Three New Books From Sápmi

 

Today I want to highlight several books about Sápmi published in the last couple of years: a novel, an autobiographical graphic novel, and a book of writing published in connection with the 2022 Sámi Pavilion at the Biennale in Venice.

 

The End of Drum-Time by American author, Hanna Pylväinen, is a historical novel set in Sweden in the mid-1800s, at a time when the new pietistic Lutheran movement called Laestadianism was taking root in northern Scandinavia, particularly among the Sámi and Kven people. Named after the Swedish-Sámi pastor Lars Levi Laestadius—dubbed “Mad Lasse” in the novel—the novel follows the paths of several characters: two of the pastor’s daughters, and several reindeer herding families. One of the great pleasures of the novel is Pylväinen’s deep knowledge of the weather and terrain of the Torne Valley and the small church village where most of the action takes place. Pylväinen has apparently visited Northern Sweden and Norway often and embedded herself with a reindeer-herding family. Her research shows in detailed descriptions of the herds and tent life.

The writing is rich, though the sentences are often long, and parts of the story move a little slowly. The novel has been billed as a love story, but the awkward erotic relationship between Willa, Lars Levi’s odd daughter, and Ivvár, a troubled young herder whose father has converted to the new faith, was not the most compelling aspect of the story for me. I savored instead the scenery and historical aspects of the book. Pylväinen herself grew up in a Laestadian sect in the United States, and she captures the strangeness of a world steeped in sin and redemption, but also in the wide-open spaces and community life of the Sámi siidas before industrialization and assimilation.

 

I picked up the autobiographical graphic novel, Da vi var samer (When We Were Sámi) by Mats Jonsson in Oslo this past February. It was translated in 2023 from Swedish into Norwegian. Sadly, it’s not too likely to find its way into English, though one of Jonsson’s autobiographical graphic novels, Hey Princess, was translated ten years ago. That book was described as taking its place “in the proud tradition of self-deprecating, confessional, sex-obsessed and guilt-ridden autobiographical comics, but stakes out a unique identity by virtue of its Nordic setting and biting social criticism.”

https://swedishbookreview.org

 “When We Were Sámi” is also full of self-deprecating humor, satire, and insight, but its subject matter is more somber and searching. Jonsson tells the story of learning after his grandfather’s death that the family comes from Måla, Sweden, and that until early in the twentieth century they considered themselves Forest Sámi. The discovery of papers and photographs in a hidden chest leads Jonsson on a quest to find out more about his family’s history. In doing so, he also goes back in time to illustrate Swedish history and the deliberate erasure of the Forest Sámi’s existence. Unlike the reindeer-herding Sámi who were allowed to keep their reindeer, while subject to ever-greater state control, the Forest Sámi were continually pushed out of their territories to make room for settlers, loggers, and farmers from Finland and Southern Sweden. Eventually Jonsson’s family gave up, assimilated, and did not talk about their past.

This is a part of Swedish history that even Swedes don’t know, much less those of us from other countries, and it’s presented in a vigorous black and white images and lively monologs and dialogs with family and friends. “When We Were Sámi” is the first graphic novel to have been nominated for the prestigious August Prize in 2021 and one of a only a few works on the Sámi to be nominated throughout the prize’s long history. I found it engrossing and sometimes unbearably sad, as well as straight-talking and funny. 

 

Čatnosat: The Sámi Pavilion, Indigenous Art, Knowledge, and Sovereignty, edited by Liisa-Rávná Finbog, Katya Garcia-Anton, and Beaska Niillas was published in 2022 in conjunction with the Sámi Pavilion’s chosen artists that year at the Venice Biennale. Pauliina Feodoroff, Máret Ánne Sara and Anders Sunna. The book’s format is intriguing: spiral-bound and non-linear in the sense that each of the three sections can be opened around the spiral as wished, giving a feeling of a circle. Something that’s true of other Sámi art forms, like the joik.

 The contributions by the artists themselves, the editors, and a few other respected Sámi authors and poets such as Sigbjørn Skåden, Timimie Gassko Märak, and Ánde Somby, are in English and/or Sámi. I see the intent of the book project, but somehow didn’t find it always reader friendly. Perhaps because in the course of presenting my own work I continually encounter readers who are encountering Sápmi—its inhabitants, its creativity, its history, its political relevance—for the first time. I could have wished for these editors to have supplied a little more introductory material for those new to Sápmi. What I did very much enjoy about the book were the photos of the artworks displayed at the Biennale, and the words and background photographs supplied by the artists of friends and family. The different personalities and intentions and sheer talent of the three artists were explored in personal ways that were easy to connect with.