Popular Music from Vittula (26 page)

The inconceivable happened, and Niila came in at the right time. He followed Erkki, and Holgeri and I tagged on as well. Like a runaway
train we stormed through the song on the rails all the way, and when we came to the final chord we pulled Erkki back onto his chair so hard that he fell over.

Silence.

I staggered as far toward the side of the stage as the guitar cord would let me, and felt an overwhelming urge to emigrate. My skull felt like a maraca. Greger grabbed hold of my shoulders. Turned me round. Said something, but I’d been deafened by Erkki’s cymbals.

Then I saw. They were applauding. The whole chock-a-block hall. They were clapping their hands, apparently voluntarily, and some of the girls who’d been to pop concerts in Luleå and hence knew what to do were screaming and shouting for an encore.

Eventually the audience trooped out, but we stood transfixed, not really understanding what had happened. Already, after our first concert, we were possessed by the emptiness one feels after every performance, a sort of introverted sorrow. Erkki claimed his mind was a blank, but said his body felt as hot as it was after a sauna. Greger muttered something about the curtain rope needing to be marked with fluorescent paint. In a daze, we started carrying our things back to the music room.

* * *

Reactions afterward were varied. One could hardly call it a success, but we had certainly left an indelible impression. The Laestadian pupils had left the hall the moment we started, but the kids in the back row had immediately stopped throwing balls of paper at the math teacher’s bald head. Some of our pals gave us the highest praise you will ever hear from the mouth of a Tornedalen citizen:

“You weren’t too bad, really.”

Others assured us that it was the biggest load of rubbish they’d heard at morning assembly since the lady accordion player from Sion, and said they’d cut the strings if we ever tried it again. It was also a little worrying that some claimed the second number was best. Others preferred
the third, and some even placed the first one at the top. On the other hand, nobody seemed to prefer the fourth number, which was the only time we’d played the song properly. We didn’t have the courage to tell them it was the same song all four times, in various stages of panic. A few girls in class eight started making eyes at Erkki, as he’d had the biggest stage presence, and others ogled Holgeri, as he was the most handsome. Greger, on the other hand, was severely criticized at a rancorous staff meeting for his artistic irresponsibility.

On the whole, then, we survived with no more damage than sheer fright.

* * *

In Tornedalen creativity has generally been linked with survival. You could respect, and even admire, the skilled wood-carver who could turn a bit of a tree into anything from a butter knife to a grandfather clock; or the lumberjack whose engine conked out but drove his snowmobile for six miles on a mixture of heart medicine and moonshine; or the old lady who picked fifty pounds of cloudberries and, not having a bucket, carried them home in her ingeniously knotted knickers; or the bachelor who brought back a whole year’s supply of cigarettes in his brother’s coffin, seeing as he’d happened to die on the Finnish side of the border; or the smuggler-widow who cut a horse up into small pieces so skillfully that her sons were able to get it through customs into Sweden and fasten it together again as good as new, then sell it at a considerable profit. Mind you, that last incident took place in the forties, before I was born.

An example of Tornedalen creativity is the fish fanatics. All those men who live for drilling holes through the ice and lying on reindeer skins and jigging their tiny rods and pulling up all those Arctic char, who spend all winter tying salmon flies, whose pockets are stuffed full of dragonflies and blind reptiles, who prefer fishing to sexual intercourse, who have mastered fourteen ways of tying a fly but only the missionary position, who pay a thousand kronor for every pound of
salmon they catch instead of buying it from the Co-op for a fraction of the price, who would rather stand around in leaking waders than celebrate midsummer with their families, who abandon a good night’s sleep, ruin their marriage, get the sack, pay no attention to personal hygiene, mortgage their house, and neglect their children the moment they hear that fish are nibbling at Jokkfall.

House builders in Tornedalen are a similarly perverse category. Evasive characters, preoccupied when you talk to them, restless, impatient, and with shifty eyes. Only when they have their hands wrapped around a hammer are they anything like normal folk, only then can they possibly say nice things to their wives through a mouth full of nails. It’s amazing what a bloke can manage to build in a lifetime! House and cowshed, signed and sealed. Sauna and shit-house, before your very eyes! Woodshed and barns, no problem! Toolshed and summer house, attaboy! Then garage and dog kennel and cycle shed and playhouse for the kids.

