nordic lore

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Elsa’s Song, Dec 8th 2021

Nejla sat with her hands wrapped around a fresh cinnamon scented oat milk cappuccino, in what felt like another dimension.

The Crew – her band name for Tuva, Kriya and Starlight – lay sprawled out and curled up between the crackling open fire place and the front door.

The blizzard had quietened down. Now there were just grey, plump clouds dropping snowflakes in a dancing slow motion.

Ricky sat at the sturdy wooden table across from Nejla. How she and The Crew had ended up this close to Pinehome with the train was beyond her comprehension. 

One moment they had been engulfed by the blizzard. Which was not a bad thing. There were few things she loved more than the cold wind and snow touching her cheeks. 

“Embrace! Embrace! Embrace! Align!” had travelled through her mind. As she said the spell out loud she had felt very powerful from within.

Seconds later , the sound of someone whistleing, followed by The Crew howling in reply. A black labrador appeared as the sun broke through the storm making the snow flurry dissipate.

“Dio!”, Nejla could not believe her eyes. “Dio! Where is Ricky?”

“Here!”, Ricky’s voice reached her before she could even see him approaching on skis. “Welcome to Buffalo Land!” He almost fell forwards as he swung his arms up to greet her with a hug which made the skis move backwards. “Soulsister, soulsister. So good to see you.”

“So, what really brought you here this time, sister dear?” Ricky reached for the sugar. He liked his coffee sweet to the point of it being sugar with a bit of coffee.

“The Adventurer. Storulven. Spells.” Nejla shrugged her shoulders. “Not entirely sure, but it’s definitely something to do with those three. And maybe more. I felt, and feel, instructed to take one step at a time, not envisioning anything behind those steps, just listening. I know this was big one. I had some sort of inner knowing telling me I had to go north, in the direction of White Buffalo Land. So, here we are.”

“Here we are”, Ricky echoed. “Listening to the light.”

Cecilia Götherström, December 8th 2021 

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Elsa’s Song, Dec 7th 2021

“Can we travel through time with our questions? Is love alive? How many “out there” questions can you have lingering in your head in the space between waking and sleeping? Love can definitely travel through time though. I just know it.”

Watering eyes are glancing out across the landscape. Scarf masking mouth and nose, keeping the blizzard out. Beanie pulled tightly over eyebrows and ears. Nejla has been walking for what feels like hours but it can’t be more than fifteen minutes.

The train had stopped in the middle of the night. A huge tree, an ancient oak, had fallen across the tracks taking part of the overhead line with it as it went down, the conductor had reported over the intercom. The train could not get any further until the tracks were cleared and the overhead lines repaired.

Fortunately Nejla had booked a sleeping carriage for herself, Kriya, Tuva and Starlight.  It was some sight for the passengers boarding the train at the later stations as they passed through the narrow corridors on the way to their carriages. There, in coach  28 D, E, F & G, a woman reading in the top bunk, a husky, a malamute and a samoyed sprawled out on the two lower bunks.

The blizzard moved in less than an hour after the announcement, making it impossible for the railway repair crew to climb the poles to fix the overhead lines until the storm had died down.

The passengers were kept warm with nutmeg spiced gluhwein, steaming hot soup, extra blankets and hot water bottles. Saved by the fact that the kitchen on the train still ran its stove on gas.

Seven hours in to the wait, the dogs really needed to get out. For some reason Nejla had decided to strap on both her own as well as Kriya and Tuva’s backpacks. Starlight was a little too slender for those dogpacks so she’d gotten a smaller one. The only one available in the store that day was a glittery version, originally made for “glamorous poodles’ and not for huskies. But hey, her name was Starlight, so why not!

They stepped out of the train, Nejla planning to follow the tracks ahead, past the fallen tree and check  what the situation was. 

The same insight had guided her to attach the dogs harnesses to each other with the longer skijöring lines as well as attach two of them to her own skijörning harness.

Lumps of ice are beginning  to form on her eyelashes.

Cecilia Götherström, December 7th 2021  

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Elsa’s Song, Dec 3rd 2021

“There’s a tree in my house and voice in my heart. They are speaking to each other. They speak of times past, of way beyond time and space, and they speak of Here.

Why is it that we try so hard to belong, when that is what we do in the first place? Belong. Like a play of words. Be. And Long. Long to Be. Belong. Is it just a matter of Be? I will try. No, I will do! I will give all my might to Be! “.

