Nina Winther Winther

My index finger quickly tapped on my phone. Still no answers.

I looked up at the clock. There were only 20 minutes left of school. Twenty minutes to Easter break. Ten boring days at the end of the world, away from people and civilization. I lived in the middle of Finnmarksvidda. Three hours’ drive to the nearest neighbor, and another half-hour to Joker, the little convenience store that had none of what you wanted.

I had sent snaps to all my friends hoping to stay with them at Easter. Kari would ask her mother at lunch and snap me back as soon as she had an answer. Reidun was going to her family in Bergen, so I couldn’t stay there. Torhild and Leah would hang out, and that meant everyone else would be the fifth wheel on the wagon. And when it comes to them, you don’t want to be any of the wheels. Trust me.

Oh, yes! Only nineteen minutes left!

I looked out the window at the thick layer of snow that lay beyond the school grounds. The sun was shining, but there was no sign that the snow was melting today either. I wish I could live further south. Bergen, perhaps? Even though I had heard that it rained all year round in Bergen, it was ten times better than this. On the hottest day of July, we would be lucky if we got fifteen degrees. At least Bergen would have 28.

My phone pinged. A snap from Kari.

“Finally,” I said out loud.

I looked up at our science teacher, Beate. She gave me one disappointed look. I should’ve placed my phone in the basket after recess, but today I simply couldn’t. I was waiting for a rescue.

“Aurora Borealis, more commonly known as the Northern Lights. It’s created when electrically charged particles from the sun hit the Earth’s magnetic field,” she continued.

Beate was from Oslo and had moved here because she fell in love with a Sami man. He was one of the most handsome men in Alta. Maybe also the whole of Finnmark. Because of him, she had fallen in love with everything to do with Sami, and I think that’s why she had an eye for me.

I was Sami too, but you didn’t see me walking around in Sami clothes and talking about reindeer. I was normal, and I did everything I could to appear normal. Nothing about me said Sami. I was Norwegian, and I only spoke Norwegian. I was going to have a Norwegian career and help Norway with the climate goals. When I finished my education, of course.

I looked up at Beate, who drew the magnetic lines on earth she had outlined on the whiteboard.

“The particles flow along the magnetic lines down towards the magnetic poles,” she explained. “Here they collide with the molecules in the atmosphere, and the Northern Lights are made.”

I opened the snap and felt the smile spread across my face. Finally, now I didn’t have to go out into nowhere and spend time with… my brother.

Sorry, mom has plans (sad smiley)

Oh, no! You’re kidding? I pressed as fast as I could.

All the days?

The answer pinged in right away.

Yep, sorry.

My stomach curled up. My worst nightmare: I actually had to go home for Easter! Oh, this isn’t what I wanted. My lower lip slipped out, where I sat feeling sorry for myself. I wanted to be social, be part of society. Not a stupid hunter with Sami written on my forehead.

My phone pinged again. I opened the new snap from Kari, still hoping for that rescue.

Look out!

What? I looked up and hit two blue eyes surrounded by long, perfectly curled eyelashes.

Beate held her hand out and looked at me sternly. I sighed loudly and put my phone in her fist. She kept looking down at me. I looked over at the other students, who were grinning at me.

“Now?” she asked.

It was like she was waiting for an answer. Had she asked a question?

“Oh!”

“Uh, what?” asked Beate. Her eyes were still on mine.

“Was there a question?” I asked cautiously.

“What is the Latin name for the southern light?”

Oh my God, was that it? I actually knew that.

“Aurora Australis,” I replied with an innocent grin on my face.

“Aurora Australis!” she smiled as she walked back to the whiteboard with my phone in her hand. After a glance at the clock, she reminded us we had a writing assignment to be delivered after Easter. And we had to read it aloud to the class.

One minute to Easter! Maybe I could hide. Just stay here. Everything was better than going home. I sank disappointingly into the chair and stared out the window. Everything was better than the godforsaken Finnmarksvidda.

The school bell rang and everyone jumped up, threw the backpack on, and darted towards the exit, where they pulled and punched to get through the narrow door and out to freedom.

Beate tried to talk over the bell.

“Have a nice Easter holiday,” she said.

But no one heard. They were too busy getting out.

I sighed loudly and made gargle sounds in my throat, to point out my nonexistent willingness to go home. Reluctantly, I stood up, put on the jacket that hung over the back of the chair, and pulled the bag after me through the empty classroom.

Beate smiled nicely and gave me my phone back.

“Happy Easter, Hannah,” she said with a wry smile.

“Happy Easter,” I said gently, dragging my feet along the floor on the way out of the classroom.

