Large Fierce Mammal

Systems of human belief that formed absent any Abrahamic religious influence tend to share the common trait of including people as being one among Nature’s creatures instead of above all by divine edict. They seek to understand the forces and phases of Nature within the context of motives and behaviours shared by Humans and other living things alike, and in so doing, grasp how simultaneously simple and profound everything is in its connectedness.

Whatever its basis, all systems of belief seem to share some sort of concept of an immortal life force that dwells in living things. While the Abrahamic group assigns this “soul” exclusively to human kind, others find spirits dwelling in places and things; some grand and powerful, and others that are tiny, even seemingly insignificant.

Spirits seem, for the most part, to concern themselves with their own affairs, in concert with Nature and their own expression of the Way of the Wild. Only things that have become unsound so they can no longer be that way themselves will attract their enmity. A tangible comparison can be found if you watch a Deer walk through a field of wild flowers on a Summer’s day. You will see it going about its business heedless of the scores of Bees that are momentarily disturbed by its passing. Likewise, the Bees will buzz away fussily, to either find another flower or re-alight on the one just vacated as soon as the interloper is gone. By comparison, something that due to age, infirmity, illness, or wrong headedness, like an irrationally fearful human, can easily attract the defensive side of a Bee’s nature with painful results.

And then there are the spirits that seem born out of the Human condition. Notwithstanding such an unstable foundation from which to spring, not all of them mean harm, although their interpretation of right and wrong may be wildly divergent with that of the average “man in the street”. The Tomte, of which I have previously written, is a shining example well known in Scandinavian lore, and that I have found my own clan of much closer to home. ~ Dark Sentiments Season 7 – Day 17: The Spirit of Things

Today we revisit the Tomte in a delightfully narrated short film based on an adaptation by Astrid Lindgren from a poem by Viktor Rydberg. The film is narrated for half its length because the entirety of the visuals are repeated twice — once with narration, and then without. That small quirk in production doesn’t bother me. I could listen to this reader speak all day, not to mention the Tomten himself, who spoke clearly to me in his own language,  a silent little language that even I could understand.