MDDM Stig & Zhang

[jbor]

> Stig:  "let us say, that my people are of the North, Northern and very
> White, so white in fact that you British to us appear as do Africans, to
> you." (612.33)

At first I was going to suggest that Stig is implying that he comes from one
of those Hollow Earth civilisations (602-3), but with the reference to the
"Frost eternal ... beneath that all-night Sun" (612.5) I think he's probably
one of the Sami people, a Laplander (cf. 544.35). Dixon's suggestion that
he's a "Swedish Jacobite" (611.15) is in fact apt:

"From the 17th century the kingdoms of Norway and Sweden tried to assimilate
the Sami by converting them into Christianity and forbidding their language.

The creation of national borders and division of the Nordic territories
between Sweden, Norway and Finland obliged the Sami to adapt to the culture
of the country they had to live in."

http://www.scandinavica.com/sami.htm

(NB also: "The Sami religious belief is animistic, believing that everything
in nature from animals to minerals have a soul.")

http://www.laplandfinland.com/select_language.asp

I don't think there's any suggestion in the text that Stig is an Aryan
Supremacist, as his people are described as isolationist rather than
aspiring to world domination (612-3). Stig reveals himself as a mercenary,
one of "a Corps of Intermediaries for Hire" (613.5), currently working for
the Swedish. And, the way he was met at the Philadelphia docks by a
mysterious stranger seems to show that the Jesuits aren't the only ones with
conspiratorial designs on the New World, or else, that Parchment being in
Latin (611.8), that the Swedes are in cahoots with the Jesuits (cf. 611.32).
 
> "A Prison," suggests Capt. Zhang. "Settlers moving West into instant
> Control." (617)

Yes, so Zhang describes the Western settlement plan of Col. Bouquet, the
"Hero of Bushy Run". Bouquet isn't real popular with George Washington,
either (277).

best