The Reindeer Hunters: A Novel

Book 2: The Sisters Bells Trilogy

by Lars Mytting, Deborah Dawkin

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

The second novel in the internationally bestselling Sister Bells trilogy, an epic, moving, and gloriously told historical novel following The Bell in the Lake, an Indie Next pick

The second novel in Lars Mytting’s powerful and compelling Sister Bells trilogy, The Reindeer Hunters is both a sequel to The Bell in the Lake and a stand-alone novel. Set again in fictional Butangen, Norway, where the story of the conjoined twin sisters Halfrid and Gunhild Hekne provides the mythical and mystical undergirding, The Reindeer Hunters unfolds around the extraordinary tapestry that portrays the sisters’ vision of Doomsday. After their death in 1613, the tapestry was given to the village church and lost at some point over the centuries.
      
The year is 1903. Twenty-two years after the events of The Bell in The Lake, Astrid Hekne’s son, Jehans, is now a young man. Driven out by his family, he lives on a homestead in the mountains near the village of Butangen, where he relishes the freedom of his life apart, fishing and hunting for his livelihood. One August morning, Jehans kills a massive reindeer and at the same moment encounters an enigmatic hunter . . .
      
At the new church in Butangen, Pastor Kai Schweigaard is living with the consequences of his past betrayal––arranging the dismantling and sale of the stave church––including deaths and the loss of the church’s mystical sister bells. Kai becomes obsessed with finding the ancient tapestry woven by the conjoined sisters in whose memory the bells were cast, with the hope that the tapestry will bring him redemption.
       
Despite the unraveling legends from the past that continue to haunt these people, they must figure out how to look to the future. A magnificent story about love, sorrow, and courage, as well as taming waterfalls and the first flash of electric light in the village night, The Reindeer Hunters is a grand and thrilling novel about what it takes to live in and embrace a new era.
       

 

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Release date: November 22, 2022

Publisher: The Overlook Press

Print pages: 448

Sample

Forged by Dwarves

The River Laugen was frozen and the weather was perfect for travelling by sledge, so it would take Eirik Hekne and his daughters just three days to get from Butangen to Dovre. The year was 1611 and only the roughest cart roads ran through the valley, but when the river was iced over these trips were made easier and even invigorating. Folk whose paths they crossed in the snowstorm thought the two sisters sat so close under their reindeer skin to keep warm, but they never ventured down from the sleigh when the horses stopped to rest, and when asked how old they were, they answered that they were both born in 1595, but that Halfrid was born in the summer and Gunhild closer to Christmas, and as these over-inquisitive folk gawped after them, the girls and their father travelled on, bursting into laughter as soon as their sledge was out of earshot. It was a laugh with a dual clang, absolute abandon around a core of selfdenial, but containing less hurt than the mean snicker when one sister wanted something and the other told her she could “go fetch it” herself.

They headed on northwards and as darkness fell they stopped at a farm in Sel, where the Heknes had acquaintances. Here the two girls twisted themselves out of the sledge and four feet landed on the ground at once. Then the first thing they did was to tighten their apron – so wide it went round both their waists – before they limped into a log cabin with an uncommonly wide bed.

Next morning they were up with the sun, though it vanished the instant they entered the Rosten Gorge, where everything lay in shade and the mountain walls were so jagged they might have been hacked out by an angry, slighted giant. The sun never reached the valley floor, and it was said that a summer’s day was no warmer than an October night, and that the only creatures to live here were those who neither needed, nor tolerated, the light. All about them the mountains plunged into the seething river below, where the waters that never froze were visible only as foam. Eirik Hekne chivvied the horses up steep slopes, through deep snow and between fallen rocks. Father, horses, daughters, sledge and all went white with rime from the spray of the river, whose roar was so loud that nothing could be heard, and there was no need to say anything, as the only thing on anyone’s mind in the Rosten Gorge was how much further it went.

Then the terrain flattened out, the sun reappeared, and the mood of both horses and travellers lightened as they reached Lie farm and were welcomed by the girls’ aunt. She had been present for their protracted birth, which had resulted in her sister’s death, when the womenfolk had flocked to see the marvel that had been squirming in Astrid Hekne’s womb: two baby girls joined at the hip.

They were sixteen years old now and going to stay in a cabin on the slopes opposite Lie, suitably remote from prying folk, on a cart road few ever used. Newly built, just for them, it was a fine, wind-tight log cabin, with smoothly hewn inner walls that gleamed yellow and smelled of fresh-cut pine, one room to sleep in and another to work in. And they saw to their own needs, making the usual jokes, as when Halfrid asked Gunhild to put on more logs and she replied: “Aye, if ye go ’n’ fetch the water.”

