Ⓐ - Ⓩ ~ Hilde Westvold

This is a series of studies for my long-time-in-the-writings book about the magic in the Nordic countries.
We are in the 70es on Unicorn Island, an island off the coast of southern Zealand. A handful of teachers have gathered the broken threads of magic once again, trying to revive the magic in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Faroes and partially Greenland.
Our main protagonist is Susan (me) from Elsinore and her three co-apprentices and friends Heidi, Tage and Lis living at Unicorn Island.
I grasped the chance to write a little bit about some of the lesser known apprentices in this A-Z challenge.

Ⓐ - Ⓩ

Hilde Westwold from Norway

Hilde lives with her parents far from everything. She herself tells of her life here:
"I am an only child of two magical parents and they home-schooled me, and taught me everything they knew both about magic and the world. We live far away in the country, and we're used to being self reliant and hard working."
  Her appearance is homely in every sense of the word, squat, mousegrey hair, coarse features and manners. Combined with her obvious good brains and memory and having been taught much of what the others are fighting to learn, her aptitude to corect the other apprentices with a mine of "how hard can it be" makes Hilde not generally liked by the other apprentices of her nature team or indeed by any of the other apprentices. One day, not long after the Easter fire that changed this, she tells about growing up and magic.
"It seems that Nature magic is a kind of magic needing almost no wands," Hilde began her tale. "We lived alone, far from any big, or even small cities. We had an old, decrepit car, and once a month - more frequently in Winter and early spring, my father drove to the nearest town. Ther he shopped and sent off his work - to this day I do not know what he did. He worked all winter, rising early, going for a run, and then typing away all day in a small room in the upper floor. He always kept it carefully locked, and after he retired, it was cleared, and everything in there, even the furniture, burned. I suspect som kind of intelligence or espionage. Anyway -- from early spring well into autumn we worked from dawn to dusk, tending plants, feeding our cows, poultry and rabbits, weeding fields, hoisting water from the well, picking, canning, milking, picking seeds for next year, in short making sure to suevive another winter. Father also sold some of our surplus in autumn, and brought home sugar, tea and spices and needles, fabric and such. In winter, when my father wrote, mother and I sewed, wowe baskets, made spoons and containers from wood, we also learned and studied. We had one very old wand for all three of us, It had belonged to my mother's grandmother, it was decrepit, and for every use its magic grew less. So we only used it for real emergencies. But for the growing things, and such ... mom called it blessing magic ... only our hands were needed. We held our hands cupped around a plant or a chicken that was blighted or ill, then we sang, mom and dad taught me all the songs you have been studying here as well, and mostly the plants grew true and the small ones thrived. We also dabbled in potions, but we did not know enough, and we could not find anything to study.
  You can imagine our happines when Jon and Tähti showed up one day in Spring and sung wands for my parents and promised that I could go to school here. Singing of wands seems to have been a forgotten craft until recently, and only a few magic people have travelled far enough, or been lucky enough to find a wand maker in another country."

 - - - - - -

Hilde loses her magic same as all the rest of the magic society in the Nordic countries. Instead of expanding, they had to close down. Gilvi visited all of the parents, grandparents, cousins, friends ... in short all and sundry for whom Tähti or Thora had sung wands in the past three years, making them break their wands, and cast the forgetting spell on themselves, as a preamble to the terrible summer party at Unicorn Farm (not online).

Hilde's wand is made from spruce, emitting kitchen blue sparks. She survived the loss of her magic by efficiently burying herself in her studies to become a nurse. We meet her again as a busy nurse and grandmother in Birch Manor.

Ⓐ - Ⓩ

Tomorrow X for "X marks the spot"

Fredagsfrustration ~ Store bededag

  I dag er det fredag i fjerde uge i påsken. Tidligere var det store bededag denne dag, men i år er det en ganske almindelig hverdag. Ugleungerne er i skole, Skribenten er på vej ud af døren ... og det er overskyet og regnfuldt.
  Så langt jeg husker tilbage, har solen skinnet store bededag - i hvert fald her i Nordsjælland. Men i dag stod vi op til regn, og resten af dagen lover ikke meget bedre. Det er meget passende!

