The Iron Age by Arja Kajermo: an extract

The sun never set on our arctic idyll in the summer. The “nightless nights” were bright and relentless. Those who were able for it worked all the hours God gave them to bring in the hay and the barley from the fields. I spent many hours on my own in the house, talking to myself and my rag doll, lying on the floor whispering stories into the dark cracks between floorboards. The buzzing of the flies and their soft hairy feet crawling across my face made me sleepy... I woke when a shadow fell over me. I knew straight away something strange was about because of the smell. I looked up at the creature in black standing over me. She was as wide as she was tall. Her skirts went down all the way to the floor. She wore a black coat although it was in the middle of summer. She seemed to wear any amount of layers of clothes. She was scary!

The smell was the worst. Rank, musty, mouldy, fishy. I ran in behind the stone oven and peered out at her. The creature parked herself on the bench by the door. She kept muttering and drooling. She was not leaving until she got coffee, she hissed. She was here for the day, so. Her bare feet were green because she walked in the grass beside the road to save on shoe leather, like all witches. She carried her boots on a string around her neck. The dust sparkled around her in the sunlight. Or was it ... electricity?

I stayed behind the stone oven and covered my eyes. She had been to our house before. Father said she was a witch – a noita-akka. He had once seen with his own eyes how she had rid a house of spooky noises. She had caught the noises in a leather purse and carried it down to the lake. She had said the magic words that would drown the noises and when the purse was thrown on the water it had sizzled and shot across before it sank. There were no noises in that house after that.

This was backwardness and superstition, Father said. He did not believe in this nonsense. He said best not to have anything to do with the witch. Sometimes it is best to forget what you have seen with your own eyes.

I closed my eyes for a long time hoping she would go away. Every time I stuck my head out from behind the stone oven I covered my face with my hands and peered out between my fingers. She was still there, but she seemed angrier every time I looked.

After what felt like a whole day she stood up and stamped her feet and muttered something incomprehensible and left, slamming the door.

When Grandmother came back from the field to start the midday meal for the harvesters, I told her. She sat down heavily. This is bad news, she said wiping her hands on her apron, bad news indeed.

And bad was indeed to follow. The next morning Mother came running in out of breath and upset. She said that our two cows had been hurt in the far field. She had gone to milk them and found they had broken the fence. They were in the next field that belonged to the neighbours. Each had a piece of skin ripped off from their flanks. A piece of skin the size of her palm.

Father choked on his coffee. He jumped to his feet with a curse and made across the room to take his rifle down. He ran towards the door roaring. Then he hesitated and put the rifle down by the door in the porch. He told Tuomas and Tapio not to go next or near it or he would give them such a hiding that they would not remember their first, middle or last name.

He ran out and Mother ran after him.

Grandmother sat down and we stood around her and asked her what now.

Tuomas and Tapio kept looking over at the rifle. We waited. Father came back and had a row with Grandmother. If he had the right tools that fence would have been mended long ago. Grandmother said that a useless man blames his tools.

We went behind the stove oven to hide and covered our ears. Mother came back after milking and put the coffee on. Father said that if the witch came back to try and nail those pieces of skin to the barn door, or to do some other trickery, she would get a bullet in the arse.
Extract from The Iron Age by Arja Kajermo, illustrated by Susanna Kajermo Törner, published by Tramp Press on April 27th, 2017. It is launched by Rick O'Shea at the Workman's Club, Dublin at 6.30pm

Susanna Kajermo Törner on illustrating The Iron Age

When Arja Kajermo asked me if I wanted to illustrate her novel The Iron Age I happily said yes. She is my aunt, and I feel a strong connection to the story. I have heard several of the anecdotes in it, told in various ways, by my Dad when I grew up. I have always been interested in the different ways people tell or remember things. This is something I use in my work as an artist.

When I draw I use pencils of varying softness, but I also like to put in details of colour in some of the pictures, to create contrast or to highlight some detail. When working with the illustrations I didn’t know whether they were going to be printed in colour or in black and white only. I just drew them the way I liked.

Since my art in general often relates to childhood and storytelling, and since drawing is my main medium, I felt comfortable working with the illustrations. Arja gave me some old photographs for inspiration, and I also had my Dad’s, rather thin photo album to look at. I mostly used the photos to look at how people dressed back then. For example, both the father’s and the card shark’s leather boots are drawn from a photo with one of the ‘rich relatives’ wearing similar boots. The illustration that is the most photo-based turned out to be the drawing of the little girl standing by the lake. I tried to make illustrations that would work together with the text but also as separate pictures that could somehow tell a story of their own. An example of this is the drawing of the girl and the grandmother walking to their sleepy neighbour Miina. I liked the absurd description of how all the pine trees hade been chopped down to prevent depression, so I put in the tree stubs in my illustration. But I also added the underground view with the roots and the skull of a dinosaur. This is something that a child could be fantasising about while walking and it puts in an extra dimension to the illustration - something that isn’t in the text.

I appreciate pictures that have both seriousness or a sort of darkness, combined with humour or absurdity in them. That is something I strive for in my art. Arja’s novel has all of these components and so I had a really good time working with it.