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valmoraTitle: Iron-banded, Silver-tipped, Golden-bladed
Fandom: Hetalia
Characters: Finland/Sweden (under different names), Denmark, Norway
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Originally posted here for this prompt and kindexed here.
References: My preferred translation of the Kalevala can be found online here. For those who wish to read it in print:
Lönnrot, Elias, comp. Kalevala: Epic of the Finnish People. Illus. Björn Landström. Ed. George C Schoolfield. Trans. Eino Friberg. Helsinki: Otava Publiching Company Ltd, 1988.
Summary: Suomi follows the trail of the sun, and takes in another like himself; all is changed, and all is the same, in the house of Suomi and Ruotsi. (AU)
In the transfer from the kink meme, I have edited Sweden's accent and the dialogue at the end.
One year the harvest is poor, and rather than let his children die Suomi follows them stone-skipping through islands in the water, chasing the sun as it wheels through the heavens. He comes upon little farms, and his people become farmers in this far-off foreign place.
It doesn’t take him long to find the boy who is the people here – he’s taller than Suomi, but not by so much, and when Suomi takes him by the hand and says, “You’re living in my house now,” he doesn’t say anything at all.
Ruotsi is skilled at building things, and at farming, and he knows how to tame iron and gold. Suomi, not wanting to be cast out from Ruotsi’s lands, has one of his warlords married to the daughter and sole child of Ruotsi’s king – crude, and graceless, but it allows him to stay. Gives him sovereignty and union between their lands, and they build a house together. He lies beside Ruotsi in a bed too big for their child-bodies and listens to the sighing of wind in the pines, the crash of the sea against stone.
A man comes to them speaking of a Christ who preaches love for all things, that there is an afterlife of happiness, or of torment for those who do not follow. He and Ruotsi listen, because their king listens, because their people listen. And then Suomi sings the man’s boat away, back across the sea, none of their people converted, the foreign weak White Christ banished also.
Ruotsi’s cousin, a wild-blooded one, comes to bring the Christ again, and he comes not with soft speech but with the singing heat of iron. So Suomi presses his fingers to Ruotsi’s pale cheeks and asks, “Will you forge iron for me, to defend the both of us? Tame its fear and keep us from its wickedness?”
Ruotsi’s eyes flicker shut and open, blue as flame, as the sky Ilmarinen forged.
“I will,” he says, and so they make war.
They chase from their seas and land the boy whom Ruotsi would call Danmark, and their opponent is bold and laughs sun-bright fearless even as he falls back defeated.
Danmark tries to enlist a boy to Ruotsi’s west in aid; he comes only after Danmark offers him gold and trade and ships.
Thus Suomi and Ruotsi follow the sun’s blood as it falls in the west, and kill and steal and burn enough to silence little Noregr, who is wide-eyed and quiet and watches the sea.
And so they are left alone for a time, to build themselves together, shore up the walls of their home. They have become older in war, in knowing better how to wear their power as a shared Nation. Almost old enough to marry, if they were human.
Suomi thinks he may ask Noregr to marry Ruotsi. They are alike, those two, and lovely in their similarity. And he would like Noregr’s land, his love for the sea.
Danmark joins with an army of warrior-monks and some of Noregr’s richer men and tries to wage a war in the name of their Christ. He calls out that it is for their souls; Suomi and Ruotsi share a glance. He cares nothing for souls. Their lands may be cold, but their fields are not infertile, and with some care and a great fleet he could become undisputed lord of the Baltic Sea.
Ruotsi has yielded to invasion once, and peaceably enough; Suomi will see that neither of them does so again.
They lose islands, and men, and Danmark strikes Suomi with his axe. Suomi falls, dazed, and watches Danmark hold his weapon aside and look at Ruotsi.
“Say,” Danmark murmurs, “Don’t you want to leave him behind? Raise up your peasants and defy him?”
Ruotsi clenches his fists around the heft of his axe and holds silent.
“If you came to us,” Danmark whispers, “you could rule him. Don’t you want to? Set the plow to his lands, feel the kingship in your own skin.”
Breathing hurts. Suomi feels blood flowing over his skin, all of it his own. He thinks it isn’t his pain that makes it look like Ruotsi’s trembling.
“Or would you rather yield to everything he asks, until he asks for your honor as a man, and sends you into witch-weakness?” Danmark whispers.
Ruotsi strikes him down, and drops his weapon in blooded ground to pick Suomi up and carry him from the battlefield.
They win, but with grievous losses, and Suomi is sick for months, lying helpless fevered in bed while Ruotsi cares for their house and lands.