“Hmmmmmmmmmm…. Not sure that is the right way to go about it”, the spark which had arrived in the morning dust twirled close to Nejla’s shoulder. “You know, giving something all your might is do-ing, which sure ain’t Be-ing.”

Nejla chuckled as she sighed. There she was. Caught again in the act of making too big a deal of something which was already in place. What was it Storulven had taught her again?

“Uncover, uncover, uncover…”, he had sung like a mantra every time she’d gone in to what he called her “dragging mode”.

“Oh, that’s a good one! Every time I feel the dragging mode towing me here or there, which longing or Be-longing are parts of, I just say “uncover, uncover, uncover” to figure out what is really there!”

“You’re getting closer little star”, the dancing spark whistled. “How about a spell?”

“A spell?” Najla looked puzzeled.

“Uncover! Uncover! Uncover! Be!”The spark pirouetted so fast across the living room floor from the energy of the words that she took off and had to one-eighty her way back.

Nejla sensed Storulven’s presence. An etheric nod of approval. She laughed.

“I love it! Uncover! Uncover! Uncover! Be!”

“Wooow, human heart.” The spark came to a halt. “That went pretty fast. Now you may know my name. I am known as Isa. From the kingdom of Isness. Which, of course, is situated here, there and everywhere once your eyes are opened and you speak to trees.”

“Of course”, Nejla smiled. “Of course”…

Cecilia Götherström, December 3rd 2021

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Elsa’s Song, Dec 2nd 2021

“ In a gentle way you can shake the world”

– Mahatma Gandhi

The darkness of the winter morning holds a cocoon. Nejla embraces the coolness of the bedroom air mixed with the warm welcoming of her worn out snowboard-socks.

Minutes later, cup of warm team with milk and honey in hand, her mother’s knitted scarf wrapped around her waist and another one around her shoulders, she is in the garden. Inhaling the new day. It is ceremony time.

The morning star is not alone in the sky this time of the year. You could say there’s a family, even a tribe of a truly interconnected web of morning stars. One shining brighter than the next, yet noone stealing the light from the other. Every single light source enhancing each other. Every breath a pulsation of light against the soft darkness of the multiverse.

“There are stars which are no stars, and there are skies which are no skies. There are no terms and conditions on creation. Just because we have named something from our perspective, looking in one direction, does not mean that is the way it is.”, Nejla spoke, pondering, to the winter air.

“What would it take to be a sadhu?” Nejla thought to herself. “What would it take to be a choice. A choice to just experience the here and now? To stop, to stay, to watch through the veils. Noticing that sometimes they are sturdy blinds and other times the velis dissipate in front of your eyes as you observe them? To be someone not going anywhere physically and ambitionally all the time, but expanding from within?”

“It would only take that. A choice. The choice. You see, magic is a choice too.” 

The voice seemed to come from the winter breeze. In the shifting light of the morning sun approaching from the east and the dense snow clouds moving in from the north a little sparkle started to manifest right in front of her eyes.

December 2nd 2021, Cecilia Götherström

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Kringlans Kalender 2020. Sacred. Part 20. Dec 20th.

“Stars shining right above you. Night breezes seem to whisper “I love you”. Birds singing in the full of pine needles tree. Dream a little dream of me, humptidumptidumtidum…..”

Barry was singing his way ascending the last piece of the slope ending at the plateau between the two mountain peaks.

“Not sure those are the true lyrics”, Marcus commented. “Think it should be a sycamore tree”.

“Come on! You can’t expect a polar bear to have any clue about what a sycamore tree is!” Barry shook his large head at Marcus.

The wind picked up. It came out of nowhere. All of a sudden there was a huge whirlwind of feathers, large and small, silvery, white, grey, golden, being blown around in a ferocious dance. 

Storulven and Grey signalled the whole pack to a halt.

“The Whispers don’t take the singing jokes lightly today”, Grey spoke. “Usually The Whispers have the greatest sense of humour as they are totally egoless. It is just that right now we are really in The Stillness and Silence territory and here singing has the greatest of magnanimous purposes”.

“What is he talking about?”, Marcus asked the wolf next to him. A gangly little red and white male called Everything.

“Dreams”, Everything replied. “You see we are all made of dreams, sung in to existence by The Whispers”.

