Nyland och Österbotten

The Haji recounted: There is a story from far west, beyond the Barentines, that the pagans of Finland worshipped not one God, as we do, whether Christian or Muslim, but a multitude: In the province of Nyland they worshipped the gentle goddess of the sun, who caressed the trees with the rays of her light, and brought succour and joy to the herding-boy of the field, but the Ostrobothnians worshipped the Thunder-God, who called doom upon the wicked; burned them up like a candlewick with a swift bolt arcing across the heavens. The people of Nyland and Ostrobothnia engaged each other in frequent feuds, especially between their high-priests and warlocks, ever jostling for supremacy, and to settle once and for all which god was to come out top — Justice, or Mercy?

And then commented Abbé Musa: I pity the pagans of yore for fashioning the masters of their world out of the human understanding, as the wisdom of men brought the civilizations of the old world only to perpetual war. As it was in Finland, so it was also in Persia, where battled the demons Hêlal and Angra Mainyu. A world of two evils, while goodness barely seeps between their front lines! But we know from revealed truths from the Father what we never would have otherwise: that Justice and Mercy are One, embodied in the same God; that the justice dealt a repentant sinner among us is the same time mercy!

And Olivia added: Remember that the Father we call to in Heaven is a Father, but even his love for his children is also like that of a mother, that he would smother us in warm embrace and say: more then a treasure, or the sun itself, you are worth the sacrifice at Cavalry; what would I give to place you in the furnace, strike you with blows of the hammer, so that it becomes a shining jewel?

The Abbé agreed: It is exactly with this understanding, that the children of Amatodate are at the same time the children of the Almighty, that we have endured all the abuse the world has heaped upon us down the centuries — right from the beginning, when we faced down the tyrants of P'yŏngyang.

Symbols carved into rock at Namforsen near Näsåker, Sweden, discovered only after a hydroelectric dam was built across the Ångermanälven in the 1940s

Picture taken August 2013.

References:
1. Psalm 85:10

2. St. Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge (1987), Author's Preface.

3. A song from Gjallarhorn's 1997 album (Solbön/Åskan), a medley of pre-Christian Finland-Swedish chants: a) Bön från Nyländska Folvisor, Uusimaa, and b) Åskbesvärjelse från Österbotten.

4. Rudolf Steiner, Incarnation of Lucifer and Ahriman (1919). The Abbé mistakenly refers to the ideas of Steiner as the tenets of the Zoroastrian religion.

The Siege of London, AD 994

Extract from Gerpla (1952), chapter 23.

As for King Æthelred himself, when he received news that the viking army was on its way to London, he began vomiting more terribly than anyone has ever been known to, and lay bedridden in an out-of-the-way dwelling. Æthelred's men were either killed or taken captive, apart from those who retreated inland and managed to hide themselves in forests or farms.

The Vikings held course for London, arriving in the evening and mooring their ships tightly together on the river below London Bridge; they prepared to storm the town walls at daybreak. There was no army in the town, and none to defend it but the townsfolk themselves. When the Londoners came to realize that an overwhelming force was marching on their town, every one of them made preparations to defend his home and his possessions, each with the weapon, implement, or tool that he had at hand — there being a general shortage of arms normally considered suitable for war, and fighting men to wield them. Most of those who had any skill in arms were at work in the fields of their masters or served in Æthelred's army, or had hired themselves out to other kinds or sailed away on trading voyages. The men left in town were mainly old or children or youths, besides numerous women and cripples. There were also large numbers of lepers and beggars, as well as noseless fornicators and handless thieves.

When the horns signaled the attack, and the Vikings, shouting and screaming, rushed onto the piers, rattled their weapons, and erected ladders against the city walls, they encountered these folk, each jabbing with his own lance. Some of the townsfolk fought with brooms, others with pokers, some with shovels or pitchforks, and many with clubs and sledgehammers. Graybeards and paupers, as well as maimed thieves, fought with their crutches, and children with their toys. The townsfolk showered rocks on the Vikings, while respectable dames and poor women joined in the attack, some pregnant, others carrying babies in swaddling clothes on their backs. Unspoiled maidens and foul whores stood side-by-side and poured boiling urine over the attacker, while others hurled simmering pitch or pumped water on them from the river. Flaming brands were cast at the fleet — fires broke out widely and leapt from ship to ship. It was not long before the fleet was one massive blaze, and great numbers of the Vikings' ships sank. The townsfolk also managed to wreck all the ramps and ladders that the Vikings had thought would gain them access to the city. Every Viking that did manage to make it over the wall was surrounded and thronged by the crowd and pummeled with all sorts of base bludgeons, or stabbed with carving knives and table knives, files and awls, pins and knitting needles and shears, or bitten to death by the inhabitants and ripped to living shreds and thrown to the dogs.

