@HistoryDude: Yeah, Neustria somehow ended up independent of West Francia. Kind of strange how that happened, too, because West Francia was this humongous empire for a lot of my late CK3 game. And yeah, the Sámi kind of got screwed over in the game when I conquered them, same way as they did in OTL during this time period.
@Von Acturus: Glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, this is definitely kind of a turning-point for both peoples. When coming up with
Vyřkedant I was really trying to think about how a Sámi diplomat in Moravia might write about politics from the perspective he grew up with. For inspiration I turned not only to authors like
Áillohaš but also other Indigenous writers of north Asia who talked about the political dimension of cultural survival, like
Kayano Shigeru. I also tried to capture in Vulle Gáski some of the inner conflict of these authors in how they approached the ways and means of the colonisers when making these prescriptions.
TWENTY-ONE.
The Sale of the Viedenský Les
11 November 1526 – 21 March 1530
‘You press too heavily on your advantages, Rostislav,’ the
Kráľ cautioned him.
‘If I do, though, it is for the good of the realm,’ Rostislav Zelezný argued back. ‘The situation among the Sámi in the north is volatile. The reports from the secret police are alarming enough. Ever since
that book came out, the Sámi in the north have been conducting secret meetings with treasonous intent. And don’t think that we’re the only ones who’ve noticed! The East Geats have been infiltrating up there as well—and we both know what their ultimate aim is.’
‘Yet what
you propose is—!’
‘Good sense,’ said the King’s staff sergeant and lover. ‘We
can’t afford a weak line of defence on our southern border, and we
can’t afford to continue maintaining a garrison in the Viedenský Les. I mean that quite literally: the expenditures you’ve made on expanding trade infrastructure in the North have left us in debt. This is a chance to kill two birds with one stone.’
Jozef sighed. ‘The Slavs who live in the Viedenský Les will
not be happy to find themselves under Austria.’
‘This may sound cold, sire, but that’s their lookout,’ Zelezný told him. ‘The situation is untenable. They should have known as much when they agitated for your father to help protect them, while Moravia was in debt. He did the same for the Dyje, if you’ll recall.’
Jozef looked carefully into the eyes of the man who loved him. Rostislav was evidently sincere—and Jozef knew him to be a dutiful man with the interests of the realm at heart, not only its king. The same king massaged his brows and said,
‘Very well. See what arrangements you can make with the regent in Austria; we should be able to negotiate a reasonable price for that territory.’
Rostislav bowed deeply. ‘It shall be done.’
~~~
The sale of the Viedenský Les brought with it the expected cash flow… but it also brought with it an equally-expected violent storm of outrage and condemnation. Anti-German riots broke out spontaneously in towns like Budějovice. In the eyes of the clergy,
Kráľ Jozef’s transfer of title over a significant and ancient community of Carantanian Slavs—a community which had called itself ‘Slovak’ as long as any, and which had espoused Orthodox Christianity for as long a time as any—to a monarch who was Roman Catholic and a
nemec to boot, was nothing less than a vile, base and even demonic betrayal. Several of the Orthodox clergy, particularly those in southern Bohemia and in the Dyje valley, took to pressing and distributing pamphlets urging radical action and even open revolt against Austrian rule in defence of the ‘Lesní Slováci’. Some of them even advocated an abolition of monarchical rule
in toto—a dangerous and subversive proposal indeed, practically unprecedented. But self-rule under Christ, so went the argument, was preferable to rule by a faithless schismatic. Such pamphlets drew particularly strong circulation and approval in and around the
experimental Johanit commune of Hradiště.
Once again, Jozef had behaved as one concerned mostly with the short-term prospects, and once again it was left to the younger brother, Jakub, to try to take responsibility for the aftermath. The
Kráľ’s younger brother read these reports with a heavy heart and a sad sigh. The situation facing the Lesní Slovaks was indeed deplorable. The Austrians were likely to kill them off as they moved in, or else demand their apostasy from the True Church in obeisance to the Papal State; and Moravia had essentially signed away any prerogative she might otherwise have had to protect them. Still, the radical clergy in southern Bohemia were stepping
well out of line.
One thing was clear as far as Jakub was concerned. In flinging open its gates in welcome to the beleaguered and harried Carantanians as they fled northward, and in acting as a safe haven for these radical clerical pamphleteers, the ‘free town’ of Hradiště had officially worn out its welcome with the Crown. Its status had to be brought to an end—and soon. Such special privileges for the descendants of mercenaries might have made sense at the time, but at this point the Hradiště charter was a relic of a medieval past that needed to be rectified.
As to the pamphleteers… Jakub shook his head as he read yet another of them. He
could put out the word to the bishops, have them stamp out this rabblerousing with the proper exhortations and threats of hellfire and brimstone. And if that didn’t work, the secret police could always be called in. But… no. Not this time. Let the current
furore run its course, don’t dignify it with a response, and it will blow and bluster itself out.
‘
Tírrvut, Miťää!’
The young man who was being hailed in this way came out of the rough-hewn wooden hut, on a little front path leading out through his vegetable patch. His sandy-brown hair was worn long and tied back, and he had on him nothing but a rough homespun tunic, rope girdle and hose. Despite his rough, common appearance he was handsome, even striking in a way—his most notable features were a long, thin nose with a high bridge, and a pair of deep-set, soulful brown eyes that could speak to both a deep sadness and an inexpressible delight. The expression beneath his wispy beard was glad as he answered:
‘
Cysst Ímmiľ Alľk, Jompá, my friend. Will you come within for some tea?’
‘I’d love to, Miťää,’ replied Jompá. ‘I came by with some news for you.’
