[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

And the circles and the ages and the ages...

Or words to that effect. I was the first to leave Finlandmoot, dragging reluctant heels back to the featureless void that is reality. Naturally, having more time than anyone else to spend on documenting the whole affair in tediously minute detail I've done nothing of the sort. I start out with good intentions like 'today I'll post my perspective on Finlandmoot' only to find long afterwards that the time has been expended in looking up references to Dwarves in HME or driving to London. Or taking the ferry across the river to eat mussels and drink beer. Come to think of it, this would be a pretty good place for a Downsmoot...

Such directionless stalling aside, it falls to me to reveal the truth behind the headlines. I was there: I know where the bodies are buried; I recall only too well how narrowly the Barrow Downs avoided war with Estonia, and how Estelyn had to sneak out of Finland disguised as a newt. The image of Nogrod dressed as Venezuelan shepherd and waving an egg-whisk in the direction of Sweden will stay with me forever. I digress, though. Perhaps it would be better to start at the beginning.

As some of you may have noticed, I haven't been around much for about five years or so. It was therefore something of a surprise when I received an invitation to a new Barrow-Downs event. I recognised one or two faces on the list, so I replaced my old passport and booked myself some flights (actually this took quite a long time, but the magic of prose allows me to compress it all into one sentence).

Skipping forward a few months, it turned out that Oddwen and I were supposed to arrive within ten minutes of each other, and that I was to land first. This turned out to be a shameless fabrication on the part of British Airways, who got me to Vantaa half an hour late due to some sort of aerial traffic jam. This was not an auspicious start, but it wasn't the worst airport disaster of the week. Stumbling dazedly out of baggage reclamation, still reeling from trying to read the Financial Times on the flight, I was hailed by some odd-looking people. Either this was my first meeting with my hosts or I was about to be mugged. Perhaps both.

Fortunately the natives were friendly, although some idiot had put the steering wheel on the wrong side of their car. We were whisked into Helsinki for a bit of sitting down, which I hadn't done since getting off the plane. Back at Nogrod's place we were regaled with a fine dinner of roast duck and wine, which was the opening salvo in a barrage of alcohol that lasted for the remainder of the trip. Some might say that I'm not obliged to drink it just because it's there, but those people are, not to put too fine a point on it, wimps. This was my first experience of Nogrod's granite death-fortress, and I must admit that the large collection of cookery books came as something of a shock. Unlike most of the people who bought those books, though, he can actually use them. We ate very well while staying there. Some of the details are a bit hazy, but by this time there were six of us: Me, Nogrod, a very tired Oddwen, Thinlómien, A Little Green and Legate of Amon Lanc (I always thought that was a nice title).

After varied banter, we went for a walk in the park. I've been to London, so I know what to expect from a city park; I was therefore completely unprepared for Helsinki's version, which is simply to end the city and call the countryside just outside a park. There was enough room for a hockey pitch (on which people were playing ice hockey without ice), an archery range from the XV Olympiad in 1952, and everything between us and Lapland. The obvious message was that you don't want to get lost in Helsinki or you'll end up at the North Pole three months later. It was a lesson I was glad to learn, just as I was pleased to discover that settees have been placed at strategic intervals around Helsinki for the comfort of passing walkers. The most logical and reasonable explanation we could think of for the random sofa was that someone was moving to the forest one piece of furniture at a time, which tells you everything that you need to know about the rôles played in Finlandmoot by logic and reason. Returning to the Dark Tower of Nameless Dread, we whiled away the remainder of the evening in Downish wise. Thus ended the first day.

At this point I have to admit that I can't remember in what order everyone turned up. I know that by the time we went to Suomenlinna and - more importantly - a Finnish supermarket, Hookbill and Estelyn were in evidence, and on that day I also encountered Aganzir for the first time. I do remember that we left Oddwen sleeping as only someone with transatlantic jet-lag can, but that she joined us later. The fortifications at Suomenlinna were sadly inadequate as a base from which to conquer the universe, there being no working guns and a café instead of a magazine. Legate and I walked over them together, and realised quite quickly that the Downs will have to launch its campaign from a different national monument, and that I can't read Russian. Once Oddwen arrived, we all sat down for a picnic at the beach, just like the Secret Seven, except there were eight of us and everything else was completely different too. Later on we were joined by Pitchwife before wending our weary way back to the Command Centre.

