Free The Shapeshifters by Stefan Spjut Page B

you have ever seen a photograph of the Lapland Gate, there is a good chance it was Dad who took it, and if it is an aerial shot, then I can almost guarantee it was him. This particular motif did not interest him especially, but it was popular, and Dad was a businessman through and through, if perhaps a hot-headed and impatient one.
    He would rather photograph the striking lowland fell in Rapadalen, the one he called the Lonely Mountain, though its real name is Nammatj. In the Sami language that means ‘nameless’. He also loved the Skierfe: the ‘sheer drop’.
    There are dramatically sharp features on the face of the ancient landscape.
    In the beginning he travelled on skis. He trained with the Ski Battalion in Boden, and it was during his military service that he became familiar with the most northerly parts of the country. He came into the world further south in Örnsköldsvik, which made him a man of Ångermanland, and I like to believe that I have Ångermanland in my heart as well, because I have never liked it up here. In a way I hate the life here: the coarse mentality that dominates the iron ore mining fields, the macho culture, the stubbornness and the corrosive, everlasting gossip. The darkness and the cold which leave deep and permanent frost damage in their wake, both in buildings and people. The reindeer and their pastures, as sacred as cemeteries.
    But I got stuck here, somehow. Just like Dad. Although for him it was different: he was mesmerised by the mountains. During the war he was posted to Riksgränsen, the northern border, and liked the place so much that he settled there. ‘A fells convert,’ he used to say.
    Riksgränsen was a dreadfully isolated place when Dad firstwent there. It’s almost impossible to imagine how isolated it was. So living there was more or less impossible. And I think that was what attracted him because few were as stubborn as he was. He bought a ski cabin by Lake Vassijaure and above the front door, which opened inwards, he nailed a sign with the words: MYRÉN’S PHOTO STUDIO.
    He stayed there for as long as a person can be in one place. When he died he had been living in Riksgränsen for over fifty years.
    He was a physically strong man, but fragile in spite of that. It changed from one day to the next. He was something of a hypochondriac too, if I’m honest. He often grimaced, bared his teeth and sighed, relating in detail how his body had let him down, and he complained despairingly that nothing worked the way it should: the plane, the cameras, his knees. There was always something letting him down.
    The fragile side of him would carry him to unsuspected heights, however. That’s how we’ll have to look at it. Following a knee injury, when Dad felt as if the fell world was drifting out of his reach, he acquired an aircraft and then learned to fly. In that order. It was a large and risky investment, but it succeeded. No one had photographed the fells from above before.
    With the plane he could reach in a few hours places that it had taken him days to get to before, or else had been completely inaccessible. It was revolutionary. The world saw the Swedish fells from above for the first time, and it was entirely thanks to Dad.
    Reindeer appeared as small dots on the blindingly white mountainsides. Distant, silent hordes, such as only the hawks had seen before. The valleys were filled with shining, black, meandering water courses, veiled in driving clouds of rain. Remnants ofsnow appeared as lines on the hillsides, like white scratch marks. The bogs changed colour, as if a red-brown wind was blowing over them.
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    Dad demonstrated that he was a fully-fledged pilot by landing on the top of Kebnekaise—or, to be more accurate, immediately below the summit, because of course no plane can land on the actual mountain top—and he was the first person in history to do it.
    He took a picture of himself up there, to capture