Jeg savner store bededag!

Og jeg citerer mig selv fra sidste år:

      Store Bededag er en fridag, der har betydet meget for mig i de forgangne år. Det er så at sige en "gratis" fridag. Butikkerne er lukkede, så vi kan heller ikke tage på indkøb. Vi får ikke gæster, vi skal ikke i kirke. Kort sagt, vi har bare fri, der er ingen, der forventer noget af os, ingenting vi skal.
     Det kommer jeg i den grad til at savne i de kommende år, det, og så den her lettede, boblende frie fornemmelse, når dagen ender af "Tænk, det er kun lørdag i morgen!"

Today is Friday in the 4th week of  Easter. Until now it was a holiday, Common (or great) prayer day, but this year for the first time it is just another Friday. The Owlets are off to school, the Writer is on his way out of the door as well, and the weather is cloudy and rainy.

So far the weather on this day has always been sunny, cold and windy maybe, but sunny. Today is the first rain on thins day for a long, long time. I woke up to the sound of rain on my window panes, and the rest of today looks the same.

I miss this holiday.

It was so to say a "free" holiday. Nobody expected anything from us, the shops were closed, so no shopping, we were not having any guests, we were not supposed to go to church (this was a Protestant prayer day only 😉). Not a thing in the calendar, and when the day ended, I always have had this light, bubbly feeling: Tomorrow is only Saturday! This feeling - of a week with two Saturdays - I am sorely going to miss in years to come.

Vejret sørger med mig ~ the weather commiserates.

Ⓐ - Ⓩ ~ Sarah fra Vestegnen

This is a series of studies for my long-time-in-the-writings book about the magic in the Nordic countries.
We are in the 70es on Unicorn Island, an island off the coast of southern Zealand. A handful of teachers have gathered the broken threads of magic once again, trying to revive the magic in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Faroes and partially Greenland.
Our main protagonist is Susan (me) from Elsinore and her three co-apprentices and friends Heidi, Tage and Lis living at Unicorn Island.
I grasped the chance to write a little bit about some of the lesser known apprentices in this A-Z challenge.

Ⓐ - Ⓩ

Sarah Poulsen from Denmark

Vestegnen - meaning "the western parts" - is the build up areas west of Copenhagen, characterised by apartment blocks, concrete and steel, and modern architecture. It was not a nice life for many of the children in this modern desert. In some areas almost half of the grown-ups were unemployed, the number of immigrants and families having trouble with the police or social authorities were the highest in al of Denmark. From kindergarten up many children were latch key children, older children vere often sent to the pub to get father home, and many younger were sent shopping for alcohol and cigarettes before school. Many were the children who swore never to touch these things, but as they grew into adulthood and unemployment, the numbing effect of beer became alluring and former promises forgotten.
Despite all this it was in many ways a safe place to be a small child. You could always find someone to play with, always some one to go shopping together with and if your parents were too drunk or away, some other family always took care of you.