Storulven continued;

“Vayu The Wind Whispering Wolf is waiting for us. He’s the keeper of Dreams. The everlasting pieces. His time is now. So is all of ours. Right now. We are here to sing all that Sacred Fierceness in to existence. First the dreams need to be dreamed. I believe Samantha and Josephiel begun the knitting of that some days ago. We all will put our own spice in the mix. Josephiel The Cloud Shrouding Dragon and Snow will filligraphically project them through the sacred geometry in the skies between the two peaks of Moonstone and Granite. Then The Whispers will speak. No clue what they will say. What they will sing. We will be the chorus. We will all Be.”

“Let’s get inside the woods before we are blown off the slope by all these feathers”, Grey turned his head to point in his wolfy way towards the thin line of pine trees between them and the open glen behind.

“Star Seeker, Star Seeker, find your Star, find your Light. Star Seeker, Star Seeker find your Light, find your Star.” 

Was that the feather-filled wind singing Marcus wondered?

“Star Seeker, Star Seeker, feet on the Earth, Heart in The Heavens, Star Seeker, find your Star where she resides”.

Yes, the wind was singing.

  • Cecilia Götherström, Dec 20th 2020.
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Kringlans Kalender 2020. Sacred. Part 15. Dec 15th

Stillness. 

It was still.

Silence.

The Sound of Silence.

You could hear it.

You could feel it.

In your bones.

In your soul.

Such peace. Such lightness. Such a sense of being carried, held, embraced.

It had arrived with the golden-dust-sparkle-carriage. A flowing cloud of gold dragons. Many, many, much smaller than Josephiel and Mama D. They were everywhere, yet nowhere. 

They were all around in the cave, on the slope at the opening where Samantha and Vayu were sitting, on top of the ridge above the cave – yet it felt like they were not really taking up any space. They were space.

“This is the joy, the magic, the gold of Stillness and Silence”, Vayu sighed.

“Splendid, isn’t it?” Josephiel added. “Realizing the space we all inhabit is filled with the magic sparkle dust of these golden dragons, every cell and non-cell encircled, this magic gold is what is All. We see them as dragons right now, as dragon energy is the one energy which can carry magic, peace, serenity, truth – in other words Life inside Life – in this dimension, and quite a few other dimensions too for that matter.”

“Then why are dragons being slain in some of the old stories and myths, portrayed as threats and dangers to humans?” Samantha asked. “All of you who I have met are just gorgeous, powerful in a sacred-life-energy-carrying way. I don´t get it.”

“There was a time when magic, connection and knowing the secrets became considered wrong my dear. Dragons were the first to be banished from the magic of the myths. The myths were changed in to legends. Along the line wolves were added to the long list of sacred connections removed from you humans. More legends added. And the rest is history.”

“It is time to bring the true myths back then”, Samantha said resolute.

“They are still here.” Vayu replied. “All you need to do is listen. Exactly what you were doing. Did you notice you saw more dragons as you listen to the Sound of Stillness and Silence?”

“I did”, Samantha said.

She slid back in to Silence. Here in the Mountain of Stillness and Silence you felt it getting enlarged. You became the Stillness and Silence. You became Every Thing. Every One. No Thing and No One at the same time. It was like being lost without being lost, an amazing sense of being Home.

As she looked inside her heart she saw a huge troop of wolves pulsing through the trees in the deep snow. Led by someone who looked like Star, just grey and larger. Where were they heading?

  • Cecilia Götherström, December 15th 2020.

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Kringlans Kalender 2020. Sacred. Part 14. Dec 14th.

Marcus was floating in that space between dreaming and waking. He felt like a feather swirling through space, gently landing on a soft, soft deep- sleep – breathing wolf belly. He felt the warmth, he heard the breath, he was one with that fuzzy, thick winter fur there in his featherness for a while.

“Oh, if I could grasp this and put it in the symphony”, a thought drifted through his mind. He woke up.

“Nooooo, I want to go baaaaaack”, he stretched out under the duvet.

“The grasping brought you back”, Barry’s voice from outside the bedroom window. “Just lean in to that tune again, drift on the first octave, let yourself be featherly carried and you can go back. Through any music.”

Barry had taken the habit of sleeping under Marcus bedroom window. That way they could both breathe in symphony he’d said. Marcus quite often got the feeling that the polar bear took finishing writing this symphony even more serious than he himself did.

“OK”, Marcus said. “I am awake already. Might as well get up and get out. I am done with this onyxing. I can hear the moonstones calling.”

“That can only mean one thing”, Barry’s voice now came from the front door. “There is just one way to journey to the place where we meet all the moonstones. Make sure to pack more than lunch my dear Marcus.”

