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In these stories, we need to go back six thousand years, to when the land was one vast forest. Its people have no writing, no metals, no wheel. They don’t need them. They’re superb survivors. They know every plant and animal in the Forest—and they respect them, because without them they wouldn’t survive.
At least, that’s the grown-ups. Torak is only twelve when his father is killed by a demon-haunted bear, leaving Torak to fend for himself. Somehow, he must survive and defeat the bear, aided only by an orphaned wolf cub.
The world I’m trying to depict is strange, unfamiliar, beautiful, exciting—but above all, it’s real. I want the reader to feel that they’re right there in the Forest with Torak and Wolf. And that means research.
First of all, what did the hunter-gatherers eat, and how did they hunt? What kind of shelters did they build? For that I’ve studied Mesolithic archaeology, as well as borrowed from the more recent past: from the survival strategies of traditional Inuit and Native American peoples, and many others. It’s the little details I love. How to fletch your arrows with owl feathers, because owls fly silently, so maybe your arrows will too. How to carry fire in a piece of smoldering fungus wrapped in birchbark. These are the things which help a world come alive.
Much of this research has been library-based, both in the British library and in my own local library in Wimbledon (which I’ve been going to since I was eight). But I’ve also done as much “location” research as I can. If I want the reader to feel that they’re in the Forest, then I think I’d better go there too.
To experience the northern forest in the raw, I went to northern Finland and Lapland, traveling on horseback, and sleeping on reindeer skins in the traditional open-fronted Finnish laavu. I ate elk heart, reindeer, and lingonberries, and tried out spruce resin: the chewing gum of the Stone Age. I learned traditional Sami (Lapp) methods for preparing reindeer hides, and picked up forest beliefs and customs from people who’ve lived there for generations.
But this “hands-on” research isn’t the whole story. How do Torak’s people think? What do they believe about life and death, and where they came from? For a novelist, the great thing about the Stone Age people is that we know virtually nothing about their beliefs—which means that I get to make it up! But it’s still got to be plausible. To create a belief system for the clans, I’ve studied the beliefs of more recent hunter-gatherers, such as Native American and Inuit cultures, the San of southern Africa, the Ainu of Japan, the Eboe and Kwaio of central Africa, and the Sami of northern Scandinavia.
Again, it’s the details that bring it alive. When Torak tracks his first kill, I’ve adapted how the San track their prey: identifying with it so closely that they become the animal. To show how Torak perceives his world, I’ve used the rather eerie Sami idea that everything—including rocks, rivers, and trees—is alive and has a spirit; not all of them can talk, but they can hear and think…
I’ve been fascinated, too, to find how in different cultures, similarities emerge. For example, because many hunter-gatherers are nomadic, they travel light, and don’t value possessions as we do. Instead they value the qualities you need to be a good hunter: patience, resilience, and the ability to listen. And they treat their prey with respect, honoring its spirit when they’ve brought it down, and taking great care to make use of every part of the carcass, so that the spirits will send more prey.
The more research I did, the more I realized that the term “hunter-gatherer” can itself be misleading, conjuring up (at least to me) a picture of someone casually spotting a clump of berries and saying, “Oh, good, I think I’ll gather some of those.” In fact, hunter-gatherers have to be experts about their world. They have to know precisely when particular plants bear fruit or nuts or flowers; when the bark of different trees can be found; when the salmon swim upstream, and in which particular rivers. The more I found out, the more I perceived how unbelievably skilled these people must have been. It’s as far from The Flintstones as you could possibly imagine.
It’s probably clear by now that in creating Torak’s world I’ve been pretty eclectic, borrowing a belief or a custom here, and then tweaking it to make it my own. I’ve used the same method to get inside the mind of the wolf cub, who in Wolf Brother is very much a character in his own right. Thus I’ve built on what I’ve learned from years of reading about wolf behavior, and then imagined myself into a wolf’s hide. I want the reader to experience the Forest through his eyes—and also, crucially, through his ears and nose. He’s cute because he’s a cub, but he’s also an authentic wolf, and therefore, even to Torak, ultimately unknowable. Children seem to like this particular aspect of the story, perhaps because it makes them see their own pets with new eyes.
So this is the challenge I’m facing with Wolf Brother and with the next five books of the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. To watch Torak grow as he battles evil and discovers his world: from the Sea to the Far North, from the Deep Forest to the High Mountains. To meet strange new clans: the Seals, the White Foxes, the Aurochs. To learn new skills, such as bow-making, flint-knapping, and reindeer hunting. And above all, to take us back to the world of the hunter-gatherers: the brave, resourceful, unbelievably skilled people who came before us. |
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