In one of the many apartment blocks lived a girl, Sarah, with her parents and two sisters, one older and one younger. Her mother worked as a cleaning woman at a nearby school, working early hours and only returning home after the three sisters had already left for school. Father had been laid off as a caroenter some years ago, he had hurt his back in an accident, and could not find a new job. His bach and his inability to fend for his family hurt him and drove him to drinking. The oldest sister Lone, cared for her smaller sisters, Sarah and Hanne. And this worked fine until  one day Lone found a sweetheart at a local pub. Then she too started drinking and dancing with him in the evenings. Sarah felt betrayed by Lone and began getting behind in school. She also felt excluded in school. She loved reading, she actually liked doing her homework and doing it properly. Sarah got into the habit of staying at the local library every day after school. It was a nice place, and the librarians knew the background of the children, so they were loving, but strict. A mixture that fit Sarah perfectly. One of the first days in the summer holiday Sarah met a strange man at the library. She was fascinated by him and his beard when she noticed him. But he just sat there, reading, same as her, and when she left for the cafeteria, to drink a coke and eat a sandwich - empty bottles earned her quite a nice sum - he did the same. That is, he drank a beer with his sandwich.
When they were all alone in the cafeteria, the tall, bearded man asked Sarah if she would like to help him. Sarah had heard enough of dangerous men to flatly say no to his request. But when she left the library a good deal later than she had planned, he stood outside. "Can I walk you home?" he asked.
Sarah could see nothing wrong in this, she counted on being able to outrun and out escape him if he was up to tricks, and as a gang of older boys had recently begun harassing whomever they found all alone on the walkways, taking their money or slicing them if no money were to be had, she accepted.
On the way home he kept quiet until they were more than halfway. Then he asked how she liked school here. This was what grown-ups always asked for starters, and Sarah answered truthfully that she liked school, that she loved reading, maths, languages ... in short all subjects, only not sewing and P.E.
"What would you like to study if you could choose anything at all?" he asked. Sarah thought for a while, then answered: "I'd like to invent a society where nobody needed to drink, where no pubs and no gangs are allowed. But to do this, I suppose I'd have to do magic."
"Do you think magic would solve all problems?" The man asked
"That's not how I meant it, and you know it," Sarah said. "But to do magic .. that would b nice. Just swish your wand and say a word, and bam, job's done, or mix up a potion to cure someone. Wow, that would be nice. Then I could cure my dad's back, mothers knees, and sister's stomach and ... oh everything. But magic is not real. It's only something you read about in books." Sarah sounded bitter.
"Would you like to learn magic?" the stranger said. "I, or rather we, as I'm not in this alone, can teach you. And we, that's I, have been studying you for some time. I'm sure you can do magic. same as us. Would you like to study real magic?"
"Would I?" Sarah said. "Of course I would. But how can I be sure it is real magic, not just rabbits out of hats?"
"Watch me," Torben answered - this is who it was - and pulled his wand out. He found a wizened bush, broke off a branch and swished his wand over it. Slowly the branch changed shape, turned into a wooden spoon and then into a drumstick.
Then he handed it to Sara. "Hold it," he said, "that way you can be sure, I'm not cheating." While Sarah held onto the branch, Torben turned it into a miniature flagpole and back into a spoon, this time with holes in it. Then he stopped doing anything, and the branch slowly turned back into a branch.
Sarah was convinced. "What do I have to do to learn this?" she asked.
"Follow me to school tomorrow morning, and after this every morning in the summer holidays. Study diligently and do your best. And do not tell anybody where you're going."
"Will do," Sarah said. "Where do we meet tomorrow?"
"What about right here? Then we walk to my portal that will take us to the magic school."
"That's a deal," Sarah said. "See you tomorrow!"

At the Unicorn Farm Sarah is a mediocre apprentice, but thoroughly enjoying her time there. She always had a remark that she herself called realistic, but others described as embittered, to people's motives and behaviour.
Sarah was 13 when she arrived at Unicorn Farm, and we first meet her when wands are sung for everybody. She joined the potions team, with a propensity for everyday magic; her wand was made of oak emitting yellow-greenish sparks.
She survived losing her magic, but turned into an old, embittered and mean drunkard. She is the only original apprentice never to have her magic back after Birch Manor was founded.
Read more here if you like to: Sarah and Her Children.

Ⓐ - Ⓩ

Tomorrow W for Hilde Westvold


Using the word Summer from the Words for Wednesday.

Words for Wednesday :: April 24 :: The Words

 This challenge started a long time ago. Now it has turned into a movable feast with Elephant's Child as our coordinator; and the Words are provided by a number of people.

The general idea of this challenge is to make us write. Poems, stories, subtitles, tales, jokes, haiku, crosswords, puns, ... you're the boss.
Use all Words, some Words, one Word, or even none of them if that makes your creative juices flow. Anything goes, only please nothing rude or vulgar.

 It is also a challenge, where the old saying "The more the merrier" holds true.

So please, remember to follow the links, go back and read other peoples' stories. And please leave a comment after reading. Challenges like this one thrive on interaction, feedback and encouragement. And we ALL need encouragement.

-- 🏅 --

The Words for the Wednesdays in April are provided by Elephant's Child.

For today we had:

    Foxglove
    Summer
    Missing
    Event
    South

And this photo
   

I have been busy elsewhere and writing the last A-Z chapters - alas these words did not fit today.
I hope to use them in some coming chapters as they sure fit the contents much better than last Wednesday's. 