Day Three saw Estelyn leaving ludicrously early in the morning to pursue her dark paths through the fabric emporia of Finland. Nogrod, Pitchwife and I preferred a more civilised and altogether slower start to the day. Eventually, at the crack of noon, Pitchwife and I were ready to venture outside. Nogrod remained on guard against the arrival of more invaders from across the sea while we hijacked a bus. I realise that it will seem strange to other Downs members, but somehow we ended up in a bookshop (I think that Kirjakauppa may have been the first Finnish word I learned, but more of my linguistic exploits later). We met Aganzir, Estelyn and Hookbill for a trip around the Ateneum, where there was indeed very much art. Some paintings depicted snow inside a living room, which reminded me of my student days. By this time I’d just about begun to get the hang of saying ‘kiitos’ and smiling like an idiot; when people think that you’re a fool you can get away with more. Speaking of cultural exchange, Aganzir proved to be very keen on the phrase ‘creepy-crawly’, as I discovered while we were admiring some metal insects.

Back at Nogrod’s castle of doom, we were ready to receive the next batch of inmates, this time Macalaure and Rikae, who had brought with them my nemesis, the Wereduckling. They seemed like such a nice family, which just goes to show how masterfully their disguises had been prepared. We were soon to discover that they came bearing destruction and torture, but who hadn’t? I think that it was on this evening that we all headed over to Thinlómien’s place to clutter up the recreation room. I remember drinking gallons of Karhu, being repeatedly assaulted by a small child, playing Paper Telephone and badgering Rune to come and join our depraved revels. By the time we repaired to the student flat I had ceased to exercise due caution over what I was drinking, which resulted in my consuming something that the girls had been hiding in their fridge to keep the world safe. It tasted of pink death, but I drank it anyway. This proved to be something of a tactical error.

This is probably the best point at which to mention what the Icelanders would no doubt call The Saga of Shasta the France-trapped. He had been expected the day before, but had called to announce that he was being subjected to the worst torture an Englishman can imagine: being stuck in Paris for the night. The French had done what they do best and deranged his travel plans, which apparently were the only things about him that hadn’t been deranged to begin with. By the point that I’ve reached, he was in Helsinki, and wisely spending most of his time asleep. As it turned out, he was merely husbanding his energy for concerted lunacy.

Also at this gathering was Volo, who apparently owns no shoes. He makes up for this by wearing an unfeasibly large hat and rather a fancy weskit. It’s just as well that he and Skip brought hats with them, because I’d left mine at home in the belief that they’d come to harm if they went anywhere near an airliner.

Speaking of Skip, he and Kath at last deigned to join us in Joutsaa, which is quite simply beautiful. We drove out in convoy, but I was in the most dilapidated van in Europe with Nogrod (the driver), Estelyn, Hookbill, Oddwen and Aganzir. If you’re going to travel half-way across Finland with a bunch of unreliable maniacs, I recommend them.

It was a stroke of genius to get us all out to the cabin, sawing up trees (kill the Ent, kill the Ent), cooking over open fires and taking saunas. I discovered a one-litre beer glass that was perfect for doing Darth Vader impersonations, if you can impersonate Darth Vader, which I can’t. Oddwen can also do some interesting voices, but the real stars of our evenings around the fire were Nogrod, A Little Green and Skip. It was during this time that I really started to relax, although this was a mistake as it allowed Wereduckling to sneak up on me and eat me to death on more than one occasion. It was after a day of such treatment that the final horror was unleashed and Rune joined us. The circle was complete, and the universe was doomed.