Marcus made his staple breakfast of oats, apricots, bananas and nuts for himself, a full side of smoked salmon with some dried lingonberries for Barry. Sat down out on the porch with the bear as they both watched a full show of Northern Lights making its way through and around the Milky Way. It was 3 minutes past 3 in the morning. No moon.

“New Moon today”, Marcus said. “I guess there could not really be a better time to start the journey to the moonstones. I mean, we finished quite some chapters yesterday, both the movements for the symphony and the heavy chapters for the book”.

“You are so right my dear WolfHearted Human of the Wilderness”, Barry replied. “I can sense that our guides are not very far from here. They heard the cry of readiness in your dream as you landed and started on their last leg this way already.”

Marcus had just finished making what Barry had called “not just a lunch package”, closed his backpack, got his “good walking shoes” out as he called them, staff in hand – no clue why, but he felt he’d needed what his neighbour Gina called “the witching wizard’s staff” for this walk. It was a pretty long staff which Star had found in the river when she was just a little puppy. She’d pulled it out of the water with all her might and dragged it up to the house. Put it in front of his feet. He smiled at the memory as he tied it to the backpack.

A howl. Quiet. Then a choir of howls. Through the treeline at the back of the house he could see countless eyes shining in the dark. One large, grey wolf stood out front. The rest of the pack waited in the trees.

“Our guides are here”, Barry waved at Marcus with his head and then gestured towards the family of greys.

  • Cecilia Götherström, Dec 14th 2020.
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Kringlans Kalender 2020. Sacred. Part 12. Dec 12th

“Onyx. Onyx is missing. Or not really missing. It is there, the volume just needs to be turned up a bit. Then a bit more. Then maybe a bit more again. Like toning down the rose quartz for now, just making space for some more onyx you know.” Barry’s words – or instructions – travelled in through the wide open front door.

Marcus had been sitting at the grand piano since 5 am. Playing one piece of the symphony over and over again. Something was missing since the second movement, he just could not put his spirit on it.

“Onyx?” Marcus asked.

Barry was really too large to be in the house. He had placed himself outdoors, in front of the porch – had he been on the porch it surely would break from his weight – , having Marcus leaving the door open so that they could have a “clear, straight channel” as they both called it. It was vital that the connection was a straight, wide line. 

Like a bridge. 

Again.

“Yes, Onyx. The colour of darkness. Of pitch black. Of all possibilities possible”, Barry replied.

“Or the colour of death…”, Marcus thought to himself.

“I heard that!”, Barry said. “Isn’t death also a moment, an opening, of all possibilities? You know, some of my friends, the cormorants, say that “humans are so afraid of death that it prevents them from living”. Turn that volume up eh, so that you can really listen to it!”

“Listen to what?”, Marcus noticed a slight irritation in his own voice. “Listen to death? To darkness?”

“A little bit more to the left my dear Marcus. Listen to the emotion attached to those words .”

“Give in to fear?”, Marcus felt perplexed.

“It is not a fight Marcus. It is not about winning, about staying on top of or about giving in or not . There is no right or wrong here. There is only listening. And then turn up the volume of the Onyx, of the listening. Make that listening sacred.”

“Sacred Listening”, Marcus let the words roll over his tongue and soar in his consciousness. “Sacred Listening, Sacred Home….Onyx….Hmmmm…”

Quiet.

He took a deep breath. Looked out through the window. Got up. Walked through the front door. Sat down on the stairs leading off the porch, right in front of Barry.

“Barry, do you know there is a song with the title “What’s Love Got To Do With It”? Maybe it’s time to use the phrase “What’s Fear Got To Do With It?”

“Now you’re getting somewhere Marcus! What’s fear got to do with it! Reply to that one more often! Spin that one in to the symphony. That’s how you get deeper inside life, how we will eventually get Home.”

Onyx.

OK, then.

  • Cecilia Götherström, Dec 12th 2020.
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Kringlans Kalender 2020. Sacred. Part 11. Dec 11th

Another evening on the path following the pawsteps of the little bundle of joy & life force Vayu The Whispering Wolf. They were being guided by Josephiel the Cloud Shrouding White Dragon floating in the air just above them through the valley,  heading towards the Mountain of Stillness and Silence.

Josphiel was of the opinion that wading through deep snow was no dragon business, taking to the wild blue yonder was.

