The Dream Factory

The Fifty Names of Snow

Anna Bergstrom has disappeared.

The snow has taken her.

Runa rests her chin in her hands and looks into the whirling blizzard outside. This is yrsnö, the snow brought by a raging storm that whips its razor sharp finger nails against the outsides of the window, and thumps its shoulder against the frame of the house making the timbers flex and groan.

'Can I go out, Nana?' little Freja asks, turning from the glass so the remnants of her misted breath fades to nothing. 'To help them search?'

'No, stay inside my little one until your parents get back.' Nana reaches down and rests her brittle hand on Freja's head to distract her from her thoughts. 'Go and get a game, we'll play together while we wait.'

'Do you think a Nökken has taken her, Nana?' Freja asks tipping the wooden pieces onto the board and rattling the dice in the cup.

'Don't be stupid Freja,' Runa nudges her sister, 'there no such things as the Nökken, are their Nana?'

Nana rocks in her chair. Her unblinking gaze seems to penetrate the mass of shifting whiteness and see the new fallen snow clogging the passageways between the houses like the snow in an old man's beard. 'The Nökken live in the lake dear, they don't come to the village.'

Runa can see Freja's mind working, working through all the dark things in her head that might steal a child playing in the snow. 'Could it be a myling, Nana? They take people don't they?'

'Why would you say that, Freja?' Nana turns her head and her eyebrows crease. 'You should feel sorry for them, they don't want to hurt anyone.'

'That's not what they say at school.' Freja thrusts out her bottom lip. 'Petter Hallstrom said the ghosts of dead children come back to steal other children in revenge for what has happened to them.'

'Petter Hallstrom is a foolish boy, he says stupid things.' Nana mutters, pulling her rug closer. 'You should ignore him. Come on now, let's play your game, quickly now, before it's time for bed.'

While Nana and Freja roll the dice and count the pieces across the board, Runa goes back to the window. The snow pelts across the glass, testing it, to find its way in. The Swedes have another name for it. Lappvante, the snow that is thick, white and impenetrably dense. If she were outside she could not see her gloved hand in front of her face. Nana is wise, she is very old. She's seen many winters and knows the darkness and the harshness of the early winter fall. Nana believes in the Nökken monster. The shape shifting young man who lives in the lakes. The one who watches, dark eyes hovering just above the water, like a crocodile lurking in the murky water for his prey. When he sees a child he changes into the shape of a white horse to entice them onto his back and then jumps back into his watery underworld taking them with him far into the freezing depths.

The door bursts open with a howl of tormented wind. Papa and Mama struggle in, pulling off coats whitened with lace snow and gloves dark with damp. Soon they settle round the stove, drying clothes hanging off the strings like last year's Christmas decorations. Runa and Freja sit on the rug watching Papa spinning his tin cup around and around before it cools and he can sip his bitter tasting coffee. Mama, her hair still damp from the snow, stares unseeing at an uneaten cinnamon bun on her plate.

'We'll rest and go out again at two,' says Papa. His eyes are dark and recessed, like hot pebbles dropped through the melt ice.

'Do you think Abisko will be able to send some help?'

'Not until the storm has cleared. We'll have to make do. It could be too late before they come.' He sucks up his thick coffee and cuts up the last bun and offers it around. 'I hope the Bergstrom's are coping.'