Estonia, a tiny country by the gulf of Findland, conquered by Russia and administered for her by the Baltic German Knighthood, has finally overcome almost six centuries of slavery. Now she is suddenly faced with a new menace - the intense Russification decreed by Tsar Alexander III. Into this seething cauldron of injustice Jarmo is born. Volume I of Orbits "On Becoming a Man", lauches the saga of Jarmo Matson. What shapes the boy to make him the man he becomes?
Intelligence is Jarmo's strength, feeding his hunger for knowledge. Curiosity is his motive power, inspiring him to challenge the very laws of nature. Loyalty and integrity are inherited from his parents, leading him to fight for the underdog and stand up for his rights.
As he and his friends mature, they discuss and ponder over many aspects of life - poitics, their common enemies the Tsar and Baltic German Barons, and naturally they wonder about girls, love and sex. Many of these friends follow right through to Volume VI.
Feeling that he needs a little polish before entering university life and the social whirl of St. Petersburrg, his parents arrange for him to spend a working summer on the estate of a wealthy wido - a family friend. This experience brings a radical change in his life.
Sven Linholm, seemingly cool and imperturbable, belies the reality of a
colourful life in which he has had experiences ranging from
crowding Death's Door to sharing the joys of the Elysian Fields. Spends
early childhood in Modder Deep, South Africa, a gold mining region, where
father is a mining engineer. Returns to native Estonia, and attends the Lycée
Française and the English College, where first sparks of daydreaming with a
pen are evident.
WW II kicks everything upside down and Stalin invades the country,
bringing along a mad ideology and the horrors of bloodshed and deportations.
He sees the Reds arrest his stepfather who takes his own life to thwart
the possibility of betraying political friends under torture. He and the rest
of the family escape the mass-deportations of the population to Russia.
Then Nazi armies invade the country. German cannons pound the city
while hundreds queue for bread. A bedroom window is splattered with
blood from a dead soldier on the roof, his head lying among the flowers in
the garden. A few years later Red planes return to bomb and burn almost a
third of the capital, Tallinn. He escapes with the family just days before the
Red Army returns.
A long stay at a Displaced Persons camp in the American Zone of
Germany, where he works at the Post Exchange for the American Army and
plays in an amateur jazz band for American Red Cross dances.
Passage to Britain at last! Among only four fields of work open to immigrants
are agriculture, hospitals, mining and the textiles' industry. Works as
a gardener and handyman at a castle in the Cotswolds. Later, in a London
hospital wheels patients to the operating room, or prepares corpses for
viewing by family members, while studying aeronautical engineering.
Accepts a position in Canada with DeHavilland Aircraft and arrives just as
the Korean War breaks out. Sorry, mister—no work for non-British subjects
in war industry! Declines offer to sweep the yard.
Becomes successful selling real estate while studying economics and
architecture, leading to a career in designing, building and selling houses.
Such experiences with violence and butchery, of invasions and wars have
left their mark and created memories which nudge reality along mysterious
paths. But they have also enhanced his delight in the beauty and pleasures
life has to offer and that led him to succumb to a growing desire to write a
saga in which these facts and the magic of fiction mingle—a saga that's been
developing in his mind for many years.
And so ORBITS was born.