From a very young age the twins had astonished and delighted the Hekne family with their elaborate weaves. But the folk of Butangen and the surrounding villages kept to simple, homely designs, and Eirik wanted to give his daughters the centuries-old skills he knew still existed further north. Living with their aunt, they could meet the oldest mistresses of the craft, from Bøverdalen to Lesja and the villages between. Usually old maids, bent-backed and a little grouchy, muttering and exacting, these were the bearers of hundreds of years of knowledge about wool, plant dyes and patterns that would come to be known by names such as skybragd – cloudburst – and lynild – lightning fire – made in ways that could not be conveyed in either the spoken or the written word, but only by sitting close and watching for weeks on end, and then repeating them over and over.

Unbeknown to themselves, many of the North Gudbrandsdal womenfolk were among the most skilful weavers in all Europe. They sat, day in and day out, at their upright looms, warp threads dangling in bundles from their stone weights. In other lands across Europe what the Døla folk called Smettvev – glide weaves – were called Flemish tapestries, and their production was governed by rules and laws, and regarded as the sole preserve of men. But opinions held elsewhere were no more interesting to them than what happened on the moon, and if anyone had voiced any objection, they’d soon have learned that the womenfolk of Gudbrandsdal, rich or poor, had no tradition of servility and could make a veritable hell for even the most placid man.

Month after month the Hekne sisters were visited by their teachers. The daylight hours were used for weaving, the evenings for spinning before the fireplace because the warmth softened the grease in the wool. The girls were taught the rarest methods of plant-dyeing, and then in the half-light they were shown – so it was said – weaves from pre-Christian times, pictures that depicted ancient Norse legends through mysterious symbols and the figures of shape-shifters and creatures that were half beast and half human.

But these lessons belonged to the night, and in the morning light the girls sat ready once more to weave pictures of the stories of Christendom, side by side as always, with that wide, beautifully embroidered apron covering their laps, their nimblefingeredness already manifest in the myriad hair braids they had made for each other in the dawn, and the sadness they had to bear was not yet mature or was something they had already accepted.

The old women soon discovered how quickly and precisely the two worked. With their unique four-handed method the sisters could make the shuttle glide faster than anyone, and all who saw them understood why the word vevkjerring also meant ‘spider’. Their teachers noticed the peculiar connection they shared. Their reflexes in tight synchrony, their every thought as tangible as a shadow passing across the other, when one had an idea, the other was instantly there to help realise it. But when they were at odds, everything stopped and they worked against each other, so that one sister could do nothing without the other immediately blocking or wrecking it, and, each being able to predict the other’s countermoves and plan her own, there was never any resolution or outlet for their anger, just a stalemate, a violent tussle of hands and arms that the old women had to avert if the beginnings of a beautiful weave would not be spoiled.

The sisters rarely worked their own designs. The mysterious images for which they would later find fame, and which would reach perfection in the Hekne Weave, their depiction of Skråpånatta – the Night of the Scourge, when the earth would be scoured bare and both the living and dead swept to their doom – had not yet entered their imagination. All winter they wove the three kings and the wise and unwise virgins, and rejoiced when the spring of 1612 came, followed by a summer that was still at its height one Sunday in late August.

A Sunday that was to be etched in history. If it had been a Saturday, everything would have been different, since it was on Sundays that the villagers gathered in the church. Everyone except the two sisters, who because of their defect avoided any public gathering.

Which was why they were unaware that the sheriff of Dovre had done the unthinkable: he had marched in and interrupted Mass, and not just that, he had not left his battleaxe in the weapons porch, but had taken it up to the pulpit and struck the floor three times with its shaft, and declared that Norway was at war. From that very moment.

Several hundred Scottish mercenaries had come ashore in Romsdalen and had passed the villages of Lesja on their way to Dovre. The sheriff told them that message batons – budstikker – had been sent north and south in the valley and along the side-valleys to rally the menfolk in defence of their land. The pastor declared Mass over and the church was emptied. As the day progressed each farm contributed one fighter, and down in the valley farm after farm was abandoned as folk fled to the seters – the upland dairy farms – often leaving behind a lonely tethered calf in the yard. Folk knew that soldiers always expropriated what they needed of food, shelter and women, but rumour spread that these Scots were in league with the devil himself, that they slaughtered anyone in their path and burned all the houses, and had dogs that tore runaways to pieces, and cut off the hooves of the milking cows and let them stumble about bleeding just for fun, which was why it was best to tether a calf in the yard and leave all the doors open, in the hope there would be enough food and space for them to spare the farm itself.

