kvikkjokk, spöke and sushi

hej. so on friday i returned from english camp - a tiring experience to say the least. unexpectedly i was put into the role of "leader", i.e. one of the camp counselors in charge of a group of five 13-14 year old girls. i shared a cabin with them and "supervised" them in the brief moments we had to be with them. a relaxed affair, altogether. my memories of camp, the one science camp i did attend, were that we were not allowed to be alone or without supervision for one second throughout the day. the kids at english camp pretty much had a run of the small hostel they were staying at, including playing in the giant snow drifts until 10pm or so, or wandering around sneaking smokes or making out in the dark. they also were glued to their cellphones, and one of the sparse duties each night was for me to take their cellphones and have them put them on a table so they wouldn't be up all night texting each other. this is a generation of children that sleeps with their mobiles under the pillows so they can tell when they've gotten a call or a message 24 hours a day. needless to say it took about 45 minutes of negotiation before they could relinquish them and put them on a table about 3 feet from their beds. wow.

anyway, two of the saving graces of the experience was spending a lot of time with Hilke, an exchange student from Germany, an incredibly intelligent and sweet girl who has been/is living in Jokkmokk for a year. the other was Tim, who, as it turns out, is the father of the guy Jonah whose apartment i stayed in a few weeks ago. Tim is an American from Ohio who moved to Sweden when he was 19 years old, and many an hour was spent reminiscing and comparing Sweden vs. America, or, him telling me crazy stories about the history of the mining industries of the area, including ghost stories - the kids loved these by the way, and he had a way of making even the most hyperactive teenage boys chill out and go to sleep like that.

he told one really good story that took place in the 1600s in the town Kvikkjokk where we were (population at it's height: 86, today: 14). according to some wrtings by, among other people, Carl Von Linne, there had been a pastor at the Luthern church here (the original burned down and was rebuilt in 1909), who had a wife named Christina. she had some sort of affair with another prominant man in the area, and was generally intriguing an unconventional. she was also known to have mystical powers, and learned the Sami language, and was actually accepted somehow, perhaps as a shaman, as one of them. it was said she had the power to change the weather and was respected for her abilities. upon her death, her body was put on some structure in the mountains to await burial. she had a necklace that she wore all her days in life, and was put with the body up there on the mountain. when the townspeople returned to get the corpse, it had disappeared, but the necklace was the only thing that remained. no one knows what happened to her body - some think the Sami took it to bury her in their own manner. or, maybe, she still inhabits the mountains around Kvikkjokk....

here are some photographs from camp - i didn't take many of the mountains as the weather was quite gray and obscured most of the vistas.


lake


afternoon trees


kids being cute. walking anywhere with them was a chaotic affair, of pushing each other into the snow and wrestling like little animals. oh yeah, the jackets the boys are wearing say "jokkmokk hockey wolverines"


walking to the church


bell tower


a strange painting of a king (?)


tim senften


one of the girls in my cabin. notice the gold heart appliqued to one of her teeth. another girl in the cabin had one too, this is a trend of some sort here...


the girls being silly with some left-over sticky rice

on saturday, Ylva invited me over to eat sushi with some friends at this community center place. the amount of food they made could've easily fed about 40 people. there was also tons of dessert and the ever-present coffee flowing. i met, among other folks, the son of Tom and Disa, Daniel, and these half-Swedish half-Greenlandic guys who were really nice. Ylva's been in town for a few days while she finishes interviews and writing up an article she's doing for one of the Sami publications. the theme of the article is ghost (spöke) stories, mostly centered around the Sami Folk High School here in Jokkmokk. when they were building the school, they uncovered some human remains and burial sites, and apparently ever since the school has existed there has been many, many reports of poltergeist-like occurances. Ylva's cousin lives there now and has experienced some of it herself. these things include loud knocking for hours on end, things being moved around, and people's dogs going crazy and barking as if someone were passing behind the doors of the rooms. FASCINATING! i've got to get a copy of this article when she's finished for sure. also, i'd like to put some photos of her, since i talk about her so much, but for some reason i haven't taken any yet. for now, here are some pictures of the delicious, delicious sushi we feasted upon.


mm


mmm


mmmm


mmmmm


folks feasting. the guy with beard was the guy at the market making the drums in one of my photos.