Jagannath

Pyret

Description, Behavior, and History

When not applied to small and defenceless creatures, the word “pyre” describes a mysterious life form: Pyret, Swedish for “the little tyke.” The word has all the characteristics of a euphemism, but nothing resembling an older name has turned up—possibly because it was taboo and in time forgotten, as is often the case. A name that evokes an image of something benevolent and harmless indicates both a form of worship and an underlying fear of its powers: an expression of love and an appeal for benevolence.[1] During the years I have spent researching Pyret, it seems more and more likely that this mix of adoration and fear stems from its extremely alien nature.

A mimic and an infiltrator, Pyret mingles with and assumes the form of pack— or herd animals, changing color and shape to match the others. From a distance it will look like an ordinary animal. It does not grow actual fur, eyes, or other extremities—the features are completely superficial, making it likely that its skin is covered by chromatophores, much like octopi and chameleons.

Although its feeding habits remain unknown, one thing is certain: Pyret does not behave like a predator. There are no records of it causing physical harm, although it insists on physical contact, which has traumatized a number of witnesses. Accounts of Pyret invariably describe a creature that tries to get close, cuddle, and sometimes even mate with the animal or person in question. The adult size of Pyret seems to be anything between a human and a cow. As for lifespan, no Pyre has been observed to die of old age; it has either wandered off or been slain by humans.

Pyret seems to have sought out and coexisted with the farmers of the Nordic countries for centuries. Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish folklore is rife with stories about farmers discovering a fledgling Pyre in a litter of domesticated animals (Tilli, Pia: Nordic Cryptids, Basilisk Förlag, Helsinki 1989, p. 68), indicating that the parent places its spawn with other litters, cuckoo-style. However, Pyret is just as likely to appear in its adult form: there are numerous mentions of strange cows, goats, or sheep appearing in a flock overnight, rubbing up against the other animals. Their presence is often described as having a calming effect. Cows and goats will start producing prodigious amounts of milk, sheep will grow silky soft wool, and pigs fatten up even if food is scarce.

A Gift from the Gods

The earliest mention of Pyret occurs in the Icelandic saga Alfdís saga, in which Alfdís Sigurdardóttir divorces her husband Gunnlaug because he accidentally sets fire to their barn while drunk, “killing six cows and also Freyr’s pyril[2], thereby ruining their family.” (Jónsson, Guðni: Íslendinga sögur, Reykjavík, 1946, book 25, p. 15) Alfdís complains bitterly about the loss of the pyril that she had reared from infancy, and which had kept her cattle happy and fat (Jónsson, p. 16). Because of the death of the pyril, Alfdís is exempt from the normal divorce penalty and retains the family’s remaining possessions, while Gunnlaug is cast out of the community and left destitute (Jónsson, p. 18). Gunnlaug’s punishment and the attribution of the pyril to Freyr, a god of fertility, indicate that it was considered a sacred creature.

This is the first and last mention in Icelandic literature. Afterward and up to modern times, stories and accounts of Pyret are confined to the northern and middle Scandinavian Peninsula, as far south as the pyril of Stavanger(Tilli,p. 69)and as far east as Carelia under the name of pienokainen.[3] (Tilli, p. 72) The majority of accounts, however, come from the sparsely populated countryside of northern Sweden.

“The Devil’s Cattle”

The Christianization of Scandinavia dethroned the Norse gods but did little to wipe out belief in supernatural creatures, due in part to all the attention they were given by the Church. The pyril of Norse faith moved into folklore where it becamethe cattle of the vittra, powerful beings that live underground and in hills, similar to the daoine sidhe of Ireland. The Church, seeing it as a very real threat, called Pyret “the Devil’s cattle” and warned the populace not to have dealings with it. Doing so was considered witchcraft. This had the opposite effect, as folklorist Ebbe Schön conjectures: “if the Church made so much noise about them, these creatures must indeed be powerful and therefore worthy of worship.” (Schön, Ebbe: Älvor, vättar och andra väsen, Rabén Prisma, Stockholm, 1996, p.16)

Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, roughly four hundred people were tried and executed for witchcraft and witchcraft-related crimes.[4] Twelve instances mention involvement with Pyret. (Leijd, Carl: Rättsprocessens avarter, Meli Förlag, Göteborg 1964, p. 223) Extensive notes from a court case in 1702 concern one Anders of Kräkånger, who was sentenced to death for harboring Pyret. To my knowledge it is also the only trial where Pyret was present. Usually, Pyret would be killed on sight, but Anders of Kräkånger had reared his to such a monstrous size that no one dared touch it. Shaped like a bull, it strode into the courtroom together with Anders and refused to leave his side. The trial was very short, as during the proceedings, “the unholy creature constantly rubbed up against its owner, emitting warbling noises and upsetting those attending, causing many to weep with fear.” (Leijd, p. 257) The court decreed that Anders’s death sentence be carried out immediately but was not quite sure how to deal with Pyret. Anders himself solved this conundrum, offering to go willingly if the court in turn promised to set Pyret free after his death. Considering what he might otherwise command his beast to do, the court accepted this. Whether it intended to keep this promise, we will never know.