This is about the point at which the local authority decides that the site is fully developed. The husband is devastated, as sour as vinegar, starts shouting at the children, turns to drink, can’t get to sleep, loses his hair, kicks the dog, has sight and hearing problems and is prescribed Valium by a doctor in Gällivare—and then his desperate wife inherits an undeveloped holiday home plot.

And so he can start all over again.

Summer cottage, sauna, shit-house, woodshed, dog kennel. A pause for breath, then boathouse, earth cellar, guest cottage, toolshed, deck, and fantasy house for the kids. Then all the extensions. Up with the lark every day of the holiday. Hammering in nails, sawing and chopping, and feeling good.

But years go by, and inevitably every square inch is filled. The housing committee of the local authority pore over aerial photographs. And the husband becomes so obstreperous, it’s beyond a joke; and his wife is on the point of leaving him.

But all of a sudden, it’s time for renovations. New roof, more modern roof insulation, underfloor heating in the living room, loft conversion, game room in the basement, replace the putty in the windows, strip and repaint, new doors for the kitchen cabinets, fitted carpets, new taps and washbasins, replace rotten timber in the sauna, build a patio and balcony, and glaze in the deck.

But then it’s all finished. Then it’s irrevocable. Then it’s impossible to add anything else, it’s all completed, there’s nothing else to hammer in, and his wife is forced to accept that there’s no alternative. It has to be the psychiatric ward in Gällivare.

But then they change the law and relax the planning restrictions.

It’s amazing how many new sheds can fit into a normal-sized garden. Off we go again. And the marriage is once more filled with something warm, something calm, something one might even call love.

* * *

Our rock music was something else. It was certainly not useful in any way. Nobody could see any value in it, not even us. Nobody needed it. We just played, opened our hearts and let the music come out. Old people saw it as a sign that we were spoiled and had too much free time, typical of the extravagance and waste of the modern era. This was the kind of thing that happened when young people were not sent out to work. It resulted in an excess of energy that buzzed around and raised the blood pressure.

In the early days Niila and I often discussed whether our rock music could be regarded as
knapsu
. The word is Tornedalen Finnish and means something like “unmanly,” something that only women do. You could say that in Tornedalen the male role boils down to just one thing: not being
knapsu
. That sounds simple and obvious, but it is complicated by various special rules that can often take decades to learn, something that men who move up north from southern Sweden often come up against.

Certain activities are basically
knapsu
and hence should be avoided by men. Changing the curtains, for instance; knitting, weaving carpets, milking by hand, watering the house plants, that kind of thing. Other occupations are definitely manly, such as felling trees, hunting moose, building log cabins, floating logs down-river, and fighting on dance floors. The world has been split in two since time immemorial, and everybody knew the score.

But then came the welfare state. And suddenly there were lots of new activities and occupations that confused the concepts. As the
knapsu
concept had developed over many hundreds of years, as subconscious processes in the minds of generations, the definitions could no longer keep up. Except in certain areas. Engines, for instance, are manly. Gas-burning engines are more manly than electric ones. Cars, snowmobiles, and power saws are therefore not
knapsu
.

But can a man sew with a sewing machine? Whip cream with an electric mixer? Milk cows with a milking machine? Empty a dishwasher? Can a real man vacuum-clean his car and still retain his dignity? Those are some questions for you to think about.

It’s even more difficult when it comes to new trends. For instance, is it
knapsu
to eat reduced-fat margarine? To have a heater in your car? To buy hair gel? To meditate? To swim using a snorkel? To use sticking plaster? To put dog poo in a plastic bag?

Besides, the rules change from village to village. Hasse Alatalo from Tärendö told me that where he comes from it’s regarded, for some reason, as
knapsu
to turn down the tops of your rubber boots.

On the basis of all this, we men can be divided into three categories. First there’s the real macho type. Often from one of the small villages, surly, silent, and dogged, with a knife in his belt and salt in his pocket in case he gets stranded out in the wilds. His opposite is just as easy to recognize, the unmanly man. He is obviously
knapsu
, under the thumb of his big sisters and useless in the forest or when out shooting moose. On the other hand he is often good with animals, and also with women
(apart from the sexual side of things), and hence in the old days he often became a healer or a naturopath.