When Suomi comes to himself he finds that Ruotsi has broken their lands into districts and of the nobles made a council which holds power over the king.
Suomi learns of this only after he leaves his sickbed, and cannot speak for the tightness of his throat.
Ruotsi is in his little workroom, hammer in hand and nails at his side; Suomi takes the tools from his hands, peaceably, and sets them aside, and lays one hand on Ruotsi’s cheek.
“You want to break the unity of our kingdom,” Suomi murmurs.
Ruotsi’s eyelashes flutter and he shakes his head, still seated on the ground, Suomi leaning over him. His cheek is warm against the pads of Suomi’s fingers, a little rough with inexpertly-shaved beard.
“Your new council fetters our king as anchor stops the freedom of a ship.”
Ruotsi licks his lips, parts them. His breath smells bitter. “So all our people have voices. A king’s loud. One farmer's not, but many…”
Suomi closes his eyes, strokes Ruotsi’s lips with his thumb. How could he have… Ruotsi serves. Always. He opens his eyes.
“No nobleman can speak for the farmers in his land, nor for the hunters in the forests, nor for the herdsmen,” Suomi says. “Let us ride out to see what our people need.”
They travel the breadth of their kingdom, and they see hunger, and beauty, and happiness, and fear. They take notes of what they see, ask questions of the unhappy – and the happy as well – to see what may be changed for the betterment of most. How much will change, neither of them can say, but Ruotsi speaks convincingly when he cares to, and he cares about their people.
North, and still farther north, the cold sinks between the layers of their clothes, into bone and blood, and at night they curl around each other, few clothes between them – everything meant to shield them together.
Suomi wakes, the sun half-sleeping still, and cannot bring himself to move, or wake Ruotsi for the day’s travels. For Ruotsi arrests the eye – sharply-featured, strong and fair. He is tall, though no taller than Suomi himself, and curls in his sleep as though to shield his belly from attack.
And Suomi realizes, watching Ruotsi sleep, that even had they become Christian, or had Norja not become so, he could not have married Ruotsi away. For Ruotsi is his, and his alone – to have in house, to hold as equal in state, to keep as lover.
He has never courted, but surely – surely he can learn.
They come upon a household run by an old woman, with beautiful daughters; she coaxes them to stay some days, for Suomi has put over himself the mantle of a singer of tales, and Ruotsi repairer of tools, carrier of steel, capable of working a forge.
They are given separate berths, good beds, and for this reason Ruotsi touches Suomi’s shoulder and murmurs, too close to silence for their hosts to hear, “She knows.”
“Let her try to keep us,” Suomi whispers. “There is no maiden here whose beauty could make me stop on the road to watch her weave.”
He imagines that Ruotsi smiles. “No daughter of th’ mistress who I'd spend six years courtin', either.”
And Suomi shivers with want.
One of the matron’s daughters finds them sitting together in the hall and holds out for them table beer, her smile the expression of a girl told to find a husband. And Suomi, unwilling to give her any of the answers her mother craves, takes one cup from her – and sets it in Ruotsi’s hands.
The girl and Ruotsi flush red; Ruotsi, as he takes Suomi’s portion and gives it to him, has shaking hands.
No ale has tasted sweeter on Suomi’s lips.
That night, Suomi comes to Ruotsi’s room, and they stand inside the just-closed door, unsure, until Suomi reaches up to Ruotsi’s shoulder – he is the taller of them, now – and tugs him close, sharing breath and heat and skin.
After that, the matron lets them stay only long enough for Ruotsi to finish at the forge, then sends them off again on the road. Neither protests.
They return home come spring, to find plans afoot among Suomi’s nobles to set his part of the kingdom above Ruotsi’s in status. Suomi clenches his fists, and talks his throat dry to stop them, and it changes none of their plans.
He goes into the king’s forest, because otherwise he will go mad and strike one of their people.
Ruotsi finds him some hours later, cradled by the branches of a tree, the bark bloody from his fists. And he calls, “Come down b’fore ‘s dark.”
Suomi climbs down the trunk and follows Ruotsi home.
That night, Suomi comes to their shared room to find Ruotsi already there, standing, waiting – naked, silver paleness made golden in the flickering candle-light.
He goes to one knee when Suomi enters, holds his gaze down as Suomi closes the door. Suomi, terrified, reaches to tilt his head up – and his fingers touch leather and iron, at Ruotsi’s neck. After that, he can only look – this rough thing, on Ruotsi, whose roughness sheathes beauty. It doesn’t fit, it catches the eye – it catches in his chest, as well, to feel the pounding of his blood.