Ⓐ - Ⓩ ~ U ... My from Uldervik

This is a series of studies for my long-time-in-the-writings book about the magic in the Nordic countries.
We are in the 70es on Unicorn Island, an island off the coast of southern Zealand. A handful of teachers have gathered the broken threads of magic once again, trying to revive the magic in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Faroes and partially Greenland.
Our main protagonist is Susan (me) from Elsinore and her three co-apprentices and friends Heidi, Tage and Lis living at Unicorn Island.
I grasped the chance to write a little bit about some of the lesser known apprentices in this A-Z challenge.

Ⓐ - Ⓩ

U for My Birkeland from Uldervik in Norway

My at 10 is the youngest of the apprentices and one of the exceptions from the age rule. She is absolutely not one of the unknown apprentices, but we hear little about her background in the online chapters. She comes from the same place as Jon, Uldervik, near Tromsø in the far North of Norway, where he works as a mail-man, and she is an only child of a single mother, her father died almost as soon as My was born. Her mother works as a modiste and is known and treasured in the theatre and literary circles of all Norway, so even if they live in a faraway place, My's mother often entertains celebrities and little My learns how to look and behave as a movie star. One thing is the looks, another thing is the interior, and My -- and for the most part her mother too -- did not like the gossipy, elbowing, knife in the back atmosphere of most of the crew.
My's copper red hair makes everybody bear with her as they write it down to red hair equals temper, but her mother persists on My's ability to keep her temper in tow.

My had turned 10 at one of the darkest, most rainful days in a wet and dark November, and not long after something happened.
Much of the afternoon, from school's out until her mother arrives back home, My is alone. She is allowed to bring one friend home, and to use all the scraps in the scrap basket for sewing doll's clothes - or even some for herself if she can manage. But My prefers to play in the attic with some of the neighbouring children. They play mostly folk tales, where My is the witch casting terrible spells and curses on whomever antagonizes her. Small and lithe with her coppery hair loose and tufted, and with skirts made from coloured pieces from the scrap basket, she looks the part.

