Dear Michelle, after finishing wolf brother in the chronicles of ancient darkness, the book left such a big impact on me and it made me love historical books more and more, and I admire the efforts you've been putting on these books. This book has made me want to continue all of the other 8 books, it had me experiencing all of Torak's emotions throughout his journey in life, from being devastated to being hopefull, and I have a question which makesme very curious: in the book the character's dialects are in english but if there was a native language they spoke from northern Scandinavia what would it be? would the language be related to Uralic, old Norse, Paleo-Laplandic, or Sami? I would love to hear your response
with kind regards, Ahmed

Dear Ahmed, What an interesting question!  I’m not a linguist, but I’ve always thought that Torak’s people would have spoken the language which we call Proto-Indo-European; but (and it’s a big but) that’s just a reconstruction which linguists have come up with over the past couple of centuries or so.  The short answer is, we just don’t know.  What we do know is that Torak’s peoples’ brains and bodies (I’m thinking here particularly of their bones and facial musculature) were pretty much the same as ours, so that they were capable of complex speech and language; although it’s quite likely that some parts of their brains were more highly developed than ours.  For example, they were probably much better at remembering things.  As far as we know, they didn’t have writing – which is why we call them “pre-historic” – but that doesn’t mean they were incapable of complex belief systems, customs, or indeed, music or poetry.  And this was my guiding principle when I wrote the books.  It’s highly likely that as well as speaking the language of Torak and Renn, some of the more remote clans also spoke their own dialects; particularly the Ice clans and the Mountain clans, whom you’ll meet in future books.  But I didn’t get into that in the stories, as it would have made them too complicated.  I hope I’ve gone some way to answering your question – and that you continue to enjoy the books!  With best wishes, Michelle