Sigurd F. Olson - Runes of the North

Other Books by Sigurd F. Olson

THE LONELY LAND (1961)

LISTENING POINT (1958)

THE SINGING WILDERNESS (1956)

L. C. catalog card number: 6318356

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK,
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC .

Copyright 1963 by Sigurd F. Olson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages and reproduce not more than three illustrations in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper.

The following chapters have appeared in somewhat different form: Hunting Moon in Country Beautiful, Wild Rice in Gourmet, and Alaskan Wilderness as Runes of the Far North in American Forests.

eISBN: 978-0-307-82227-7

v3.1

To Elizabeth

I AM DEEPLY GRATEFUL FOR criticism, editing, and help, to members of my family, my agent Marie Rodell, and my editor Angus Cameron. Sincere appreciation goes to Ann Langen for her patient and enthusiastic work during the entire preparation of the manuscript. I also wish to thank my good friend Harlan Lampe for calling my attention to Kalevala; Eric Morse, historian and fellow voyageur, for geographical checking of routes; and Gerry Malaher, Chief of the Game Division of Manitoba, for his assistance on the caribou study.

I am indebted to the following: Aili Kolehmainen Johnson and The Book Concern for permission to use excerpts from the Finnish epic poem Kalevala; Loren Eiseley and Random House for quotations from The Immense Journey; Anya Seton and Houghton Mifflin Company for an episode from The Winthrop Woman; Phebe Jewell Nichols for the Menominee Cradle Song in her book Tales from an Indian Lodge; Fred Morgan and The Beaver magazine of the Hudsons Bay Company for information in the article Wild Rice Harvest (autumn 1960); Walter OMeara and Bobbs-Merrill Company for the statement on Daniel Harmon in the book The Grand Portage; The Champlain Society of Canada for use of material from David Thompsons Narrative of Explorations in Western America 17841812, edited by J. B. Tyrrell; Robert Service and Dodd, Mead and Company for several quotations from The Collected Poems of Robert Service; True Magazine for an adaptation of my story Trout of the Outlaw Country; and The Naturalist.

Among many sources that supplied valuable information are: The Journals of Alexander Henry the Younger and David Thompson, 17991814 (New York: Francis P. Harper; 1897); Alexander Henry: Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories between the years 1760 and 1776, edited by James Baine (Little Brown and Co.); The Fur Trade of Canada by Harold Innis (New Haven: Yale University Press; 1930); Five Fur Traders of the Northwest, edited by Charles M. Gates (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press; 1933); Son of the North by Charles Camsell (Toronto: Ryerson Press; 1954); Peter Pond Fur Trader and Adventurer by H. A. Innis (Toronto: Irwin and Gordon Ltd.; 1930); The Moose Fort Journals, published by the Hudsons Bay Record Society of London; Bogs of the Quetico-Superior by J. E. Potzger, Department of Botany, Butler University, Indiana; Bulletin 102 of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D. C.; The Caribou Crisis by A. W. F. Banfield, Canadian Wildlife Service, as reprinted from The Beaver 1956.

My thanks for many courtesies and help goes to members of the Hudsons Bay Company all over the north; to Jock McNiven, Superintendent of Eldorado Mine on Great Bear Lake, Angus Sherwood of Norman Wells on the Mackenzie, Barney Lamm of Kenora and Ralph Hedlin of Winnipeg for the flight to Nejanilini, Joe Langevin of the Kluane Game Sanctuary in the Yukon; to Urban C. Nelson, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Leone J. Mitchel of Glacier Bay National Monument, Samuel A. King of Mt. McKinley National Park, James W. Brooks of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Jess Honeywell of the Bureau of Land Management, and P. D. Hanson of the U. S. Forest Service, and their staffs, all of Alaska; and to many others who over the years have helped and given of their time and enthusiastic support wherever I have gone.

Only I am left to sing these tales learned from riddles, snatched from the wayside, broken from the heather, torn from the bushes, drawn from the waters, rubbed from the blades of grass, and reft from the roadside.********

The frost squeaked out verses to me, and the rain chanted runes. The winds whistled other lays carried by the waves of the sea. Birds twittered words, and the boughs of the trees whispered charms.

These I twined into a ball which was carried in my sledge to a barn where the grain dried. The ball of verse was placed into a copper casket, hidden on a beam of the barn loft.

My verses waited in the cold; long they yearned in the darkness. *** Shall I draw forth my songs from the chilly frost? **** Shall I open the chest of words, set tune to phrases, unwind the ball, and straighten out the knots in the yarns?

Kalevala

RUNES OF THE NORTH

L IKE THE ancient bard in the Finnish epic poem Kalevala, I have listened to the rapids of rivers, to the winds of summer and winter, and to the waves of many lakes. I have known mountains and glaciers, forests and tundras, and have gathered runes wherever I have gone. Only a few are part of the legendry of the past; most have to do with what I have known and done, thoughts and impressions which have come to me in my home country of the Quetico-Superior, in the far Canadian north, and in Alaska.

My runes have come from the wilderness, for in its solitude, silence, and freedom, I see more clearly those values and influences that over the long centuries have molded us as a race. I know there are moments of insight when ancient truths do stand out more vividly, and one senses anew his relationship to the earth and to all life. Such moments are worth waiting for, and when they come in some unheralded instant of knowing, they are of the purest gold.

Man, as Emerson once said, is a dwarf of himself and so ancient beliefs and feelings are in a sense vestigial remains of the common origins of mans inner world.

This inner world has to do with the wilderness from which we came, timelessness, cosmic rhythms, and the deep feelings men have for an unchanged environment. It is a oneness and communion with nature, a basic awareness of beauty, and earth wisdom which since the beginning of mans rise from the primitive have nourished his visions and dreams.