Pilgrim Reindeer in Pisa, 1348
a free multimedia novel by
Thomas A. DuBois, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Pilgrim Reindeer in Pisa, 1348 a free multimedia novel by Thomas A. DuBois, University of Wisconsin-Madison |
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1. Part I Setting Out 7. The Trek Toward Risti [July 11, 1347]
He put his finger into the man's ears
and, spitting, touched his tongue;
then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him,
"Ephphatha!" (that is, "Be opened!")
The New Testament is quizzical the way it sometimes quotes Jesus's exact words, while usually covering the narrative in all its details in Greek. Biblical scholars recognize these quoted words as ancient Aramaic, but lots of later Europeans, particularly ones in remote corners of the world, like Sweden and Finland, have yearned to discover in such words reflections of their own native languages. This is what I depict happening with Pekka and Bávlos in this chapter, and my etymologies here are no more wild or inaccurate than many that have been offered by people over the past several centuries. One need look no farther than the seventeenth-century Swedish intellectual Olof Rudbeck, who proved conclusively that Swedish is the ancestral language of both Latin and Hebrew!
It's worth noting that I chose to use modern Finnish and Sámi in the text rather than trying to reconstruct what Pekka and Bávlos would have said in medieval forms of their languages. Languages constantly change, and this is the case with Finno-Ugric languages as well. Because Finnish and Sámi were not used extensively (or at all!) as written languages during the medieval period, however, we can only surmise on the basis of phonological reconstructions what their words would have sounded like in the fourteenth century. For the purposes of the novel, I felt the modern languages were sufficient here, although I do use older forms of Swedish, French and German in later chapters.
I also wanted to suggest the difficulties that Bávlos faces in learning Finnish. Although the two languages are related, it is real work to learn one from the other. Nonetheless, Bávlos will face far greater linguistic hurdles once he reaches the southern coast.