There isn’t enough space on the forum’s servers for me to give a very detailed account of Joutsaa. Suffice it to say that I went fishing with Skip and Aganzir (the boat is apparently unsafe for eighteen people, so we had to take turns), played werewolf for the first time (and was on the winning side, because we really were that good). We played the longest game of Apples to Apples in living memory on the veranda of a log cabin, and witnessed the frightening woodcraft of the Downs membership from the relative comfort of an open fire. We ate pancakes with berries we’d gathered in the woods that very afternoon and spent a lot of time in the lake. A number of us also fell over spectacularly, especially Rikae. It’s interesting when you reach my advanced years and crosswords seem like a pretty wild way to spend an afternoon to have your banged head carefully examined by a concerned teacher. People have been calling Kath ‘the only normal Brit’, but I think ‘least immature’ is probably a better way to put it. I’m not sure whether to find that galling or reassuring. Having said that, when the only other two Britons present are me and Hookbill it’s not surprising that such comparisons spring to mind.

The last night in Joutsaa was spent largely sitting in a lake, rambling on about politics with Aganzir. I ended up getting about two hours’ sleep before the journey back to Helsinki in our amazingly still functional bus. I can impersonate a pillow or a footstool with equal felicity. Then, after a long-overdue shower, I donned my best Theakstons T-shirt and headed off to look at some church boats with Nogrod and Esty. Apparently they weren’t Viking longships, but they were the closest thing to them that I saw in Finland. Eventually, Esty and Nogrod poured me into a bus, which would ferry me to the Slut Walk. This journey, incidentally, reminded me why most people have working mobile phones. I was reduced to scribbled numbers and occasional telephone boxes, but fortunately I’d remembered to bring some blind luck, which got me to the station in time to join the march. Present there were Aganzir (our fearless leader), Hookbill, Oddwen, Shasta and your humble correspondent. We walked as we’d often walked before, exploring Helsinki in what I’m going to start calling ‘protest tourism’.

Back at Lommy and Aganzir’s place, we watched the obscene Glaswegian Harry Potter video that had so captivated the junior Downers and then headed off a bar (at last) to play ‘Truth Be Told’, which is a game in which no truth is told at all. I find when trying to recall the game that my memories have been suppressed. Something about Rush Limbaugh dressed as Scarlett O’Hara floats up from the depths of memory like a dead sheep in a reservoir. Anyway, we laughed a lot. Then everyone else turned up and we went to dinner.

This was the last evening we’d spend together, so we made the most of it by eating, drinking, collecting all the restaurant’s stuffed toys on our table and dressing one of them up as Rune. We then piled back to Nogrod’s Doom Fortress for tea and cakes, or more accurately Danish mead and lots of beer. Estelyn had brought with her the silliest Lord of the Rings film any of us have seen, courtesy of the Russian society, and we played far too much of the two-line story game: five simultaneous sheets that eventually contained some of the most disturbing and ridiculous statements that we’ve ever produced. Since Estelyn and I were in REB together, that’s saying quite a lot.

Once the little ones had been packed off back to the nursery flat, there seemed little point in sleeping as I had to be up in three hours to catch my flight. Therefore Nogrod, Pitchwife and I spent some time looking through Nogrod’s quite impressive library: Snorri in Finnish, sagas in Danish, the most dilapidated copy of LR in the world; the list is practically endless. We talked, I avoided falling asleep, and finally Nogrod saw me into a taxi and I was, as they say, out of the saga. It seems that the best of the Moot was yet to come, but such is the punishment for those who can’t arrange enough holiday.

Normally I’d add some impressions of the various people, but I think I’ve imposed on the Forum’s time enough. Suffice it to say that it was obvious from the start that I was among friends: people with whom one could comfortably build a guillotine or barbecue a head of state. It would be to the great impoverishment of mankind if this company were never again to be assembled, and I hope that I’ll have the opportunity to meet each of them again. Special thanks are due to our hosts, Nogrod, Thinlómien, A Little Green and Aganzir, who gave their bus passes, their time, their money and so much energy to organising the whole thing and catering for half the Downs. A week is too short a time to spend in the company of such excellent and admirable folk. May your beards grow ever longer, and your feathers never fall.