Author's note: The idea of nations being born fascinates me and how the way they were born, the when and where, shapes them. Plus baby Nords are adorable.
The Swedish at the end (as a stand in for Old Norse) has no translation because he doesn't understand her so you don't have to either. I've no idea how correct that Swedish is since I know only bits and pieces of it, but I tried.
There are subtle jokes and references in here that if you've read my other Nordic stories you should be able to pick up on. If not I'll reply to any questions you have to let you in on the punchlines.
Quote sources: I didn't want the sources in the text because I felt they took from the flow, so they are as follows: 1. Lord Byron, 2. Joseph Corned, 3. Plato, 4. Alexander Pope, 5. Caroline Norton.
Ensamhet
Suomi
Among them, but not of them.
They dance while the sun is up, each day less time to spend in its warmth. And when she goes to bed, the moon taking the majestic sun's place, they sing songs inside their homes.
He watches them intently, always delighting in everything they do. They had found him years earlier, a well-told story repeated for each of the new members of their people. He was a child then; he is still a child.
Sometimes they let him come when they take care of the reindeer. He likes the reindeer, how fuzzy and warm they are. When he buries his face in their fur the men laugh, lifting him high and carrying him back.
One of the women makes him a new gákti to wear, a kind Sámi who takes care of him now; no one will tell him where the elderly woman who had taken care of him previously has gone. But this one smiles brightly for him, holds him when he's cold or when he cries, feeds him and cares for him.
Tonight wind howls and it scares him, yet when he shakes the woman she does not wake. He runs for the man he had spent the day with, who tells him to stay while he checks on the woman. The man's wife holds the little boy close but he still feels alone in her arms. He lives with these people but he knows he does not belong; he is different.
Ísland
Who knows what true loneliness is —
not the conventional word, but the naked terror?
It's cold and the snow blows furiously in the wind, lashing at his exposed cheeks as he tries to cover them with his hands. But there's really no point because then his hands are what are being attacked on this harsh winter day.
He's alone. He's always been alone. And it's so lonely, he doesn't know who he himself is or where he came from, doesn't remember anything besides waking one morning in the summer by water.
He eats fish and sometimes things from plants that taste nice. He's learned which ones taste funny and make him ill. He doesn't like being ill.
Sometimes he stumbles upon this large thing of water, or watches tall things smoke a little, gray clouds rising up from them the way his breath rises from his mouth in the cold. He doesn't really understand why but he tries to give them all names the best he can, names with sounds he can pronounce. His voice is foreign to his ear, no one to speak with. So far he likes the « m » sound the most.
Most days he sits by the water and wonders if this is it, if this is all he'll ever have: hunger and loneliness and sometimes being so tired he just lays down and naps where he is for days, no reason to get up when dreams are so nice. The weather is turning cold and he's never been through the cold, only remembers the warm. It's not so nice anymore, not that it was ever that warm to begin with.
A dark bird flies by overhead and he wishes that maybe there'd be one other person in the world to come sit with him. Then it wouldn't be so bad.
Danmark
Whosoever is delighted in solitude,
is either a wild beast or a god.
In the cool running water he watches another boy with light hair and eyes the color of the sky. When he moves his hand one way, the water boy moves his hand too. And when he delights in that the boy delights too.
He likes this boy trapped in the water, the one who keeps him company on days where he can do nothing more than cry because he's hungry or cold or tired or wants someone beyond the water boy. The water boy takes no offense to that except to cry too when he looks at him; he apologizes for upsetting his friend.
But today the sun is bright and the air warm and so he plays with the water boy. He runs to get a stick and when he comes back, the water boy too has found a stick. A rock, a rock; a leaf, a leaf. He searches high and low for a flower that he likes and smells nice, one that surely even the water boy could not find. And yet while he was gone the water boy too had found the flower.
One day he thought he'd seen in the distance another somebody, besides him and the water boy, but he could have been wrong. After that he'd started trying to figure things out and realized that the water boy did what he did, as if he had created the water boy like some sort of giver of life.
And when he walks away from the water, he takes the water boy's life too.
Norge
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.
A cave, one of the voices had called it when he'd come to under a blanket made of leaves that stayed together as they laid over him. A cave, and that was a fire so close to him, warming his naked body as he pulled the blanket over him.
Outside the wind howled, or so said another voice to the first one. A storm, a bad one, and how had the boy managed to get so high up the mountain in it?
Was he what they called the boy? Was that what he was? All his life he had been without another like him, though when he went where it gets warmer and the sun stays longer he heard voices drifting up as if there were others. When he had gone to look no one had been there; had he imagined them?
Not that he cares either way. He didn't need the phantom people who could have waited if they too had wanted him the way he'd wanted them, wanted someone else. He had screamed at the top of his lungs in the hopes that they too would hear him, and they had to have heard him, just as surely as he had heard them. They had left though, without him.
He didn't need to get involved in the various people around, a third voice complains. He has them now and they would take care of him.
But by now he's fallen back to sleep to the gentle sound of the fire crackling.
Sverige
Until I truly loved, I was alone.
She smiles, holding out a hand. Her skin has lines in it where it sags like his ragged cloak about his small body, something he had found in the cold and worn ever since though it is by far too big for him. Even with the weather warming and its large size he will not take it off, too afraid of losing his only protection.
She takes another step forward and he retreats a little at that, holding his hands over his face. She smells of food and in the distance he can see the warm fire that buildings were constructed around, can hear people laughing and singing and speaking. Her hands take his, palm to palm, and his racing heart skips a beat as she crouches down to look him the eye.
"Hej," she says. He blinks. "Är du ensam?" He blinks again. "Jag heter Idunn. Vad heter du?"
That's when he cries because he doesn't understand what she's saying, doesn't know her words he so wants to understand, her language he wants to speak with someone. All his life he has been alone and frightened, a forager with no one. His heart hurts; he slams his hands again his chest to make it stop, but it's always hurt and he hates that. He just wants his heart to not pain him any longer.
Two frail arms encircle him, holding him tight so he cannot hit himself. "Du får heta Björn," she whispers, "för just nu är du liten, men när du växer upp kommer du att vara stor som en björn."
"Björn," he repeats and his voice hurts; he hasn't tried to speak in so long, to imitate the words he has heard from others as he watches them in the distance.
"Björn," she sighs, looking him in the face. "Min Björn." She takes his hand and leads him towards the fire; his heart doesn't hurt so much anymore.