The bus stop was fuller than usual. All the elementary school kids were waiting for the buses, too. I pushed my way through the crowd, looking for Kari and Reidun. I had to say goodbye before they left. Perhaps I could persuade them to come up with a way to hang out with me or something. One day, away from the home of boredom, was one day more than nothing.

Three buses stopped one after the other, and as the doors opened, students stormed into the buses. A little stressed, I searched through the herd, but I couldn’t see either Kari or Reidun anywhere.

I pushed myself forward and noticed Kari in the back row of one of the buses. I waved frantically, but she was busy talking with Rolf and Petter, who sat next to her. Reidun sat down in the middle seat. They laughed and chatted, and didn’t see me jumping on the sidewalk trying to get their attention.

I wish I lived in Alta too. Everything would have been so much easier. I sighed loudly as the buses disappeared down the road, and two new buses stopped right in front of me. The remaining students got on and the buses disappeared. Now I was the only one left at the bus stop.

“Hey, Hannah!” I heard behind me.

I just turned around as the pinched 12-year-old slipped on the compressed snow and fell right on his ass. His stuff fell out of his bag. Of which was the old, worn-out dinosaur book he got when he was four. I looked at him strangely.

“Why did you bring the old dinosaur book?” I asked.

“Because!” he replied, putting the book back in the bag.

It was so typical of him. He never remembered to close the bag. Never.

So, meet Nikko, my little brother. He was far too small for his age, and he always wore his Sami-hat that was way too big and slipped into his eyes all the time. He looked a bit like an elf that we decorate with for Christmas, one of those that just made you smile because it was so cute.

His big dream was to follow in dad’s footsteps and become a hunter. Everything Dad did, he did, too. Dad was his great Sami hero.

I bent over and helped him pick things up and get them back in the bag again.

“You’re so clumsy,” I said with a grin. “One day you’re going to lose something important.”

“I don’t.”

“Yeah, you will.”

“No, I won’t..”

Usually, we could do this for hours, but luckily our bus arrived. A small ten-seater minibus.

I didn’t know why we got a ten-seater bus instead of a taxi when it was just the two of us. Maybe it was because of our regular bus driver. His name was Terje, and he lived almost as far out in the wilderness as we did. And when I say almost as far out, I don’t mean anywhere near as far out as we do. He lived right next door to the Joker store, three and a half hours away.

Nikko stuffed the last book into the bag and threw it on his back, causing the book to almost fall back out again. He never learned!

We boarded the bus, and I slammed into my usual seat at the back row, while Nikko put the bag in the aisle and jumped into the seat on the first row, right next to Terje.

Nikko and Terje began with their usual hustle and bustle, while I put on my earphones and let the voice of Ariana Grande take me into a dreamland where I could be who I wanted to be, do what I wanted to do, and live where I wanted to live. This was my favorite time, my time to live like a rich American superstar with perfect hair and ass.

The bus started driving, and I closed my eyes. It would take a few hours to get home.

I opened my eyes and looked out the window. The snow layed thicker on the ground, and there was no sign of civilization except for the ill-plowed road we were driving on. The minibus took off the road and drove onto a tractor path into a small birch forest. That meant we were almost at the end of the road. I took off my earphones and put them in my bag.

The minibus stopped at a turnaround in the middle of the forest. I got up, and on the way out, I said a polite goodbye to Terje and stepped out into the deep snow. Dad hadn’t plowed the turnaround like he said he was going to. But that was business as usual.

The minibus disappeared down the path, and I stomped towards a pile of snow and started pushing the snow aside. A tarpaulin came into view. I pulled it aside. Underneath stood a snowmobile.

I closed the zipper on my jacket and swung my foot over the seat. Nikko was busy pushing a book into the disorganized bag, but it didn’t go far enough in order for the zipper to close.

“Hurry,” I said impatiently, looking up at the gray sky. “It’s starting to snow any minute.”

“Yes,” Nikko said, and gave up.

He threw the bag on his back with the book sticking out and jumped onto the seat behind me. I started the snowmobile and drove off. Nikko grabbed my waist hard. He always held on so well when I was driving.

The door slammed open, and we stamped in, covered in a thick layer of snow. Nikko shook the snow off like a dog, and it all landed on me.

“Nikko,” I shouted annoyingly, before taking some snow from my hood and throwing it back at him.

“Don’t do it,” he howled.

“I’m just doing the same thing as you do. If you don’t like it, then stop!”

I took off my jacket and hung it up. Nikko threw the jacket on the floor with his bag and entered. I shook my head. He was hopeless.

Upstairs in my room, I flung myself onto my newly made bed. I could smell summer flowers. Mom loved that smell. Both her perfume and the softener she used for the laundry smelled of summer.

