The Harvester Ghost Figurine - Yrsa

The Harvesters appear only after the first grain has been cut.

Old Lammas records speak of pale figures emerging at dusk from the newly shorn fields, where the standing wheat had concealed them throughout the growing season. They are seldom witnessed before the final cart has departed. By then, only stubble, scattered husks and the long shadows of the harvest remain.

Earlier custodians believed the Harvesters kept account of all that had been gathered and all that had been left behind. They were treated neither as omens nor intruders, but as quiet witnesses to the turning year: spirits of labour completed, stores replenished and the first promise that winter might yet be endured.

Their appearance marks the opening of the harvest season at Lammas. They remain only briefly, vanishing as the fields are cleared and the late-summer nights begin to lengthen.

Ysra was first recorded at the edge of a reaped field, where a final strip of barley had been left standing in accordance with the old harvest custom.

By dawn, the stalks had been gathered into a neat bound sheaf, though no worker claimed to have touched them in the night. Old records associate Ysra with the keeping of field offerings, and with the warning that any harvest taken too completely will return leaner with the following year.

Torsten the ghost figurine is just short of 9 cm in height.