Anders of Kräkånger was taken to the block; his beast followed him like a dog and we dared not touch it, not even the priest. The moment the prisoner’s head was severed from his neck, the creature let out a terrible howl, and all who heard it cowered in horror. The creature then fell over and did not move again. When evening fell, it had started to shrink, as when one pours salt on a snail. The remains were shoveled into a trough and burned along with the prisoner’s body. (Leijd, p. 258)

As Pyret constantly seeks out the company of other mammals, I suspect that sometimes it forms an attachment so strong that, like Anders of Kräkånger’s bull, it cannot survive separation. Companionship—belonging to or with someone—seems an intrinsic part of its being.

The case of Anders of Kräkånger was to be the last in the history of Pyret-related trials. The arrival of rationalism changed the face of Scandinavian faith and superstition in a way Christianity had not. Scientist Carl Linnaeus held a lecture in 1762 during which he reached the conclusion that belief in “Pyret, nixies, vittra and their ilk” is a warning sign of what happens to a people that do not concern themselves with science:

These creatures would lurk among cows and goats, haunt every nook, live with us like house cats; and superstition, witchcraft, and warding swarm around us like gnats. (Levertin, Oscar: Carl von Linné. Lectures, Albert Bonniers Boktryckeri, Stockholm, 1910, p. 50)

Pyret was officially wiped out of existence. This did not stop it from appearing.

Sjungpastorn: the Singing Pastor of Hålträsket

Accounts of Pyret assuming human shape are nearly nonexistent. There are three possible reasons:

a) It is non-sentient. Observations of dead specimens may support this, as they universally mention gelatinous bodies with nothing resembling a brain, nervous system, or inner organs (see, for example, Widerberg, Emilia: Folk Tales of the Macabre, Bragi Press, Oxford 1954);

b) It prefers non-sentient mammals (see all the above cases);

c) It is sentient and does frequently take human shape, but witnesses identify it as something else entirely, for example, a vittra, changeling or troll.

One remarkable exception is documented in an eerie account from the nineteenth century, about the entity known as Sjungpastorn.

Margareta Persson (1835—1892) was the schoolmistress of Hålträsket, a village located in the mid-north of Sweden. She kept a diary for most of her life, meticulously cataloguing events and people of the village. After her death the diaries were donated to Umeå Heritage Museum.

In late November of 1867, during the last great famine in Scandinavia, Persson documented the passing of the local priest. No replacement came, and there was no easy way to travel elsewhere for mass.

The cold deepened and the days shortened as the year drew toward its end. Two villagers killed themselves, one by hanging and one by shooting. Three died of starvation. The desperation is evident in Persson’s diary: “School is closed, because the children are too weak or sick to attend. I spend most of the day in bed. I do not quite want to die. I am just not sure that I have it in me to live.” (The Diaries of Margareta Persson, Umea Heritage Museum, book 8, p 65)

Then, early on Christmas morning, a stranger arrived. Ms. Persson writes.

The priest earned the name Sjungpastorn, “the sing-pastor.” He held Mass not only on Sunday mornings, but every single morning for the better part of a year. The Masses followed the same pattern as the first on Christmas morning: Sjungpastorn would stand at the pulpit and sing his wordless song, and the villagers sang along. At the end of the Mass, he would walk among the pews and touch or even embrace the people.

Ms Persson doesn’t describe the man in great detail. What she does say is very interesting, elaborating on her observation that she “could not see his face clearly”: he was “not fully formed, like a clay doll or a new-born child.” (Diaries, book 8, p. 95) Furthermore, the man doesn’t speak, but produces other types of noise (the same type of phenomenon is described in Selma Lagerlöf’s “En historia fran Långsjö,”[6] about the appearance of a strange-looking cow who couldn’t moo). Lastly, being close to him creates an intense feeling of bliss, and he regularly touches the villagers. All these are characteristics of Pyret, and in chronicling them Ms Persson finally gives us a possible clue to Pyret’s procreation cycle.

In the autumn of 1868, Sjungpastorn began looking poorly and greyish. Ms Persson mentions that he began touching people outside of Mass, specifically men. It didn’t stop there. On the night of September 20th, someone knocked on Margareta’s door.

