Some ten to twelve years before a half-demented old Swede roamed about in Ré Valley. People called him the Ré Valley Swede. For two whole summers he wandered about with a divining rod and a pickaxe, looking for the Ré Valley treasure. According to an ancient old legend, seven pack-horses loaded with church plate passed up the Valley at the time of the Black Death. Four men led them. When they reached the bogs near the Tolleiv Mountain Farm, the plague overtook the men. They had barely the strength to bury the silver, before they lay down to die with the name of Our Lady on their lips.
This treasure lived like a ghost in the imagination of the people. Somewhere in the Ré Valley lay the plate, that much was certain. When the half-witted old Swede heard of it he commenced haunting the Ré Valley from end to end. He used his pickaxe diligently enough. Every wound in the bogs bore traces of his exertions.
Thus he went on one whole Summer. During the Winter he went timber-cutting in the lower valley, but Spring saw him in Ré Valley once more wielding his divining rod and his pickaxe untiringly.
People met him when they happened to pass that way. At times he was starved to the point of exhaustion; but when they gave him to eat of the food they carried, the old Swede grew strong and full of energy once more. He would half bury his pickaxe in the earth, then straighten his huge body, saying: “To-day I am as poor as a church mouse. But to-morrow I shall be as rich as the King at Stockholm.... I am pretty certain of the treasure now.”
And his voice, which began in a deep bass, would rise upwards to the shrillest falsetto.
Once some lads placed a few bits of an old stove in a pit where the Swede was digging. He found them, and the next day he went home to the Lower Valley delirious with joy. When he understood that it was not the real Treasure after all, he wept like a child, but went straight back to Ré Valley and resumed his digging.
The Ré Valley Swede suffered from epilepsy. Sometimes when he reached the summer mountain farms he fell down in a fit. Therefore people either expected some day to find him dead up in the lonely valley or else never to see him again.
During the third summer of the mad Swede’s digging Gaupa stayed near Gipsy Lake fishing. One night he took his road northwards across Ré River. A few stars twinkled. A glacier shimmered in the Western Mountains, long and narrow like a white bird with wings outstretched. Gaupa moved slowly, slowly northwards along the River.
Towards morning he observed a light coming from a small pine-covered mound, and he went to investigate. A few sparks flew up, and the pine needles were still pink in the glow from a burning log.