Finally had time to make my ssssona. So let me introduce you
Helga Petterson
Age…………………n/a*
Nationality……… Swede
Area of birth…….Mora
Gender…………....Female
Immunity………...yes
Profession……....
teacher, scholar
Languages……..:sweden:, :iceland:, :finland:
*presumably in her thirtiesShe comes from a family of academics. One of her ancestors on her mother’s side was a foreigner, a man from Hungary, who was an exchange student (an
Erasmus student, whatever that means) at the time of the outbreak of the rash. Unfortunately his language was forgotten; she can’t even pronounce his name.
Her most valuable possession is an old, handwritten recipe book (volume 2, pastries) inherited from her grandmother, who won it from a farmer at a drinking contest in Bornholm.
She led a comfortable and uneventful life as a teacher in a public school in Mora. She wasn’t particularly good at teaching and had trouble handling adolescents, especially those who showed no interest in her subjects (Known World history; Culture of the Old World). She was often dreaming of quitting her job and opening a small pastry shop – making all the cookies and pastries from the recipe book. As she became more and more fed up with teaching, she finally handed in her resignation; the last straw was the arrival of a pompous and annoying student in her class – a spoiled kid of a formerly wealthy family.
However, instead of opening the pastry shop, she accepted a job at the New Nordic Museum, mainly because she couldn’t resist the temptation of paid trips and field studies in foreign countries. She even started learning Finnish, and when she felt confident enough, set off to Keuruu to do a „participant observation” by living there and study the culture of Finnish mages. Not that she believed in magic, but the exotic beliefs and superstitions of the Finns were always a hot topic among Swedes.
After arriving in Keuruu she had to face two major problems: her Finnish was not sufficient enough to engage in deep conversations; and talking to mages was much harder than she had imagined. Nonetheless, she tried. She was so enthusiastic, that she even developed a silly little crush on a certain mage with the worst haircut. This one-sided feeling was doomed from the start, and disaster struck soon, when – after too many cups of birch sap ale – she asked him out for a walk by the walls, and started joking about sneaking out of the settlement to the romantic wilderness. She couldn’t exactly recall what happened after her joke, but this
incident made it impossible to continue her field study and she felt it would be wiser to leave Finland for now…
So, she needs to find another topic for her research (coming of age rituals in the Sognefjord region? traditional wool production in Iceland?) – or, perhaps it’s finally time to open that pastry shop.
By the way, she believes in magic now…
