Read Online Popular Music from Vittula by Mikael Niemi - Free Book Online Page A

throwing snowballs at them. Mainly so they’d regard us as manly, I think. And believe it or not, it worked. These lanky sixteen-year-old Valkyries would scamper off like reindeer,screaming and shrieking, holding up their makeup bags as shields. They really made a meal of it. We were only throwing loosely packed little bundles of snow that rarely hit them, after all—fluffy lumps of snow that came floating down like woolly Lapp mittens. But it was enough to impress them. We were a force to be reckoned with.
    It went on like this for a few days. We made a store of snowballs as soon as we got home from school. By now we felt like soldiers from Vittulajänkkä fighting in the Winter War, two battle-scarred veterans in action on a foreign continent. We bristled in expectation. Fighting brought us closer and closer to pleasures we could only dream of. Our cockscombs grew with every battle fought.
    There came the flock of girls. Several bunches with irregular intervals between them. As they approached, we crouched down behind the ramparts of snow piled up at the side of the road by the snow plow. The plan was worked out in great detail. We used to let the first group pass by unscathed, then throw the snowballs at their backs while the other groups came to a halt in front of us. Create disarray and panic. And admiration, of course, of our manly deeds.
    We crouched down in wait. Heard the girls’ voices approaching, the smokers’ coughs, the giggles. We stood up at exactly the right moment. Each of us with a snowball in our right hand. Like two fearsome Vikings we watched the girls scamper away, screaming. We were just about to heave our missiles into their midst when we realized that one of the girls was standing her ground. Only a couple of yards in front of us. Long, blond hair, neatly made-up eyes. She was staring straight at us.
    “Just you dare throw one more snowball, and I’ll kill you,” she snarled. “I’ll hit you so hard, you’ll never walk again. I’ll make such a mess of your faces that your mothers will burst into tears the moment they clap eyes on you …”
    Niila and I slowly lowered our snowballs. The girl gave us one last, terrifying look, then turned on her heel and strolled after her friends.
    Niila and I didn’t move. We didn’t even look at each other. We just felt we’d been terribly misunderstood, in spades.
    * * *
    As a boy in Pajala, one’s life was dominated by chain thrashings. They were a means of adjusting the balance of power between the male citizens of the village. You were drawn into them as a young lad of five or six, and didn’t escape until you were fourteen or fifteen.
    Chain thrashings took something like the following form: a few little lads would start arguing. Anders punched Nisse, who started crying. I won’t go into the cause of the argument, whether there was a history of animosity or some kind of family feud hovering in the background. A young lad simply hit another one, and then they went home.
    That’s when the chain reaction starts.
    The one on the receiving end, Nisse, immediately tells his two-years-older brother about it. Big brother goes out into the village and keeps his eyes peeled: the next time he comes across Anders he gives him a good hiding and extracts revenge. Anders goes home crying his eyes out and tells his own four-years-older brother, who goes out into the village and keeps his eyes peeled. The next time he comes across Nisse or Nisse’s elder brother, he gives them a good hiding and issues a series of threats into the bargain. (Are you still with me?) Nisse’s five-years-older, burly first cousin hears an abridged version of what has happened and beats up Anders’s brother, Anders himself, and a few friends who tagged along as bodyguards. Both Anders’s two friends’ six-years-older brothers go out into the village and keep their eyes peeled. The rest of Nisse’s brothers, cousins, and other relatives hear an abridged version of what has