“They’re in th’ righ’,” Ruotsi murmurs. “I should serve.”
Suomi tries to speak and can’t, his mouth stopped by hunger – to see Ruotsi yield, again, to him, now that they are no longer children, has twisted his thoughts.
“Come to bed,” he says. “After that, when you’ve given me back my mind, we will talk.”
Ruotsi smiles, faintly, stands. Follows Suomi to their bed, and surrenders.
After, both lying naked, Ruotsi’s face pressed to Suomi’s chest, the collar still on, Suomi lays his hands on Ruotsi’s warm back and says, “You are not the lesser of us. We were unified under a single king, meant to be equal.”
“Y’ took me from my home, ‘n ‘ve kept me in your house since. ’s a marriage, ‘n I’m th’ wife.”
And Suomi laughs, struck by the strangeness – the two of them men, grown around and beside each other. Is that how others see them? Is that what Danmark meant? “Is that what you want? To kneel in service to me?”
“Already pledged my arm.”
“That’s different. Without you, I couldn’t have won. Together, we hold our lands and our people. You’re no wife, left to keep house when the time comes to make war. You come with - my smith, my lover, my friend."
Fandom: Hetalia
Characters: Finland/Sweden (under different names), Denmark, Norway
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Originally posted here for this prompt and kindexed here.
References: My preferred translation of the Kalevala can be found online here. For those who wish to read it in print:
Lönnrot, Elias, comp. Kalevala: Epic of the Finnish People. Illus. Björn Landström. Ed. George C Schoolfield. Trans. Eino Friberg. Helsinki: Otava Publiching Company Ltd, 1988.
Summary: Suomi follows the trail of the sun, and takes in another like himself; all is changed, and all is the same, in the house of Suomi and Ruotsi. (AU)
In the transfer from the kink meme, I have edited Sweden's accent and the dialogue at the end.
One year the harvest is poor, and rather than let his children die Suomi follows them stone-skipping through islands in the water, chasing the sun as it wheels through the heavens. He comes upon little farms, and his people become farmers in this far-off foreign place.
It doesn’t take him long to find the boy who is the people here – he’s taller than Suomi, but not by so much, and when Suomi takes him by the hand and says, “You’re living in my house now,” he doesn’t say anything at all.
Ruotsi is skilled at building things, and at farming, and he knows how to tame iron and gold. Suomi, not wanting to be cast out from Ruotsi’s lands, has one of his warlords married to the daughter and sole child of Ruotsi’s king – crude, and graceless, but it allows him to stay. Gives him sovereignty and union between their lands, and they build a house together. He lies beside Ruotsi in a bed too big for their child-bodies and listens to the sighing of wind in the pines, the crash of the sea against stone.
A man comes to them speaking of a Christ who preaches love for all things, that there is an afterlife of happiness, or of torment for those who do not follow. He and Ruotsi listen, because their king listens, because their people listen. And then Suomi sings the man’s boat away, back across the sea, none of their people converted, the foreign weak White Christ banished also.
Ruotsi’s cousin, a wild-blooded one, comes to bring the Christ again, and he comes not with soft speech but with the singing heat of iron. So Suomi presses his fingers to Ruotsi’s pale cheeks and asks, “Will you forge iron for me, to defend the both of us? Tame its fear and keep us from its wickedness?”
Ruotsi’s eyes flicker shut and open, blue as flame, as the sky Ilmarinen forged.
“I will,” he says, and so they make war.
They chase from their seas and land the boy whom Ruotsi would call Danmark, and their opponent is bold and laughs sun-bright fearless even as he falls back defeated.
Danmark tries to enlist a boy to Ruotsi’s west in aid; he comes only after Danmark offers him gold and trade and ships.
Thus Suomi and Ruotsi follow the sun’s blood as it falls in the west, and kill and steal and burn enough to silence little Noregr, who is wide-eyed and quiet and watches the sea.
And so they are left alone for a time, to build themselves together, shore up the walls of their home. They have become older in war, in knowing better how to wear their power as a shared Nation. Almost old enough to marry, if they were human.
Suomi thinks he may ask Noregr to marry Ruotsi. They are alike, those two, and lovely in their similarity. And he would like Noregr’s land, his love for the sea.
Danmark joins with an army of warrior-monks and some of Noregr’s richer men and tries to wage a war in the name of their Christ. He calls out that it is for their souls; Suomi and Ruotsi share a glance. He cares nothing for souls. Their lands may be cold, but their fields are not infertile, and with some care and a great fleet he could become undisputed lord of the Baltic Sea.