The Hekne girls stayed, however. Whether to protect a valuable weave, or because being so slow-moving they would make easy prey if the enemy followed them to the seters, or perhaps because they secretly had no wish to flee, nobody was well enough acquainted with them to know.

Next day a rowdy troop of more than three hundred soldiers passed through Dovre. The dogs first, then officers on horseback, wearing helmets, pistols and swords, the rest a motley crew of press-ganged foot soldiers and young boys, followed by a few women, gunsmiths and saddlers, and a rearguard of seasoned veterans who chivvied any stragglers on.

The soldiers chose a little cart road some way up the valley, and soon they were marching directly outside the Hekne sisters’ cabin. They must have heard the tramping of soldiers and horses and the general hum of talking. Almost the entire line of soldiers had gone past when an officer stopped his horse and issued an order. Two young men were given swords, and stepping out of line they approached the log cabin while the rearguard looked on.

They entered without knocking.

Stayed inside for a remarkably long time.

So long that the officer was about to send some men after them, but then they emerged with swords lowered and two leather bags filled with drinking water.

What was said between those four in the cabin that day, only they would know. What is almost certain is that, like most young soldiers, they were probably very nervous and easily scared, and they might have wondered at first if they had stumbled upon the mythical Norns sitting at their loom – the mythical sisters of fate who spun, wove and cut the thread of each human being’s life. After all, the old Norse legends were still very much alive on the islands from which they hailed.

The four of them might also have been astonished that they understood each other’s language. The officers were from the Scottish mainland, but their men were from the Orkneys and Shetland, which had been inhabited by Norwegians for more than six hundred years, and where the Norse dialect still prevailed even though the islands were now under Scottish rule.

The army travelled on, and set up camp that evening at Kråkvolden, an hour’s march south of the Hekne cabin, and they lit campfires and settled into drinking and wrestling, customs inherited from their Norwegian ancestors.

What the Norwegians did not know was that these soldiers had no plans to conquer Norway. They were headed for Sweden to serve as mercenaries to the Swedish king in the Kalmar War. They had not burned any farms or slaughtered folk on their way, but rumours of their wickedness had served them well. Particularly since almost all the soldiers were unarmed and few had ever seen combat before; indeed, most were poor youngsters recruited under duress, some bought out of jail, some simply press-ganged.

Colonel Ramsay was commander of the forces, and serving under him was Lieutenant-Colonel Sinclair, who burned gunpowder in his palm each morning and read the smoke to see what dangers the day would bring. Not that they feared the Norwegians. They were marching across Norway because it was less risky than taking ships through the Skagerrak. Norway was a poor and wretched land, a barren wilderness whose malnourished inhabitants melted away at the mere sight of strangers – wasn’t that what their journey had proved thus far? Not an enemy in sight!

But news spread slowly then, and what Ramsay and Sinclair did not know was that King Christian of Denmark had lost faith in the use of mercenaries to defend this cold and rugged land in the north, and had imposed order just eight years previously, by issuing a leidang, which not only made the local farmers duty-bound to provide soldiers but required each farm to own a gun. Calls to arms were carried by budstikker along strictly defined routes. Also known as hærpiler, or war-arrows, these message batons were scorched at one end and marked with a hangman’s loop at the other, a reminder that any farmer who failed to uphold the leidang would be hanged from the roof beam of his own house, while it and his entire farm were set ablaze around him.

The men gathered.

By Tuesday the hærpiler had reached the remotest corners of Gudbrandsdal, and five hundred peasant soldiers were at Kringen, just a day’s march south for the Scots. Here, the mountains plunged straight down into the River Laugen and a small, crooked path was their only way through. When the Scots reached it on Wednesday, it proved so narrow they were forced to march single file, and as their army stretched to its full length, a shot rang out and Lieutenant-Colonel Sinclair fell. The shot that hit him in the forehead that day was a jacket button of heirloom silver, chewed into a bullet shape and fired from a two-metre-long wheel-lock rifle by a huntsman from Ringebu, who knew that only silver could kill a man in league with the devil. The only consolation for Sinclair was that for centuries he would be considered the leader of the Scots because he rode at the front.

