LEAVING HOME

was a difficult experience.

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A hunter’s adventure was one thing.  He could always go home.  But always living in the wild regions was another thing.

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Would the animals always be handy?  What about the nuts, the fish, the fruit, the vegetables, and, especially, the grain?  

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People need daily bread

—or something like that.

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Something that can be harvested by the women and stored until needed.  People can miss a meal of meat now and then, but the bodies’ fire needs grain every day.

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So the younger brothers left home very discouraged.

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A few of them knew about the unseeded grain in Skuggland. 

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But who wants 

to live the rest 

of your life

in a cold swamp?

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The brothers had a choice:

Unseeded Grain and Skuggland or wild animals with feast or famine.

.._______________________

“Skugg” meant “whiskers.”  Today, if you look over the cattails and other reeds in a northern swamp, “Skugg” seems to be the right word.

_______________________

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The discouragement line was repeated by the composer to emphasize the agony of leaving home and to enable the composer to complete the Drottkvaett format.

._______________________

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For a decade the reeds of Skuggland in the pictograph were not understood.  The composer knew about Skuggland.  We, who never sat in a boat in Skuggland, could not understand what the composer meant.

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But now the pictograph is obvious.  The brothers left home – the mound on the left-- and thought they were faced with living in Skuggland forever.

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SAVED.>

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