The day after Mia and I arrived in Finn Forest, we drove to the Torsby Finnskogsentrum – a place dedicated to Finn Forest artifacts and history just a short drive outside the town of Torsby. The map to the right comes from that center: “The First Finnish Settlements in Torsby Area.” Sixty of them! How […]

We had our passports stamped when we reached Finland. Never again were we asked to show them, not until we left Helsinki to fly home. In between those days, we flew to Norway, drove into Sweden, crossed back into Norway, went to Sweden again, drove to Norway, flew to Finland. I went back to Norway […]

On Midsummer Eve Mia and I were led to a star made of sky and trees. Earlier in the day we had helped weave flowers around the May Pole. “May,” I learned, refers not to a month but but to the act of decorating one’s self, of making one’s self beautiful. A May Pole is […]

  Amelia and I have begun a discipline. I write something about our ancestral search. She reads my offering and makes a response. My words are often stories or research. Hers are poems. Hers change how I see the world. With one generation and nearly 40 years difference in perspective between us, our words – […]

We release. We cleanse. We banish that which does not serve us. We cannot hold on to magical energy that is burned up. Cannot ask more of a spell once it is complete. I have to let go. It’s easy to wonder what would have been if we had known. If we had been witches, […]

One of the first words I learned in the Duolingo Finnish course was velho. Duo translates the word as “wizard,” but the sentences give a better indication of the meaning. – “We love our wise velho.” – “The Swede is a Viking and the Finn is a velho.” – “The shaman is Sami, and the […]