Pilgrim Reindeer in Pisa, 1348 a free multimedia novel by Thomas A. DuBois, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Stone above Nissonjohká. Abisko national park, Sweden. Back to chapter Cultural information for this chapter

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 1. Part I Setting Out 5. Contact at Last [July 6, 1347]

I had a lot of fun writing this chapter. The story of Samuel's call is one of my favorite vignettes from the Bible, and it was fun to create a Sámi version of it. I also wanted to depict as best as I could what a noaide's conversation with his helping spirits might sound like. Cross-culturally, the moment in which a future shaman first makes contact with helping spirits is tremendously meaningful, with the spirits often seeming both terrifying and yet alluring. Sálle discovers deceased family members among his futurer spirit gang, and is confronted by what he takes to be the friar's God--Iesh. Iesh, of course, is a great pun on both Iesu and the Sámi word ieš, meaning "self," and helps give the chapter a little Moses feel. And then there is the name change from Sálle to Bávlos, which parallels the Abram/Abraham change as well as the Saul/Paul shift. So I wanted to reference a whole set of biblical conversion narratives in the chapter in such a way that they would all become meshed together and thereby somehow fresh and strange to the reader.