‘I ate slimy seal liver and skinned reindeer for research’

UK’s Michelle Paver won the Guardian children’s fiction prize this year for her series Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. The six books are set in the Stone Age and trace the life of an orphan, Torak, his female friend Renn and Wolf, his wolf cub companion. Paver is well-known for the research she put into her books by living with hunter-gatherer tribes around the world to recreate their world in her series. She spoke to DNA and revealed that she still lives in another era (she doesn’t use the Internet) and how her fantasy series are all reality, though of another world.

How did you start writing?
I started writing when I was five and my influences, not surprisingly, were all from the books my parents had on the Stone Age. I was born in Nyasaland (now Malawai) in central Africa where my South African father ran the Nyasaland Times, and my Belgian mother wrote a weekly gossip column. I got a degree in biochemistry from the Oxford University and I wrote fiction all along without getting published. I was partner at a law firm in London but gave all that up only in 1996. I think the pressures got into me and instead of waiting for things to happen, I finally turned to writing romantic novels.

How did the transition from romantic novels to children’s fiction come about?
After five adult novels, to be honest, I lost all interest in my heroes and heroines. That was when I turned back to an old draft from college about a boy and his wolf friend in the 9th century AD and changed the setting to Stone Age. I’ve had this inexplicable liking for wolves (Paver always carries a stuffed wolf wherever she goes).

As a child, I pestered my parents to get me a wolf instead of the spaniel they got me, and I eventually made him my pretend-wolf. I also tried very hard to live the Stone Age life. I got rid of my bed to sleep on the floor, bunked school and bought dead rabbits so I could them skin them neatly like hunter-gatherers do. I grew bizarre herbs in my garden and administered potions to my sister. It struck me only much later that, given these childhood quirks, I could’ve written nothing but on Stone Age with such lasting interest (Paver still doesn’t use the Internet, but books for research). 

You could have easily based your series on imagination but you set out to live Torak’s life. Why?
Yes, I could have gone wild and cooked up things but, you know, surprises are far bigger in the real world. It hit me when I went snorkelling years ago and came to a spot where a killer whale had forced hundreds of herring into a ball by bursting bubbles from its mouth. The herring had just been eaten up then and I swam right into a million gleaming scales floating in the water, just like spangles. I have never read of anything so beautiful.

At a museum in Greenland, I came to know how a kayak isn’t just a boat for the Inuit, it’s a hunting partner (The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous people inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada). An Inuit mourns the death of its kayak (in case of breakage). That sentimentality gave me the idea to create Renn’s character, and how she’s devastated when her kayak is destroyed. I don’t think relying only on imagination could have done it.

What were your experiences with the hunter-gatherer tribes like?
There isn’t much left much behind by hunter-gatherers so I read up a lot on the archaeology of their times and on recent hunter-gatherer tribes like the Inuit and American Indian cultures, the Ainu of Japan, Aborigines and the San of southern Africa.

I did almost everything that Torak does in the book. As I wanted to see how a reindeer is skinned, I went to Sami lady’s home in Finland (Sami are the indigenous people living in parts of far northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia). I am not squeamish, but the bucket full of reindeer heads at her door, for soup at lunch, was quite a surprise. She had a large, dried mushroom for a pincushion. In the book, Torak carries a piece of burning fungus rolled in birchbark for fire — I’ve learnt that, too.

I ate seal blubber and seaweed but the most bizarre thing I’ve ever put in my mouth has to be raw seal liver. When a tribe kills a seal, they honour it before eating. The liver was slimy, looked horrendous and all I could think of parasites. But it tasted quite sweet and was steaming, fresh out of the seal’s body…These details make the book come alive. I’ve had one of the 10 huskies pulling my sled in Greenland decide he didn’t want to do the job and jump right next to me and enjoy the ride. I’ve had a killer whale’s dorsal fin trying to take me in, and a large, black bear who didn’t care I was lawyer and had some serious plans to attack me. I came closest to death in Greenland as I slid through a glacier.

You’ve said that your interaction with children is limited. Why? And what do you think children can take away from the Stone Age?
I don’t have kids and I write more for the child in me. I think kids don’t really like messages — what is good and what should be bad.

The books speak about how everything has a spirit — trees, rivers and rocks. Hunter-gatherers didn’t waste anything. Killing an animal and honouring it through rituals meant promising it that you wouldn’t let its life go waste. Hunter-gatherers didn’t care for possessions — they cared for noble qualities. You survive only if you can use your wit. I sat across a 19-year-old Inuit girl in jeans who also skins reindeers and builds igloos with equal ease. Children have a lot to admire there.      

What is your next series about?
My next series will be set in the Bronze Age and the research will involve visiting many active volcanoes in Greece and Egypt. And no, no wolves this time. I’ll pack them away for a while, I think.