‘No,’ replied Nilas; ‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you know whether it has been lying here for a long time?’
‘Yes,’ said Nilas; ‘it has lain here for hundreds of years. I heard that from my old grandfather.’
‘God bless both you and your old grandfather!’ I said; ‘but who brought the stone here?’
‘It must have been the monks,’ said Nilas.
‘The monks, do you say? Why, what monks?’
‘The monks who lived here a long time ago, about whom my grandfather has told me.’
‘You are my friend, Nilas,’ I said; and I rubbed my hands together for joy. ‘Come, let us get back to the fire, good Nilas, and sit down. You must tell me all you have heard from your grandfather about these monks. You mustn’t forget anything. I shan’t let you go till you have told me all that you know.’ [[8]]
‘Well,’ thought I to myself, ‘here is the explanation of the names Munkfjord, Warehouse Inlet, Trifon’s River, and others.’
We went back to the fire, and remained sitting through the light night-time, and far on into the morning, Nilas squatting on the ground, half in the smoke of the fire, with which he mingled the smoke from his own pipe, looking, with his red head-covering, just like an imp. I sat with a veil over my face, and with paper before me, he relating and I listening, and scribbling down on the paper, as fast as my pen would go, his strange tales about a big monastery which had once stood where our tents were pitched, and about a magnificent church, and monks who used to go in procession, and sing psalms, and burn incense. If I had not found the millstone, I should most probably never have learnt the history of this monastery, but the millstone gave me the first clue, which I resolutely followed up, carefully searching through legends and manuscripts and books, among the State archives, and in libraries in Norway, Finland, and Russia. I have picked up and collected every trustworthy piece of historical and ethnographical information, and woven these together with the old legends which I heard from the Lapp Nilas that night on the banks of the Petschenga River.