Ruotsi has yielded to invasion once, and peaceably enough; Suomi will see that neither of them does so again.
They lose islands, and men, and Danmark strikes Suomi with his axe. Suomi falls, dazed, and watches Danmark hold his weapon aside and look at Ruotsi.
“Say,” Danmark murmurs, “Don’t you want to leave him behind? Raise up your peasants and defy him?”
Ruotsi clenches his fists around the heft of his axe and holds silent.
“If you came to us,” Danmark whispers, “you could rule him. Don’t you want to? Set the plow to his lands, feel the kingship in your own skin.”
Breathing hurts. Suomi feels blood flowing over his skin, all of it his own. He thinks it isn’t his pain that makes it look like Ruotsi’s trembling.
“Or would you rather yield to everything he asks, until he asks for your honor as a man, and sends you into witch-weakness?” Danmark whispers.
Ruotsi strikes him down, and drops his weapon in blooded ground to pick Suomi up and carry him from the battlefield.
They win, but with grievous losses, and Suomi is sick for months, lying helpless fevered in bed while Ruotsi cares for their house and lands.
When Suomi comes to himself he finds that Ruotsi has broken their lands into districts and of the nobles made a council which holds power over the king.
Suomi learns of this only after he leaves his sickbed, and cannot speak for the tightness of his throat.
Ruotsi is in his little workroom, hammer in hand and nails at his side; Suomi takes the tools from his hands, peaceably, and sets them aside, and lays one hand on Ruotsi’s cheek.
“You want to break the unity of our kingdom,” Suomi murmurs.
Ruotsi’s eyelashes flutter and he shakes his head, still seated on the ground, Suomi leaning over him. His cheek is warm against the pads of Suomi’s fingers, a little rough with inexpertly-shaved beard.
“Your new council fetters our king as anchor stops the freedom of a ship.”
Ruotsi licks his lips, parts them. His breath smells bitter. “So all our people have voices. A king’s loud. One farmer's not, but many…”
Suomi closes his eyes, strokes Ruotsi’s lips with his thumb. How could he have… Ruotsi serves. Always. He opens his eyes.
“No nobleman can speak for the farmers in his land, nor for the hunters in the forests, nor for the herdsmen,” Suomi says. “Let us ride out to see what our people need.”
They travel the breadth of their kingdom, and they see hunger, and beauty, and happiness, and fear. They take notes of what they see, ask questions of the unhappy – and the happy as well – to see what may be changed for the betterment of most. How much will change, neither of them can say, but Ruotsi speaks convincingly when he cares to, and he cares about their people.
North, and still farther north, the cold sinks between the layers of their clothes, into bone and blood, and at night they curl around each other, few clothes between them – everything meant to shield them together.
Suomi wakes, the sun half-sleeping still, and cannot bring himself to move, or wake Ruotsi for the day’s travels. For Ruotsi arrests the eye – sharply-featured, strong and fair. He is tall, though no taller than Suomi himself, and curls in his sleep as though to shield his belly from attack.
And Suomi realizes, watching Ruotsi sleep, that even had they become Christian, or had Norja not become so, he could not have married Ruotsi away. For Ruotsi is his, and his alone – to have in house, to hold as equal in state, to keep as lover.
He has never courted, but surely – surely he can learn.
They come upon a household run by an old woman, with beautiful daughters; she coaxes them to stay some days, for Suomi has put over himself the mantle of a singer of tales, and Ruotsi repairer of tools, carrier of steel, capable of working a forge.
They are given separate berths, good beds, and for this reason Ruotsi touches Suomi’s shoulder and murmurs, too close to silence for their hosts to hear, “She knows.”
“Let her try to keep us,” Suomi whispers. “There is no maiden here whose beauty could make me stop on the road to watch her weave.”
He imagines that Ruotsi smiles. “No daughter of th’ mistress who I'd spend six years courtin', either.”
And Suomi shivers with want.
One of the matron’s daughters finds them sitting together in the hall and holds out for them table beer, her smile the expression of a girl told to find a husband. And Suomi, unwilling to give her any of the answers her mother craves, takes one cup from her – and sets it in Ruotsi’s hands.
The girl and Ruotsi flush red; Ruotsi, as he takes Suomi’s portion and gives it to him, has shaking hands.
No ale has tasted sweeter on Suomi’s lips.
That night, Suomi comes to Ruotsi’s room, and they stand inside the just-closed door, unsure, until Suomi reaches up to Ruotsi’s shoulder – he is the taller of them, now – and tugs him close, sharing breath and heat and skin.