The third group of men are all the many in the middle. That’s where both Niila and I belonged. What you do indicates how
knapsu
you are. It could be something as harmless as wearing a red woolen hat. That could drop you in the category for several weeks, during which time you’d be forced to fight and watch your back and submit to death-defying rituals before you slowly managed to climb out of the pit reserved for men who were
knapsu
.

Rock music is usually played by men. It radiates something aggressively manly. It wouldn’t take an outsider long to decide that rock music is not
knapsu
. But there again, it has to be said that messing about like that is not exactly real work. Put a rock musician in a forest and give him an axe, and he’d piss blood. And even singing was deemed to be unmanly, in Pajala at least, assuming you were sober. Even worse was doing it in English, a language much too lacking in chewability for hard Finnish jaws, so sloppy that only little girls could get top marks in it—sluggish double dutch, tremulous and damp, invented by mud-sloshing coastal beings who’ve never needed to struggle, never frozen nor starved. A language for idlers, grass-eaters, couch potatoes, so lacking in resilience that their tongues slop around their mouths like sliced-off foreskins.

So obviously, we were
knapsu
. But whatever, we couldn’t possibly stop playing.

About a girl with a black Volvo, about pucks and fucks and what you can amuse yourself with in Pajala

Our next gig was at the Community Hall in Kaunisvaara, after a meeting of the young Communists, known as the Red Youth. Holgeri had arranged it: he knew a girl on the committee, one of the thirty or so standing around in Palestine shawls, with their bangs and round glasses, beating time with the pointed toes of their Lapp shoes. It would be fair to say that the reception was pretty enthusiastic. It was two months since we’d performed in public for the first time, and we’d got it together much better. We’d written two of the tunes ourselves, and the rest were covers I’d pinched from
Top Twenty
. A few ancient Red Pioneers came to stand in the doorway and listen out of curiosity, but they soon turned their heels and left. Apart from one old boy who’d been deaf ever since a hand grenade went off by mistake when he was doing his national service. He stood and gaped, adjusting his cap now and then, thinking what a damn waste of electricity it was.

After the last number Holgeri’s girlfriend started clapping and shouting for an encore, and a few others joined in. We were still on stage,
and I glanced nervously at Erkki and Niila. We didn’t know any more, we’d exhausted our repertoire.

Then we heard a howl. Holgeri! He was standing next to the loudspeaker with the sound turned right down. An electronic whine filled the hall, the windowpanes rattled. Then he started playing. Solo, maximum distortion. He never so much as glanced at the audience. Went down on his knees and slammed his guitar on the floor, shook it like a newly murdered corpse in front of the funnel-shaped lips of the loudspeaker. Clawed at the screeching strings. The tune seemed familiar. Fragmented, coming and going like a distant radio broadcast, but nevertheless packing a punch. We just stared at Holgeri. He lay down on his back. Thrust his guitar skyward, thrust after thrust. Eyes half closed, sweat pouring off his brow. Then he bent his head back and started playing with his teeth. The same strangely familiar tune.

“Hendrix!” Niila yelled into my ear.

“Better!” I yelled back at him.

Then it dawned on me what he was playing. The Soviet national anthem, echoing around the old wooden walls of the Community Hall.

Afterward several of the audience came up on the stage to ask where we stood politically. Holgeri sat there with a faint smile on his face, as if he’d just woken up out of a dream, while two girls tried to sit on his knee. I found myself face to face with a girl with strange, Indian-inked, Arab eyebrows. Her hair was so shiny black, it seemed she must have just dunked it in an inkwell. But her face was powdery white. There was something doll-like about her, a thin outer layer of cellophane. Her body was hidden behind the regulation voluminous uniform Red Youth fashion dictated, but her supple gestures gave her away. She wiggled her pelvis as she crept toward me, slight, careful movements. But I knew there was a woman in there, a hunger. Without a word she held out her hand to be shaken, like a grown-up, and she smiled, displaying her small, sharp teeth. She shook firmly, like a man. It hurt.