ÆDNAN

An epic poem, much honored in Sweden since its publication in 2018, that charts the fortunes of a Sámi community against opposing nationalisms.

There was a time when Norway and Sweden were united as a single country. The union dissolved in 1905, and eight years later, as Sámi author Axelsson’s epic begins, a boundary is forming between the two that impedes the free movement of a reindeer-herding Arctic community. “Once May Day passed we were allowed to cross the border into Norway,” says one speaker, while “the Swede he dammed // And the river was left / muffled and silent.” In the face of this degradation, where the Sámi are barred from herding grounds, ancient migratory routes are blocked, and villages are swallowed by rising waters, a young man dies accidentally, a ghost whose presence hovers over the generations. He laments to his distraught father: “Didn’t you hear me // Among the seabirds / as you came walking / with your summer-fat / reindeer,” and his grave will forever be unquiet. Fast-forward two generations, and the Sámi have themselves been herded into government villages, their children packed off to boarding schools to be acculturated as Swedes; one matriarch, subjected to that cultural annihilation, recalls questions from her daughter: “Tell me what it / was like at the Nomad School / Mama // I’m supposed to write / an essay about / you in school.” Adds one character, Lise, speaking a century after the epic begins, “And I did not / want to talk about it.” As Axelsson charts the story of the Sámi under colonial rule, the reader will be reminded of the injuries done to Indigenous peoples everywhere. But there is at least some resolution: Axelsson describes present-day Sámi activists fighting to regain control of traditional lands, with young descendants teaching their elders about their culture. Such is the case with another matriarch, Sandra, who’s “Trying / as a grown woman / to learn Sámi / with her children.”

A sharp-edged tale in verse of colonial suppression, resistance, and survival.