shook. He thought that it was an expensive reindeer.
But Jo lifted Seimke up and carried her away, running
down to the boat, and she held the reindeer skin over her,
towards the bank and the Finn.
And from land, they went out to sea.
Seimke was so glad that she clapped her hands to-
gether and leaned against the oars.
The northern lights spread out like a comb, red–green
and fiery, and played and licked at her face. She spoke
into it and waved with her arms, and her eyes sparkled.
She used both tongue and mouth, with quick expressions,
and she exchanged words with it.
As it waned, she laid herself at his breast so that he

34
could feel her warm breath. Her hair lay black against him,
and she was as nice and warm to stroke as the ptarmigan,
when it is afraid and its blood beats.
Jo laid the reindeer skin across Seimke, and the boat
rocked them out into the great sea as if in a cradle.
They sailed into the night, until they could no longer
see headland, holm, or the birds on the reefs.

35