After that, the matron lets them stay only long enough for Ruotsi to finish at the forge, then sends them off again on the road. Neither protests.
They return home come spring, to find plans afoot among Suomi’s nobles to set his part of the kingdom above Ruotsi’s in status. Suomi clenches his fists, and talks his throat dry to stop them, and it changes none of their plans.
He goes into the king’s forest, because otherwise he will go mad and strike one of their people.
Ruotsi finds him some hours later, cradled by the branches of a tree, the bark bloody from his fists. And he calls, “Come down b’fore ‘s dark.”
Suomi climbs down the trunk and follows Ruotsi home.
That night, Suomi comes to their shared room to find Ruotsi already there, standing, waiting – naked, silver paleness made golden in the flickering candle-light.
He goes to one knee when Suomi enters, holds his gaze down as Suomi closes the door. Suomi, terrified, reaches to tilt his head up – and his fingers touch leather and iron, at Ruotsi’s neck. After that, he can only look – this rough thing, on Ruotsi, whose roughness sheathes beauty. It doesn’t fit, it catches the eye – it catches in his chest, as well, to feel the pounding of his blood.
“They’re in th’ righ’,” Ruotsi murmurs. “I should serve.”
Suomi tries to speak and can’t, his mouth stopped by hunger – to see Ruotsi yield, again, to him, now that they are no longer children, has twisted his thoughts.
“Come to bed,” he says. “After that, when you’ve given me back my mind, we will talk.”
Ruotsi smiles, faintly, stands. Follows Suomi to their bed, and surrenders.
After, both lying naked, Ruotsi’s face pressed to Suomi’s chest, the collar still on, Suomi lays his hands on Ruotsi’s warm back and says, “You are not the lesser of us. We were unified under a single king, meant to be equal.”
“Y’ took me from my home, ‘n ‘ve kept me in your house since. ’s a marriage, ‘n I’m th’ wife.”
And Suomi laughs, struck by the strangeness – the two of them men, grown around and beside each other. Is that how others see them? Is that what Danmark meant? “Is that what you want? To kneel in service to me?”
“Already pledged my arm.”
“That’s different. Without you, I couldn’t have won. Together, we hold our lands and our people. You’re no wife, left to keep house when the time comes to make war. You come with - my smith, my lover, my friend."
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-18 03:05 am (UTC)Beyond the way it affects the characters, both subtle and obvious, I love the concept for itself. The implications to history of a part of Europe never being Christianized are very intruiging. This could spawn a massive alternate history. I for one will egg you on if you ever decide to revisit this world - would love to see the answers to the 'where do they build the cities' question that got brought up in comments, and I'm trying to imagine a modern world now with this backstory, and how much else would be affected. (Would there be other contries that followed suit as far as kicking-out-the-missionaries? I could see Finland's example inspiring Lithuania to seek allies north instead of south, for example. Would their mere existance affect, or derail, the Protestant Reformation? Uh. As you can see I've been thinking far too much about this.)
You have a deft hand with characterization, and you did wonderfully at keeping the characters themselves, even as their history changed. Loved the mythological references. Loved the use of Suomi and Ruotsi as names - there's a deep significance to it that informs the whole fic. And you do so much with such simple lines.
I think what I liked best is that Suomi recognizes the importance of maintaining equality, even as his nobles don't - it proves how integrated and intertwined they've already become (perhaps closer than in history, because of the outside pressures being greater) - and how Ruotsi is still willing to serve, which it feels like is both out of a recognition of the social situation as it exists and out of, well, true love.
And, uh, I talk too much. Short version: This fic made me both geek out and squeee, and do you take bribes? Can I bribe you for a sequel?
no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 11:05 am (UTC)Basically, you've noticed a lot of the things that I was hoping people would notice and think about, and I'm glad that the fic did make you think - I hoped it would do just that.
I'm trying to imagine a modern world now with this backstory,
I think it changes the balance of power in Europe, and therefore, among other things, the outcome of the Thirty Years' War and the balance of power in the Baltic forever. Those are not simple changes, especially keeping in mind how close St. Petersburg is to the Finnish border and how that geographical proximity has historically fueled conflict between Russia/Soviet Union and Finland.
Can I bribe you for a sequel?
I was thinking of writing a sequel, but I am not familiar enough with Swedish history in its particulars to write that fic yet. If I remain in Hetalia fandom long enough to have free time, I will probably do some research on Swedish history in enough detail to write such a sequel.