English books say that at this point, when King Æthelred hears this news, he is so terrified that the spew sticks fast in his throat, like an avalanche obstructed by a narrow gully — for the fear that a land's rulers have of foreign conquerors is slight compared to their fear of their own subjects. When Æthelred hears how the townspeople of London are relentlessly burning and sinking the Norsemen's ships, and boiling the Vikings in piss and carving them up with table knives, he feels utterly betrayed— to learn that now, in the space of one morning, the wisdom handed down by sage English kings of old, that the Norsemen are invincible, is to be proven false by a crazy rabble, weaponless and ignorant of warfare, after England's army has fled to the woods or hidden itself in manger stalls.

Æthelred rises from his bed, hale once more, and sends men in haste to Thorkell Strutharaldsson the Tall to deliver the message that he wishes to parley with him and sue for peace with the Vikings. The Vikings respond quickly by retreating from the town and rowing their ships down the river — those that were not burned or sunk. They summon King Æthelred to meet them at the mouth of the river. There they make a pact that is often cited in English books, with King Æthelred promising to pay the Vikings a tribute of four-hundred-and-eighty hundreds in silver. Æthelred, being penniless, offers to open every door in London to the Vikings, and to designate them protectors of the city, and he pledges to command that they be honored above all others by the people of the land and loved most fervently of all their leaders, and to place at their disposal, beyond all other authorities in England, all the city's property and revenue. Thorkell and most of his men, being landless from birth, had never imagined claiming lands or kingdoms for themselves, but only of pillaging for kind or cash. In return for King Æthelred's offer, they pledge their true willingness to defend him from those subjects of his who stubbornly pit themselves against illustrious warlords and eminent conquerors using table knives and ladles, brooms and crutches, or who pour piss on the heads of men of renown.

Guests from Overseas «Заморские гости»
Nicholas Roerich, 1901
oil on canvas, 85 by 112.5cm

Irannika Yasin

They asked of the Toyogarov Satrap: what was his downfall? Where did he go? Why did he take off into the Taiga one night, with torn clothes and incoherent screeches?

The forest sang, in reply, the song of the hill country: the Mesogriadines, where a new Amatodate over the ashes of the old was rising, as through the centuries —

Young Veronica stared down the prince's cannons
Then on a flaming chariot to heaven she soared
A rough-woven sash became her wedding garment
But her palace-rags she leaves for Jaromil

With his army and cannons perched on the hilltops overlooking the monastery, Jaromil Toyogarov had pleaded with Sister Irannika to leave the people of Abbé Musa and to return to the palace, once again, as queen. He might even forgive her defection to the Sultan — everyone, as a matter of course, believed that the religious of Amatodate secretly favored the Muslims — and to guide her return to the true faith. He wept, he cried out, he let the tears course down his face. "My love, my betrothed!"

Irannika, who watched him from the ramparts, did not respond. For the onlooker it did not seem apparent that she was moved by the prince's emotional affect, or if she heard at all what he had said. We found out later from Sister Olivia, who had served her in the courts of Toyogarov, that Sister Irannika was likely to be in a state of panic. Fear dominated the couple's betrothal, for Jaromil was a vile man, cursed to an irascible temper, who lashed his subjects with the slightest provocation. The bride herself had no shortage of anger directed at her from the prince.

"Leave this evil man, he will be your death," the servant Olivia had suggested, one day.

"Where can we go? Who will protect us in this lawless land?" Irannika was uncertain.

"Do you remember your aunt, Ershebet? She was close to death, and given one month to live. She gave the month in service to the poor and the sick taking sanctuary in Amatodate, and passed away five years after. Whoever was watching over her will watch over us as well!" Then, putting on her snowshoes, she said, "He may only have hurt you with words now, but he will do to you all that he has done to me before, now that I am gone."

And so, Princess Irannika Yasin and her servant Olivia Hutanonoyong went out, plowing into the snow, and made for Amatodate. For young Irannika was fond of her late aunt, and longed to follow in her footsteps.

Prince Toyogarov was dismayed by the lack of response from his bride. A wave of rage hit him like a wall, and he tasted blood in his breath. Irannika could see the tenderness in his eyes disappear, turning into resentment, shame, and then rage. Then suddenly, raising his left hand, he ordered the cannons to fire.

The last thoughts of Irannika Sikanderovna Yasin were filled with fear. Curiously, and contrary to her own expectations at the time, the fearfulness was not at the thought of Jaromil, nor was it the prospect of her own imminent death. A random seed of a thought had just taken from in her mind about the elderly Anita, who had stayed behind in the building, and refused to evacuate. Anita-neni will die, far from everyone, alone, if I do not go now.

The thought of it filled Irannika with dread. She broke free of her panic-induced torpor, tore her gaze away from the cannons, and made a dash towards the stairwell, heading straight for the dormitory where Old Anita stayed.

We could see all this happening from across the lake. We watched as the buildings of the monastery collapsed into a cloud of chipped wood and ash. With it went our Sister Irannika, Old Anita Kachituvan, and Brother Arkadius Wijaya. May they rest in peace.

