Preview of a Goldenbird story set in Finland.

In the ancient Finnish epic Kalevala, song moves both the living and the dead. What if this idea had a scientific base? What does the small magnetic idol of a bearded figure perched on an eagle*, smuggled to the West by a Tatar officer in Wrangel’s retreating army, have to do with a forgotten Ural-Altaic empire? Why are the Germans secretly funding a submarine project in the Arctic? Why are the Finns painting these disconcerting blue signs everywhere in sight of the sea? … It’s the 1920s and anything is possible!

*) Other interpretations (involving tentacles) are welcome.

The title “White Dusk and the Morrow” is a riff on British secret agent Paul Dukes‘ book Red Dusk and the Morrow (1922), where the MI6 officer, concert pianist and yoga enthusiast describes my hometown in hilarious turns of phrase:

Helsingfors, the capital of Finland, is a busy little city bristling with life and intrigue. At the time of which I was writing it was a sort of dumping-ground for every variety of conceivable and inconceivable rumour, slander, and scandal, repudiated elsewhere but swallowed by the gullible scandalmongers, especially German and ancien régime Russian, who found this city a haven of rest. Helsingfors was one of the unhealthiest spots in Europe.

The picture of Erik and Sulo is, of course, a homage to Edgar P. Jacobs…