INTO THE WINTER LANDS
Arctic retreat for women with Carolyn Hillyer

We walk along the forest line where the great north sweeps to the ground
We fear we lost you long ago, so many trees have grown to hide you from our eyes
We ran to find you in the past and we will seek you through our future dream
but now our pouch carries no more than lonely air and we do not hear the mending drum

We walk across the icy lake where the snow is piled in frozen waves
We thought we heard you through the pines but the wind has turned the sound to glass
We will sing you out from the dark forgotten past and we will sing you a future road
This berry pouch needs to be filled so we may bless the mending drum

We walk back to our cooling hearth where the smoke from scented boughs darkens the hides
and there you wait beside the stones: did we forget to look for you so close to home?
Your lap is the blanket of the past and your brown earth hands caress the future as it sleeps
You shake sweet berries from your pouch and now you reach to play the mending drum

In January 2006 thirteen women set off to the Scandinavian Arctic for a deep winter retreat, to live together for several weeks in forest cabins beside a frozen lake and to share our journeys into both the outer and inner landscapes. The women came from England, Holland, Germany and Sweden; some with extensive travel experience and some with very little; each woman undertaking this trip for different personal reasons but all drawn powerfully by the ancient ice and, through it, into the hidden faces of a northern women’s spiritual tradition rooted in the primordial winter lands. The intent behind the retreat was to combine days and nights of silence, during which we would each engage individually with the land and with our own projects, with time spent together out on the ice and snow, sharing a whole range of Arctic activities.

We were also there to walk into our bone country. During the last ice age the glacial line extended from southwest England to Siberia along the northern edges of the great landmass, and the present features of the Scandinavian Arctic were once those of places far further south. By physically travelling northwards to meet the snow, we were tracing old ancestral tracks along a distant time line, using the raw landscape as our source and finding a deeper route into the indigenous memory of our own lands.

Carolyn travelled ahead to prepare the cabins and the welcome dinner. The group eventually arrived, bright with exhaustion and wonder, to be greeted by white forest, silent darkness and outside temperatures of minus 35. The next day we experienced nostrils that froze together with every breath, hair thickly coated with ice and our first steps out across the frozen lakes. All of us found delight in wearing our polar boots (able to withstand any sort of ice and most extremes of temperature) and soon grew accustomed to the vast amount of time it took us to wrap and unwrap ourselves from our many layers of clothes each time we ventured outside!

During our alternate days of silence we stayed close to our cabins and worked with our own projects – drum making, tanning salmon skin for bags, sculpting, sewing, writing, singing, dreaming… Together we created small weavings on a traditional Sámi heddle (back strap) loom that were later given as gifts to Arctic friends. On those nights we made our way through the snow to gather around the fire of a traditional kata (winter house for herders) and watch the flames spark up through the turf roof. Our sacred circles were rooted within the cycle of images and words from Carolyn’s work The Northern Sisterhood of Drums and together we explored our deep relationship with ancient ice and winter darkness.

On our talking and sharing days we went out onto the ice. Everything we did during our winter retreat was shaped and filled by the surrounding landscape. Some days the sun briefly rose, skimming sideways on the hills and dipping down again. The temperature also rose and fell dramatically within a range of more than 40 degrees. An evening sauna in a small hut perched on the frozen lake (where our steaming bodies rolled in the deep snow) was followed by a stunning display of northern lights that played for many hours across the night. Travelling with dog sleds enabled us to access the land to the very edges of the horizon, speeding along the boundaries between ice and sky, expanding to fit the open spaces through which we moved as each lake opened into yet another. A herd of reindeer spiralled across the ice, others we found digging for lichen at the forest edges. Searching for elk took us (on wheels) high into the mountains.

We visited Greta Huuva and Gun Hofgaard at their lakeside hamlet west of the Sámi village of Jokkmokk, sitting on reindeer skins and drinking teas made from local herbs and berries. With Gun (drum maker and traditional artist) we made rattles of reindeer toes and birch sticks. Greta talked about the Sámi world, the land, the drums and sacred animals. She sang ancient yoiks then served us indigenous foods of flat bread, smoked fish and reindeer meat. We went to the traditional tannery of Anders Hakansson, where the complete range of Arctic wild life on display in his workshop demonstrated how, in these cold lands, the lives of human and animal are so closely bound together. Anders uses old methods and ingredients to prepare hides brought in by hunters and herders for leatherwork, drums and clothing. Reindeer skins are tanned with alder bark to redden the skin – in summer months sunlight turns the dye into dark ochre, whereas the winter skins are pale creamy brown. Other skins are tanned white with seal fat producing leather that is especially fine and supple.

It is important to make good endings, to bind a journey into your bones and then offer back something for the footprints you have left on the land. We walked until we found the blessing of silence. We rested in the deep nourishment of darkness. Across the white emptiness, icy waters and cold winds swept through us, stripping us clean. In the quiet stillness of our hibernation, standing so distantly from any familiar environment, we found new eyes. Snowfall gave us new clear spaces on which to place fresh tracks. We absorbed the land into our bodies until the song of ancient ice permeated every moment of our experience. We followed the memory of faint tracks in the snow until the ancestral mothers in our veins walked across the frozen lake to meet us…and to sing us home.

Arctic sisters arrive on the ice	Carolyn	Gulli
Carine	Janet	Mezzie
Johanna	Yvonne	Nicky
Penny	Jan	Kathryn
Nicola	Christine	Our cabins ...
by the side of...	the frozen lake.	The wood shed
The kata (roundhouse)	Looking out...	across the lake.
In summer the sauna hut...	perches at the water's edge.	Trekking to the village for supplies
Preparing salmon skin...	for tanning as leather...	to sew into pouches.
Reindeer skin drum making	Finished drum and pouch	Weaving on a heddle loom
We wove together the threads...	of thirteen ice journeys.	The tannery
Reindeer skins...	worked by Anders Hakansson...	using traditional methods.
Sami craftwork made by...	Greta Huuva who also...	cooked us a special Arctic meal.
Gun Hofgaard (drummaker)...	at the medieval market.	We used skis, snow shoes and...
dog sleds...	to travel across...	the frozen landscape.
We experienced...	the beautiful balance...	of fire and ice...
and the primordial dance...	of the sun gradually returning...	after the dark months.
Thirteen women carried home...	the magic of our shared journey...	into the winter lands.