Sjungpastorn was never seen again. It does seem that he was nearing the end of his life cycle and therefore tried to procreate; that he chose a man indicates that he was looking for sperm to fertilize an egg. There is no mention in Ms Persson’s diaries of Pyret—perhaps because she didn’t know of the legend, or the villagers never made the connection. After all, Sjungpastorn resembled a man and not a beast.

My Own Investigations into the Situation at “Lillbo”

So far, my findings have mostly fallen within the realm of folklore, but I am about to present modern-day evidence that we are not dealing with a cryptid but a real being. I have previously stated that accounts of Pyret assuming human form have been extremely rare. Recent events at the village of “Lillbo” hint at a new development. While unraveling Margareta Persson’s account of Sjungpastorn, I met an informant at the Umeå Heritage Museum. A stocky woman in her eighties, she worked as a volunteer at the museum. When she heard about my area of research, she immediately asked me to interview her. Please note that the informant’s name and the village’s name have been changed for their protection.

Annika M was born in Lillbo in the 1931, raising the population from thirty-five to thirty-six. Situated in the region of Dalarna, the village had grown up around a foundry, which was shut down in the early twentieth century. Like most of her generation, Annika left in her teens to find work elsewhere, eventually settling in Umeå. She would not return to Lillbo for thirty years. In a taped interview, Annika told me of the events that took place when she finally did return.

It was in October 1978 when Annika’s father unexpectedly called her. She hadn’t spoken to her parents for several years, having broken off contact with them because she felt they were “bitter” and “stuck in the past.” Now pensioners in their late sixties, they remained in Lillbo. Her father begged Annika to visit, although he wouldn’t explain why: “My father had never talked to me like that before. I thought one of them must be ill or dying, so I got into my car and drove there as quickly as I could.”

The village was no better than she remembered it, with ”a single main street, a dirt road really… some houses on each side of the road, and the little grocery store in the middle. The forest is littered with abandoned cottages.” As she came to her parents’ house, she quickly had the feeling that something was wrong.

Before Annika could greet her mother, her father pulled her with him into the living room and closed the door. In hushed tones, he told her a story.

All of this sounded crazy to Annika, and to find time to think she “told them I had to go for a walk.” She made her way down to the empty main street, where “The paint on the houses was chipped and fading, the stairs rotting; everything was falling apart.” Soon, she noticed something odd.

As she went further down the street, she happened upon a man chopping wood outside his house. Something wasn’t quite right here either:

Annika got her father into the car and drove all the way back to Umeå without stopping. “We never came back to Lillbo. We never told anyone, because who would have believed us? Me and my father were the last, the last people to leave Lillbo.”

Final Conclusions

As you might expect, Annika M’s story prompted me to travel to Lillbo. Decades had passed since the events she described, but I still hoped to find clues, if not a live specimen. I also needed to see the site for myself. An inexperienced and frightened observer, Annika M had provided an account that was vague and skewed toward the monstrous. I, on the other hand, had studied Pyret for a very long time. I had nothing to fear from a creature I knew to be, in essence, benign.

I arrived at the village late in the afternoon. As it was October, I was treated to a spectacular turning of leaves. Annika had described the village as “falling apart” on her visit decades ago; now, the houses were practically rotting shells. I looked into windows and doorways where I could, but found nothing interesting… until I tried the door to the grocery store. It was half-stuck, but unlocked, and I managed to get it open.

Everyday objects filled the shelves on the walls: alarm clocks, stationery, china, clothes, silverware, paintings, lamps, scales, Bakelite telephones, canned goods, stuffed toys, sewing machines, picture frames. A powdery smell in the air made me think of plastic gone brittle in the sun. In the middle of the floor, its back to the counter, sat a molding velvet couch facing an old TV set. A little table to one side held a teapot, four cups, and a sheaf of paper. The couch was covered in a layer of something like hardened gelatin. That powdery smell became stronger as I drew closer, a taste of something like talcum settling on the tongue.

The paper on the table was inscribed with curlicued rows that resembled writing, but on closer inspection turned out to be just long loops of ink. A signature-like swirl sat in the bottom right corner. It looked very much like a childish imitation of a letter.

As I wandered along the carefully stacked shelves, the ordered clutter left behind, I found myself doubting the premise of my own research—and this elicited a strangely powerful reaction. I think it was due in part to the fact that I have studied Pyret for so long, and was suddenly closer than I had ever been to finding tangible proof of its existence. But this proof, these leavings, was far beyond what I had expected to find.

I have in this essay offered the possibility of Pyret’s sentience, but so far my research points to it really being a non-sentient animal; talented, yes, but an animal nonetheless. This room, which more than anything resembled a shrine to humanity, raised a new question—one that might not be answered until Pyret’s next appearance.

When a creature chooses to die surrounded by keepsakes from a species to which it doesn’t belong, leaving an imitation of language behind—has it acted out of instinct or intelligence?