Vayu had hidden a laugh within a yawn as he’d said “Let him believe he’s the one guiding us. There ain’t no better guide in this dimension than this very nose right here”.

Samantha was really enjoying these nightly hikes. They were usually on the move until just before midnight. Then they’d either find or build a shelter. For her, both Josephiel and Vayu were very clear about every time.

“For that somewhat frozen little human”, they would joke daily.

This evening they were getting close to their last hike among the trees. Shelter would probably be just above the treeline.

The glittering snow crystals reflected the Milky Way, or was it the other way around?

“Everything is a reflection”, Vayu said. “All the beauty you see in the world, all the things you reject, criticize or judge, they are all part of your perception reflecting back at you. That is why The Whispers are so powerful. Why you want them on your side. The Whispers are closer to Truth than the words you cover them with when you speak and think loud thoughts covering any possibility to perceive the most perceivable of them all. The Still Whispers of Your Soul. Only in stillness can you hear them. The Whispers.”

“Are you saying that this gorgeousness of diamondy glittery silver lives inside of me too?”, Samantha asked.

“Yes! And do you know what more lives inside of you?… 

Vayu went dead quiet.

“Come on, are you going to tell me?” 

Vayu did not move. He did not even flinch. 

Samantha looked up in the direction his eyes stared. Holy moly…. Was that an avalanche? There was no sound, so there could not be, right?

The sparkly cloud of glittery-moon-reflecting-snow-star-dust rushing down the mountain slope was the size of a jumbo jet.  As the diamond-dust evaporated something took shape where the sparkle settled.

“Mum!”, Josephiel twirled in the air, somersaulted towards them.

Right in front of Samantha and Vayu, the largest, grey-sparkling dragon anyone could possibly imagine.

“Enchanted”, she exhaled. “Mama D welcomes you all.”

  • Cecilia Götherström , December 11th 2020.
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Kringlans Kalender 2020. Sacred. Part 9. December 9th.

Marcus picked up his pen. His writing-feather was actually a ballpoint pen adorned with a massive feather.

He’d found it in a jewelry store of all places when he was fourteen years old. His mum had brought him to that store to pick out a present from his Mormor for his confirmation. Whether religious or not, everyone in the village got confirmed. It was more of a tradition than something strictly religious. A rite of passage. Somehow, somewhere along the way the event had gotten symbolized by jewelry.

Young Marcus would rather have gone out in the woods or down to the river with Mormor herself and picked out a stone together, but mum had insisted her mum wanted to give him something “valuable” that he could “cherish” for the rest of his life – preferably in gold. Marcus had smiled to himself at those words as he knew that was mum’s wish, not Mormor’s. Mormor – and Morfar – had always taught him that nothing is more valuable, nothing is to be cherished more, than this Earth we walk upon and all of her creations.

He’d seen the pen, a huuuuge Eagle Feather attached to it, between a selection of gold crucifixes and “faith, hope and love” themed earrings.

“That one, please”, he’d pointed to the pen.

Mum had raised her eyebrows, but before she could shake her head in a no Marcus had pointed to the little marking proving it was sterling silver. A compromise well worth giving she had decided.

Here he was, 35 years later, a celebrated composer and musician. And it was this pen, this pen only which produced the magic. As soon as he touched it he was transported. Just like when he put his fingers gently on the keys of the piano.

And Star.

She had been his co-composer. 

His magic portal.

All this time.

This morning he had gone out for a 4 am starbathing walk in the snow. Something or someone had called him out of his sleep. By now he had learned to listen to those “whispers”, as he called them.

Down at the river bank he looked up to the skies. North Star. Great Bear. Orion. The Doggies.

Across the ice a misty figure came walking. As the shape got closer it seemed huge. The size of a Polar Bear. He sat down. Rubbed his eyes. It was. A Polar Bear. Should he be afraid? He’d lived with a wolf with little over 12 years, so maybe not?

The bear stopped. A few meters out on the ice still. Saying;

“May I?”

Marcus gestured to the large space in between himself and the trees. The bear settled in.

“Thank you. It was one hmmmm of a journey getting here from the dimensions of the outer banks. But now I am here, you are here, so we can better get acquainted as we need to finish that piece “Home”. The most magnificent symphony to ever grace these dimensional planes.”

Marcus did his best to take it all in. The large white bear pushed him gently on the shoulder. “Barry’s the name. Like Barry-ton.” he said with a wink.

  • Cecilia Götherström, Dec 9th 2020.