The Scots were attacked from above with rifles, spears, long axes and scythes. Three hours later, half the mercenaries were dead. Only a few Norwegians fell. The survivors were taken south and imprisoned in a large barn. The sheriffs ordered that they be taken to Akershus Fortress in Kristiania and handed over to the king’s men. But it was August, the busiest month of the harvest, so as the liquor was passed around that night there were mutterings, since to accompany the prisoners that far would require a large contingent of guards and supplies, and would take so long that the grain and hay would rot in the fields back at home and lead to winter famine, and was that really all the thanks they could expect from the king for defending the land?

Next morning began with various escape attempts and quarrels between guards and prisoners, then quarrels between the guards themselves, and culminated with the prisoners being led out of the barn two by two and executed. Either shot or speared.

In the silence afterwards came the terror and shame.

God, help us. What have we done. Almighty God. What have we done?

An internalised horror. Over the brutality that was within them.

That we could do this. Even I. Even you.

Eighteen men escaped death. Three were taken to Akershus, where the incident was recorded by the governor general and the file duly closed. It was a military triumph followed by a massacre, and nobody liked to be reminded of the bloodbath that had taken place outside the barn. Eighty years passed before anything more was written about the Scottish invasion. It was then given fresh life in poetry and song, depicted as a wholly heroic deed. In one song however, which was quickly forgotten because it told of the massacre, there was a verse which described a young boy who had been spared. He had broken free, and, running towards the spear of his own accord, he had said in Norwegian:

When God gathers and reckons the dead, then count me a friend of Halfrid Hekne.

It is just possible that this was the selfsame boy who came north to Lie a few days after the battle. He had a bad knife wound and offered to work for free in exchange for food and lodgings. His brother had been killed at Kringen, they were farmhands from the Hebrides who had sought work in Hjaltland when the officers came and press-ganged some of the local youngsters, which they had no legal right to do, but they were armed, which the boys were not. The sisters believed his story, and let him go about with a scythe and an axe and a hoe and a shovel. Each day he carried water and firewood and food up to the cabin. But exactly what happened early next summer was never divulged. The girls’ aunt managed to keep the incident hidden from the local gossips, and the only person beyond Norddalen to be told what had happened was Eirik Hekne, when he arrived that Christmas to take his girls home, and by then their wounds were almost healed. Those that could bleed, that is.

The aunt reported that screams had come from the Hekne cabin, screams from both girls, so shrill and intense that they could be heard from down at the farm. They had run up and discovered the twin sisters bloodied and in a state of terror. But neither would say what had happened, only that they had cut themselves and that nobody else was to blame. There was a huge to-do and the wound was difficult to dress, and it was late afternoon before folk noticed that the Scots boy had vanished, having sneaked enough food to get him to the coast. But even stranger were the telltale signs that he had actually returned to the stabbur – the farm’s old two-storey food storehouse – and replaced some of the food. This was taken as proof that he had originally packed for two, but had then abandoned the plan and his fellow runaway.

The wound turned nasty and the sisters were struck down with a fever, which they only survived, so their aunt believed, because they had cut themselves with the knife they used for their weaving. This knife had been given them by a woman from Bøverdalen, and was said to have special powers. Not only was the knife jordfunnet – that is, lost on snow-free ground and rediscovered after having been long forgotten – but it was sharp enough to be dvergsmidd – forged by the magical dwarf blacksmiths deep in their underground caves. Knives of this sort were found in every village and passed from farm to farm to heal sick animals and folk, and it was these magical healing properties which the aunt believed had saved the girls.

A new silence entered between the sisters after this episode. They began, for the first time ever, to work on separate weaves, the first two of which were said to depict the things they’d seen when they were delirious with fever. Some folk reckoned the boy had returned to them one night, leaving something behind for Halfrid, something she later held dearer than all else, though nobody ever found out what it was. Their father took them home, and beneath the ice on which they travelled, the River Laugen streamed towards the sea with yet another secret from Gudbrandsdal.

Back home again in Butangen, they moved into the newly built farmhouse at Hekne. They had an extra loom installed in the room for a work that would occupy them for the rest of their lives. The Hekne Weave was given to the church when they died and was the most elaborate and enigmatic of all their works. Later, after the Sister Bells were cast and named in their memory, the villagers began to realise the power of their inseparability, for just as the girls had been inseparable, so too were the bells. But the wanderlust that lurked below the surface of this inseparability was nigh on invisible to anyone not privy to what happened in Norddalen. Likewise, there were few who had any notion of the powers that were unleashed at the sisters’ deathbed, when Gunhild folded Halfrid’s hands in her own, and said:

“Ye shall shuttle wide, and I shall shuttle close, and when the weave be woven we two shall both return.”