A gnome knows what lies under whatever it is standing on, to the inch, and cannot be stopped from saying so. Water at nine feet. A cracked drain tile at four. A buried cart axle two fields over, if the wind is right. I begin my notes in October at Tindvollen, a slate-quarry village, where a gnome I call Rust (for his beard) works the pasture margins. He is wedge-shaped, broad across the shoulders and tapering to small boots, two feet three inches tall, with broad, capable hands. He crosses a field in a slow zigzag, stamps once, lays an ear flat to the ground and digs a hole the width of a thumb. A flat pebble goes in the bottom, gray for water, white for ore. Then he moves on.
The pits are how he is tracked, and how the village uses him. Anyone at Tindvollen who means to dig a well sets a flat stone on the chosen spot and waits. Rust must stand on it and give his number before a spade goes in. The number is never argued, and nobody speaks of the dig aloud until the water comes. People say a contradicted gnome goes quiet for the rest of the year, and a quiet gnome is worse than a wrong well.
By late November the ground stiffens and his work shrinks. He digs shallower and sleeps longer. Each evening, in any weather, he scrapes his boots on the same lip of slate, left boot first, and hangs his cap on a root peg beside his door. It takes four minutes, and I have never seen him skip it. He is also generous with his numbers. Eleven years ago the cooper Orm Vestby mended his bucket for nothing, and Rust now announces the depth of Orm's well to everyone who passes the cooper's gate, with the depth of Orm's cellar added for good measure.
In March, at the thaw, Rust has changed. His door, which faced the pasture in October, now opens on the lee side of a birch. His beard has gone gray at the tips. He stamps twice now instead of once, and his pits have crossed the road onto the peat flats at Jorsmark, where the ground is soft and he has more to say. Gudrun Halvik, who keeps the dairy there, sets out her stone each spring. "He's never been wrong," she says, "and I'd rather not find out."
- Classification
- Small earth-sensing folk
- Habitat
- Hill pastures, quarries and peat flats
- Danger
- Minimal
- Size
- 2 ft 3 in tall
- Activity
- Diurnal
- Realm
- Northern hill country
- Binomial
- Subterrus mensor
- Diet
- Root vegetables, barley bread, pickled beets
- Temperament
- Exact, proud, generous with measurements