Popular Music. Mikael Niemi

mentally alert, she had lain on her deathbed and confessed her sins in a barely audible whisper before licking the bread with the tip of her leather-brown tongue and having her shrivelled lips sprinkled with wine. Then she said she could see a bright light, and angels drinking curdled milk from ladles, and when she drew her last breath her body became half an ounce lighter, that being the weight of her eternal soul.

      Close relatives were summoned to the ulosveisu the same day as she died. Her sons carried her coffin round all the rooms in the house, with the foot end first and the lid open so that she could take farewell of her home; hymns were sung, coffee was drunk, and the corpse was eventually driven off to the freezer at the mortuary.

      Then the funeral arrangements were made. The Pajala telephone exchange glowed red hot, and the post office started distributing invitations all over Norrbotten, Finland, south Sweden, Europe and the rest of the world. After all, Grandma had filled as much of the world as she could manage and had time for. She had borne twelve children, the same number as the apostles, and like them they had gone off in all possible directions. Some lived in Kiruna and Luleå, others in the suburbs of Stockholm, and some in Växjö and Kristianstad and Frankfurt and Missouri and New Zealand. Only one still lived in Pajala, and that was Niila’s father. All of them came to the funeral, including the two deceased sons – the ladies of the parish in touch with the other side had seen them. They had wondered who the two boys were, standing with heads bowed by the coffin during the introductory hymn, but then had realised they were rather bright round the edges and that their feet were hovering a finger’s breadth over the ground.

      Also present were grandchildren and great-grandchildren from all over the globe, strange elegantly dressed creatures speaking every Swedish dialect you could think of. The grandchildren from Frankfurt had German accents, while the Americans and New Zealanders chattered away in Swenglish. The only ones from the younger generation who could still speak Tornedalen Finnish were Niila and his brothers and sisters, but they didn’t say very much anyway. There was a whole host of languages and cultures assembled in Pajala church, a very tangible tribute to what a single fertile Tornedalen womb could give rise to.