Miťää’s eyebrows rose slightly as he welcomed Jompá into his hut. ‘What troubles you? Are the
nuejt after me again?’
Jompá shook his saturnine head. ‘No. The
nuejt do not worry me anymore, nor do the elders of the
siida. In fact… many of us now believe your words about the Son of God, myself included. We are willing to be baptised when the Moravian bishop arrives here.’
Miťää paused in his business of preparing the tea, lifted up his eyes to heaven and crossed himself. ‘Praise to God. But they are not my words you hear. I’m only an unlearned
muzhik.’
‘Don’t say that!’ Jompá’s thick, dark brows drew together. ‘Ever since you came here to Peäccam from… what, Novy Torg,
after the war?… even though you’re a Russian and not one of us, you’ve kept us safe. You sheltered our reindeer from raids and our young men from conscription. You kept our children here and fed them when their parents went missing. You even scolded the Moravian governor
to his face for how he treats us—and somehow you got off only with a whipping! You are a man of clean and respectful habits, and there is power in your words.’
Miťää laid a hand on his breast and bowed to Jompá. From a Sámi, there were few compliments higher than that. ‘You honour me beyond my deserving, but I thank you. But you said you had news.’
‘I do, and sad news at that,’ said Jompá. ‘Vulle Gáski is dead.’
Handing Jompá his tea (a mixture of dried garden herbs, not true tea from Taugats), again Miťää crossed himself, prompting Jompá to do the same. ‘May God keep him in everlasting memory! He sounds like a decent man; I wish I’d had the opportunity to meet him in this earthly life. I cannot read—I’ve heard people read parts of the
Vyřkedant. Much of what he says is good sense, though I can’t condone his words against the rule of kings and tsars.’
‘He was not as highly respected up here as he is in the Bohemian cities,’ Jompá allowed, ‘but his ideas made sense to me as well. I hope that his writing can still help us somehow.’
‘I shall pray for him,’ Miťää told Jompá, before adding knowingly: ‘That is not all you have to say.’
Despite himself, Jompá trembled a bit. Miťää had a degree of intuition about people that could be… unsettling. Of course there was other news, though he didn’t quite know what to make of it himself, and he had been debating whether or not to tell it to the young Russian hermit. Now he had no choice.
‘The Moravians have been active in Julevädno. The last free Sámit may find themselves robbed of that freedom before long.’
‘I shall pray for them as well,’ Miťää said with sympathy. ‘Yet remember, Jompá—the true freedom is the freedom of the soul. No one can make you to choose evil over good, or force you to choose God over the devil… but the only true freedom comes from following God.’
‘But the Lule… !’
‘This generation will be most difficult for all of the Sámit,’ Miťää told Jompá gently, clasping his shoulder in sympathy. ‘The Lule will not be spared this trial either. Not the people, not the animals, not the land. But the important thing is to keep faith. When the bishop comes, even though he is a Moravian, still accept the baptism he offers. If Sápmi holds fast to the Cross, and prays with the prayer of the repentant thief, it will be made whole again, and free—if not in this generation, then in a generation to come.’
Jompá took his time in his return to his
siida, as he usually did from a visit with the Russian hermit Mitrofan, both reassured and unsettled. He always got the impression from Miťää, that his knowledge came from some ancient and unreachable source, but that it was rooted deeply in truth and could be trusted. But what he had said, troubled Jompá. As he returned to his
siida, he saw in the distance the massive wharfs that were now hosting immense seafaring vessels of full sail, laden down with goods for trade in places Jompá knew he would never see.
And he thought of the fishermen of Julevädno, and he pitied them. There the Moravians were sidling up as friends, but once they were through, the Lule Sámi would be in the exact same position that the Kíllt were now. From what Miťää had said, this would be an inevitable development.
But… if they embraced Christ…
The shamanic beliefs ran deep in Jompá. He knew the spirits of this place, knew them as the old friends they were. He offered libations in respect to them and treated the land with reverence. Christianity had always seemed to Jompá like an act of forgetting them. It had always seemed like something that the city Sámi came to believe, when they’d been away from their homelands and the spirits of their native places for too long.
But then Mitrofan had come: a half-willing refugee of the war between Garderike and Great Rus’, who had set up his hermitage along the Pechenga River.
Mitrofan, unlike the young men who went and became city Sámi and who had embraced the faith of Rome or of Olomouc or of Bogomil,
understood this place and its inhabitants. Some of them he fought with and tousled with in terrible struggles, like a
nuéjt in search of lost souls; and others of them he respected and honoured, even if it was always in the name of his Crucified and Risen Lord. Miťää’s meek and gentle
mien disguised a very tough core—the fact that he had survived here, this long, alone, proved that. And the fact that he had weathered many years of threats and abuse from the
nuejt. Having failed to drive him off, many of the old shamans now viewed him as worthy of respect as a peer. Maybe becoming Christian wouldn’t mean the death of their ways after all.
If Miťää said that trials were coming, then Jompá was convinced they were coming. And so were the
siida at Peäccam. If Miťää said to endure them, then Jompá would, and so would the
siida at Peäccam. And if Miťää said that better days were coming, even if it took generations, then Jompá believed him, and so did the
siida at Peäccam.
As a result, the men and women of Peäccam, as well as those of surrounding
siidas—Mueťkk, Nuõtťjäuřř, Kíllt and Mázielľk—came willingly to be baptised by Archbishop Spytihnev of Moravia when he arrived in Kola later that spring. And those who had embraced Roman Catholicism or Bogomilism came to be received, through economy, by chrismation into the Orthodox Church. Archbishop Spytihnev also tonsured Miťää formally as a monk with the name of Trifon, turning his lonely hermitage into a monastic community.
Pechenga Monastery, Kola Peninsula