Page 37 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

THE BACKWOODS

In the hush before the dawn the clearing lay silent.

Against the paling sky to the east the pine trees at the forest edge
stood black and sharply outlined. To the west, beyond the
cleared fields and the marshes of the foreshore, the setting moon
trailed a wake of silver across the waters of the fjord. In the clus­
tered houses of wood and turf the settlers slept, rolled in their
furs and homespun cloaks as near as possible to the banked cen­
tral fire, the low doors shut tight against the midwinter cold. The
new millennium came in unheeded across the forest settlements
of northern Europe.
There was a watch, it is true, but he dozed over his fire in
the lee of a store hut, conscientiously close to the corral in which
the cattle and the sheep were penned. The natives were friendly
hereabouts, had been friendly for generations. The watch was
only a precaution against wolves or marauding bobcats, and the
cattle could be relied on to give warning of their approach.
The settlement was typical of many along the deep fjords
and scattered through the wooded lowlands of southern Scan­
dinavia. It was new, its fields carved and burnt out of the forest
less than three years ago. Yet it was not in virgin territory. When
the last village had been abandoned, and the villagers had
trecked the seven miles across the ridges to this new site that the
gods had indicated, they had found massive old tree stumps
among the fighter newer growth, which showed that, before the
memory of man, other farmers had been there. There was even
an ancient stone tomb where the hills gave way to the estuary
flats, the immense capstone of the dolmen protruding above the
low mound which covered its walls, its entrance choked with