In bed, I looked up at the pictures on the wall. Kari, Reidun, and me. We were best friends and always hung out at school. The problem was that when I was at home; I was all alone while they were together after school as well. I was a teenager who was pulled away from all my friends and held captive in no-man’s-land.

Just after Christmas, Rolf and Petter organized a big party where the whole tenth grade had gathered at the youth house. They were still talking about the party. That’s why Kari and Reidun were friends with them now. But, of course, I couldn’t go, since dad insisted I stay home. Life was so unfair.

I picked up the phone- no new snaps.

I moaned and threw my phone down on the bed. I couldn’t wait until after the summer when I could start high school. Kari, Reidun, and I planned to move in together in dorm rooms and study science so that we could go on to university and become scientists. That’s why we had only applied to schools far, far away.

I wanted to do research on the Northern Lights. Maybe I could transform the energy for electricity generation? All I knew was that I was going to make a difference in this world, and I couldn’t do that as long as I was stuck out here following the ancient Sami traditions. If we were to change the world, we had to make changes, and not just do things the same way we had been doing for thousands of years.

My plan was bulletproof. No one was going to change my mind. Nobody!

I got up and walked over to my dream wall. It contained pictures and articles about renewable energy, the Northern Lights, my favorite scientists. And best of all: a picture of a tropical sand beach. My dream place. A place where I could lie on the beach and swim in the crystal clear waters. The farthest I had ever been on holiday was to Tromsø. No wonder I thought Bergen sounded like a tropical paradise.

I kissed the image of my favorite scientist; Kristian Birkeland, a world-renowned scientist of the Northern Lights. He’s known for other things as well, but for me, his research on the Northern Lights was his most important achievement.

“One day I will be the leading scientist of the Aurora Borealis - the most fascinating phenomenon on Earth,” I said aloud before flinging onto the chair and opened my laptop. Now I was going to write the paper on the Northern Lights.

My Sami-dress lied curled up in the corner. It’s actually called a Gákti. It is blue with colorful sleeves and a neckline. The shoes and hat that belong were somewhere inside my closet. I didn’t know where. I hadn’t used the dress for years. I would not use it either.

The next morning, I woke up from rummaging downstairs. I turned around in bed and hid my head under the pillow. It was Saturday morning. It meant my dad was going hunting, and even though I’d said no a hundred times before, he was going to ask me today, as well. Just wait and see.

On the way down the stairs, I heard my dad’s voice.

“P651 has no problems in sub-zero temperatures, unlike the older 4C.”

He always read aloud. He could never read silently. And he only read hunting magazines. Weapons, catch, fishing, and killing of innocent animals. That’s all he cared about. That and the wonderful Sami traditions.

I lowered my head and pretended to have just woken up. Hopefully, this way, he wouldn’t engage as I walked past. I entered the old-fashioned living room with a fireplace and muntins in all the windows and continued straight up to the kitchen door at the other end of the living room. There was only one way to the kitchen, and that was through the living room.

Dad sat on the couch wearing a Sami fur dress with matching shoes and a hat that he always wore when he was out hunting. He had a Sami belt containing hunting tools around his waist, and the hunting rifle leaned against the couch.

He had his face hidden inside the hunter’s magazine and was still reading aloud.

“A shot from fifteen degrees angle will reduce the suffering of the prey.”

“Bang, bang!” shouted Nikko.

He held his arms as if shooting a rifle and pretends to shoot into the air. When he saw me, he pointed the invisible gun at me and pretended to shoot.

“Bang!”

Just like he could kill an animal. The last time he went hunting with dad, he got so scared that dad had to carry him all the way home. He didn’t sleep for a week. Dad caught nothing that day. The future hunters, am I right? Ha, ha.

To avoid attention, I pretended not to see him and continued towards the kitchen door.

“Are you ready to go?” my father asked in Sami, without taking his eyes off the magazine.

I pretended not to hear him.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked more firmly.

“I don’t understand Sami!” I said though I understood him very well.

Even a Greek could understand Greek.

I hurried towards the kitchen door, the endless, long leg towards freedom. There were noises coming from the couch, so I went even faster. But he spoke again as I was about to round the corner.

“Are you ready to go?” he said loudly and clearly in Norwegian.

I couldn’t wriggle away from this, so I stopped and sighed loudly.

“No, I’m not ready to go,” I said firmly as I turned toward him. “I will not go out hunting innocent animals.”

Dad put the magazine down, grabbed the gun, and got up. His eyes were staring right at me like I was saying something wrong.

“It’s tradition.”

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