by Geir Tore Holm
The text is one of the stories in a digital book circle held in the spring and autumn of 2025 by Verdde, as part of the art project Vihtanuššan Vittnesbörd.
The land I come from is where the national borders of Finland, Sweden and Norway meet. I grew up in a nook at the brim of the rich and salty Arctic Ocean. Generations before me found their living in this village, Olmmáivággi/Manndalen on the steep, but hospitable Norwegian coast. I have a craving for seafood, maybe to keep my gained iodine levels balanced, and I love berries and reindeer meat. My ancestors came from the pine tree forests and marshlands in the wide inland river valleys, where the tributaries run in from the cold and barren rocky mountain plateaus. They came from the round mountaintops, softened by the glacier´s caress through thousands of years. From shifting seasonal faces of the fells. They came from the since time immemorial reindeer migration tracks along lakes, creeks and from fragrant lush light green birch and willow woods.
I feel I belong to this land. To the shrubs, moss, lichen, algae, and fungi. I carry it all with me, my digestion, my brain, my blood, my respiration. The joiks singing this landscape bring tears to my eyes. I feel related to the pitch range of my relative’s vibrating voices, the never ending play with words, metaphors, understatements. And when I meet people from the inland I recognise eyes, noses, cheeks, mouths and hands and feel comfortable in their company. Not many words need to be exchanged. The togetherness can very well be quiet.
It´s not foreign land. Enzymes show the way and make communication, migration, division possible.
All this fits into my human cells. It is stored in the molecules and organelles, mitocondrias, ribosomes, golgi, proteins, endosomes, lysosomes, membranes. It´s not foreign land. Enzymes show the way and make communication, migration, division possible. This is under harmonic control – or not. What is determined? What is incurred? What is will? What is hidden in the cells defines the landscape and connects.
So much is sentiment, it´s yes and no, or a lot between. Sentimentality is a key element in patriotism, a driving force in chauvinism, indispensable in nationalisms, necessary in all kinds of – even the most cynical – self-assertive, greedy, violent, territorial mindsets. What has´t been done for the sake of revenge?
What have we been without feelings? We can´t go on. We can´t sense our inner, nor our outer. To belong is to be held tight by a connection between what the cells tell the brain and what the brain is able to process into action. What the shrubs, moss, lichen, algae, and fungi throughout generations have wanted us to. They want us to wander in love and health, but are we able to use what we like to think is human indigeneity to give love back? Are we sure that our growing pride makes us good, coexisting custodians of our lands?
Exerpt from Ancestors are the Future by Meander
Sensing Earth – Cultural Quests Across a Heated Globe (Dietachmair, Gielen, Nicolau, eds.)
Valiz, Amsterdam, 2023