The rumors came out of the Christian army that the Toyogarov Satrap's true motivations of finding his bride at Amatodate was no secret, despite a carefully-crafted pretext by his general that the monastery had housed injured soldiers in service to the Sultan. The prince reacted to his own decision with immediate regret, and rallied his men to a search for Irannika's body as soon as the dust had settled on the rubble. They searched for one week, they searched for two — they turned over every stone and wooden beam, but all it turned out was a blue robe of softest silk, finely embroidered; the one she wore on the day of their betrothal.

"Our daughter Irannika has gone the way of Elias Nabi," rejoiced the survivors of Amatodate upon hearing the news.

Ainu Robe. Collection of: Los Angeles County Museum of Art [source]

The Adventures of Zhang Qian in Alexandria Eschate, 128 BC

After years of trekking through the scorching deserts of the Tarim Basin, Zhang Qian —famed diplomat and explorer on a mission to procure horses for Great Emperor Wu's campaigns against the Huns— arrived at Alexandria Eschate, where settled the furthest diaspora of the Macedonian Empire. Seeing the snow-capped peaks of Tien Shan in the distance, he exclaimed: Truly, I must have been the first of anyone in the China to lay my eyes on such a wondrous sight! And then he had for lunch a huge bowl of beef la-mian from Chinatown down the street, because travelling also made him very hungry.

Tien Shan [Photo: Maureen Barlin]

Abbé Musa

This was the week before the autumnal equinox. In one of the nights the people who stood sentry at the monastery's ramparts noted an unearthly, flickering red glow on the ground on the distance, but could not discern how it had happened. At the same time Sister Irannika was in the throes of a nightmarish vision which she later recounted to Abbé Musa. This was how it went:

A demon, which seemed to be three men welded into one in the inferno. Three heads, three torsos, an indeterminable number of arms and legs, none being where they belonged. The faces locked in grimace, their complexions at once deflated and ashen and glowing with impotent rage, their voices chanting and announcing their names: Ivanov, Beria, Dzhugashvili; Ivanov, Beria, Dzhugashvili... 

"The local demons of Taimiria," noted Abbé Musa. "In the empire which spanned this land of eons past, the pharaohs sent their men to work to the death in Taimiria and as far east as Šaškotan, where poor and noble alike built the road and were buried under it when the cold claimed them, and to where the souls of the pharaohs themselves were banished."

Sister Irannika Yasin continued: And then at once the three heads spoke to me. Dogs! Swine! The tribe of Tanezeden are little better than animals. They dared speak against our Prince of Toyogarov; they spoke treason against the Taimirian race. They shall not even be seen as equal as flies, whose wings and legs we pull apart for sport. And that is what we will do to them.

Lies, lies! I cried. But they laughed at me. Lies? They believed the lies of the Metropolitan of Archangel and his representative. Lies, but who speaks truth? We are at war, truth we have long trampled into the sod. The bleeding edge of the sword, the smoking barrel of a gun, these are now our Truth. 

We do not ask "what is true?", but rather "whose side are you on?" I will show you what happens when you are no longer on our side. I will show you the monsters that the Tanezeden clan really are. The truth, our Truth! The men we tortured until death, the women we violated in sight of their kinsmen. And all taken apart to pieces to hung on rotting boughs, heads against legs, arms against trunks. Monsters that we vanquished and humiliated, a testament to our might!

Poor Irannika was drenched with tears at this point. "These were my cousins, my kinsfolk that were murdered by Prince Jaromil. I could not bear to look, but I could not tear away my eyes. I felt I had had a glimpse of hell. I know in the past that people who see hell do so while protected by Maryam Eme. Why not now?"

Abbé Musa replied. "I had a dream last night, too. I did not pay attention to it and let myself forget it in the busyness of the day's affairs, but it has come back to me now. Maryam Eme gave me a horse-drawn cart, but it had been set alight in a bright flame. Be assured that your cousins are now restored to dignity and risen to the bosoms of our Mother, with the forerunners of Amatodate, as what was done to Elias Nabi on his last day on Earth."

Los desastres de la guerra, plate No. 39: Grande hazaña! Con muertos! (A heroic feat! With dead men!).
Francisco Goya, circa 1810

Notes
1. This passage takes its inspiration from discourse surrounding current events, and also the particular work of Francisco Goya depicted.
2. The role of Maryam Eme was described earlier in Haji Thexeira.
3. The character of Irannika Yasin was first introduced in Lisbeta Griadina.
4. The present iteration of the monastery Amatodate is taken as the setting here. Previous iterations are described in Amatodate. The monastery is ultimately based on the presently vacant Territorial Abbacy of Tŏkwon, now the site of the University of Wonsan, North Korea.
5. The many-headed demon references figures in Soviet leadership Lenin, Stalin, and Lavrentiy Beria.
6. A phrase from the demon's monologue was lifted from a quote by Mao Zedong.
7. The Abbé referred to the "Road of Bones". This is the place which we know today as the Federal Highway R504 "Kolyma" of the Russian Far East.
8. The Abbé references the story of Prophet Elijah taken to Heaven (2 Kings 2:11)
9. The name "Šaškotan" comes from an island in the northern Kuriles. In the present context, it is understood simply to mean the furthest east of the Asian landmass.