Sometimes, mostly in winter, when it was pitch dark when she returned from school, she liked to stay in the big apartment, reading and eating cookies. Often the mail-man came, delivering orders or swatches in big manilla envelopes for her mother. The mail-man was a wonder to My, she was as dark as she was fair, his hair as black as hers was red, and in his red and black mail-man uniform with a double row of bright buttons he looked like something from a fairytale himself. It took weeks before My dared to say more than Hello or Thank you to the tall, dark stranger, but Jon, our postman, kept greeting her every time, and after some more time he got more words out of the girl. When after more than a month of chance meetings, he found My in a bleak mood sitting outside the apartment door, she was no longer afraid to speak to him. "Oh, Mr. postman," My said, "can you help me? I have lost my key. Mum is going to scold me so much. She said I was not old enough for my own key ..."
"How did you lose it?" Jon asked.
"Those girls ... " My said, and then stopped.
"Those four that have been following you, and teasing you ever since the Autumn holidays?" Jon asked, his voice low and caring.
"How did you know?" My asked, "but yes those four."
"You have no idea how much you can learn by walking the same rounds, and seeing the same persons, stairs and houses every day," Jon said. "But what happened to your key?"
"They teased me again, and I became so mad," My admitted, "and I threw thinks at them and stones and sticks. Then they sang 'Sticks and stones may break our bones, but My can never hit us.' Of course this made me even madder, and I looked for even larger stones to throw at them. In the end, I was home, and found I lost the key somewhere on the way. It must have fallen out of my pocket when I picked up my projectiles."
"Come with me for the last of my round, and then let's go and search together. That'll be better than sitting here on the staircase and grow cold."
My saw the logic in what Jon the postman suggested, she left her schoolbag at the door, and helped Jon empty the bag of letter; and then, in the dark they walked to the woody stretch of the road where she had ran around looking for stones to throw at the girls.
On the way Jon told about bing a postman, that was quickly over and done with, then they talked of stamps, and then of Fairy tales, and My told of her role as a witch in the childrens' plays.
"How are we ever to find my key here in the dark?" My asked.
"Do you believe in magic?" Jon asked.
"Like in the fairy-tales?" My asked, and Jon nodded. "Hmm, I do not really know," My said. "Everybody says magic is only inside the books -- oh! I love books -- but I would like magic to be real. Good magic that is, not like all the curses and spells I pretend to cast on my enemies when I am Barbara, the witch in our plays. Or even the thinks I try to send at them to make them fall and so on. They also seem not to work. I'm afraid I feel too much like evil Barbara doing that."
"I can do magic, real magic," Jon simply said. "And I think it is the only way to find your keys."
"Ljós!" he said, swishing a branch and a small, reddish light rose from the tip of the branch to hover over the path.
"Here, you hold it," Jon said and gave her the branch.
"It is a magic wand, isn't it?" My whispered and accepted the branch.
"Yes it is," Jon said, "just hold it upright and concentrate on the light."
My did, and slowly the light grew a bit brighter, more silvery. "You can do it!" Jon encouraged her. "Now think of the key! Make a picture of it inside your head." My tried to imagine her key, it was old, worn and silvery. It was her key. And suddenly the ball of light veered to the left and a weak echo of it could be seen under a tree. Jon went over there and quickly picked up the eerily shining key. "Here it is! You found it with magic."
The light faltered and gave out. My sat down on the nearest bench. "Ohh, I am so tired now, and hungry."
"Of course you are," Jon said. "I forgot how tiring magic is. Do you like bananas?" And he pulled a large, perfectly ripe banana from his mailbag.
"More magic?" My asked, warily.
"Nope, a totally normal and mundane banana, magic food is not nourishing, You must know from your tales." Jon smiled broadly, and his teeth shone in the last of the witchlight as he put the wand back in the bag.
My ate the banana, and soon felt well enough for the return journey.
"Don't tell anybody about your magic," Jon warned her. "They won't believe, and maybe trouble will come from it."
"Not even my mother?" My asked. "I do not like keeping secrets from her."
"Did you tell her about the four girls?" Jon asked.
"Yes I did," My said, "but she did not listen very closely. She just told me to not lose my temper ... and now I did."
"I'll come with you home, and do some explaining, I think. You mother need to know. You're right."
Jon sat quietly on a chair while My served tea and made her homework.
When My's mother arrived home, she was shocked to see a strange man sitting in her living room, drinking tea with her daughter, but then My explained about the key, and that Jon had helped her find it.

"And where did you say you found it?" My explained, and her mother sat quietly for a short while. "But it's pitch dark out there!" she protested.
My looked at Jon, as if to say 'I told you so'. And he drew a deep breath. "Sorry Mrs. Birkeland. May I explain. My name is Jon Solstad, and I can do magic. And so can your daughter."
"I suspected it. And I'm Ann," My's mother said. "My's father was the same. He could always find whatever what was lost, if not lost in deep water. I suspected that My inherited the gift ... or is it a curse?"
"It is a gift," Jon answered smiling. "And furthermore I have an offer you cannot resist - or at least I hope so. This summer, during the holidays, we will open a school for magic, and we hope to welcome My as one of the apprentices!"
My jumped up: "Oh mom, can I go. This sounds wonderful!"
"I do not think I would be able to stop you. And if I tried, you'd be pestering me forever!"
My gave her mother a big hug. "Thanks mom! I love you!"  She  turned to Jon, "And thank you too, Jon."
"I have to leave now," Jon said, but I'll be back. Both as a postman and to pick you up on your first day in magic school!"

My is the youngest of the apprentices, she joins the  potions team, where she is among the best, if not the best, and always willing to help, teach and share. She is a brilliant apprentice all round, only really bad at divinations and chiromancy.
Her wand is long and slender, made from sugar maple, and her sparks are silvery white, often likened to snowflakes.
My will be one of the teachers at Birch Manor.

Ⓐ - Ⓩ

Tomorrow V for Vestegnen, where Sarah Poulsen lives.

 - - - - -

PS. Don't try looking for Uldervik, it does not exist on any map of Norway. It is my misreading of Oldervik near Tromsø. I only noticed yesterday, and I am not going to change it.