The Agency of Sea Ice: Sohvi Kangasluoma Overwinters in a Sailboat in Greenland

In 1897 Fridtjof Nansen published Farthest North, his narrative about the three years he spent in the Arctic, part of it on the famous ship, the Fram, and part of it attempting to sledge to the North Pole with one companion from the ship and being turned back by the ice to face a harrowing fifteen months before being rescued on Franz Josef Land. I read this book quite recently and still am thinking about the amazing fact that he, all his companions on the ship, and the Fram itself survived three years of polar weather and challenges. They didn’t reach the pole but they did get within a few degrees. Some of the most entrancing sections of the book are the descriptions of the cozy interior of the ship; locked into the ice and drifting west in the direction of Svalbard, the expedition team read books, ate nice meals with desserts, and played cards, while the wind howled and the snow fell outside.

Nansen studied to become a marine biologist before he became a polar hero and later a statesman with a side line in oceanography. In the introduction to Farthest North he lays out a short history of attempts to reach the North Pole by ship, and the many disasters. He explains his own theory of ocean currents that run west from Siberia to Greenland and how they could help, not hinder a ship in an expedition to the Pole.

In memorable and prescient words, he writes, “I believe that if we pay attention to the actually existent forces of nature, and seek to work with and not against them, we shall thus find the safest and easiest method of reaching the Pole.”

 

Sohvi Kangasluoma with her dog on the ice

The other day I had cause to remember those words, when I read an article in the High North News (April 30, 2025) about Dr. Sohvi Kangasluoma, a young woman scientist from Finland who’s taken some of Nansen’s ideas further. Kangasluoma, a post-doc at the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland, lives and works with her partner Juho Karhu in their sailboat. Last summer the couple transited the Northwest Passage from Alaska to Greenland to study the movement of ice. In the winter of 2024-2025 they embedded the boat in pack ice off the east coast of Greenland.   

 

Kangasluoma’s dissertation is titled Understanding Arctic oil and gas: Entanglements of gender, emotions and environment (and can be downloaded here). In the High North article she discusses the ways that the Arctic is currently viewed as a geopolitical prize to be fought over, Kangasluoma has pointed out that sea ice “is approached as something that just is and melts. But it is anything but a passive and dead thing; it is very much alive, and it has agency of its own."

Like other researchers influenced by feminist and ecological views of nature, Sohvi Kangasluoma, looked beyond the sea as only a place to extract wealth, whether in the form of fish, minerals, or oil and natural gas, an enormous site of geopolitical greed and political conflict. She researched the Arctic seas with an eye to the non-human. "We tend to have this very anthropocentric way of thinking. Humans need a shift in knowledge. Humans are not alone here; there are so many other actors as well. This is, of course, already present in many Indigenous ontologies and ways of life, which we need to start listening to."

The article has a link to a video called “Turning Our Boat into an Igloo.” The YouTube channel, Alluring Arctic Sailing, has other videos equally fascinating. It's maintained by Juho Karhu, who has a scientific background as well and contributes to voluntary research projects. His voice and manner are incredibly calm, no matter what seems to be happening on the ice or how hard the wind is blowing.

 

 

 

 

Sápmi Lands Threatened by EU’s Approval of Raw Materials Strategic Projects

 

 

News that the mining projects Talga Graphite in Nunasvaara, LKAB ReeMap in Malmberget, and LKAB Per Geijer in Kiruna were part of a mass approval on March 24, 2025 by the European Commission was a shock to the Sámi Council, which has issued a strong statement. Other sites are located in the Sámi part of Finland. The mining projects on traditional Sámi territory, some of 47 “strategic projects” around Europe, are the result the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act on May 23, 2024, aimed at reducing supply chain vulnerabilities. Many of the areas to be mined can also produce the raw materials required in a conversion to so-called green energy.

The Sámi Council, along with the Sámi parliaments in the Nordic countries have long made it clear that they lack the legal staff and funding to tackle the impacts of each proposed project on the environment and Sámi culture, a culture closely interwoven with the landscape. International corporations had already been expanding in Sápmi.  The Australian company, Talga, for instance, which plans to mine graphite in the winter reindeer grazing lands around Vittangi, near Kiruna, has long fought court battles with the Talma Sámi siida. Now, thanks to the fast-tracked status of the project given by the EU, the project can move ahead without the Sámi being likely to mount an effective defense.

“The EU is promoting the exploitation of minerals that contribute to human rights abuses within the EU,” Per-Olof Nutti, president of the Saami Council said. “This is a direct violation of our rights as the only recognized Indigenous People within the EU.”

 

Siri Broch Johansen Awarded Ibsen Prize

 

Siri Broch Johansen

The Ibsen Prize is Norway's only drama award and considered one of the most prestigious international drama prizes. Last week, on March 20 (Ibsen's birthday), in a first for a Sámi author, Siri Broch Johansen was awarded the Ibsen Prize for her play, Per Hansen: A Faithful Man/oskkáldas almmái which premiered in October, 2024 at Norway's traveling theater, Riksteatret.

Per Hansen: A Faithful Man is described on the theater's website as “a juicy, humorous, steamy erotic, and honest piece. It's about adult love, complex life choices, and enduring this life.” A rave review on NRK celebrates how the two characters, both Sámi, explore a relationship outside marriage, with all the heartbreak and loneliness that can involve. 

Much of the action takes place on a sofa as the actors talk about sex, desire, and what's possible in explicit terms. From the reviews, it seems that Norway has never seen Sámi people through this lens before--as ordinary, not particularly exotic human beings--yet still Sámi for all that. 

Siri Broch Johansen is, in addition to an author of several books, a language teacher and singer, living in the Tana municipality in East Finnmark/Sápmi. I know her work from her biography of the Sámi activist Elsa Laula Renberg, published in 2015.

Ollu lihkku!! (Congratulations!)

Barbara Sjoholm and Kaja Gjelde-Bennett talk about The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens

  

A new interview about The  Reindeer of Chinese Gardens with Sámi-American Ph.D. student Kaja Gjelde-Bennett. Kaja and I talk about immigration to the Pacific Northwest by Chinese, Norwegian, and Sámi at the turn of the 19th century and about the setting of the novel in Port Townsend, Washington. Kaja will be leading a book club discussion of the novel on February 27, 2025 at 6 pm. Sign up through Nordiska.

Water Street, Port Townsend, WA 1908

 

 

Upcoming Events for Reindeer of Chinese Gardens

 

My new historical novel, The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens, now feels officially launched, with some upcoming events scheduled for February and March.

On Thursday, February 20,  I'll be doing a reading from the novel in the Carnegie Room of the Port Townsend Library. It seems like a perfect place, since the stacks of maritime titles are nearby, and were an important source for me while writing the book. 

The library on Lawrence Street isn't far from where Dagny and her family and friends lived in the Uptown district of Port Townsend in the 1890s. 

After the reading, I'll be selling and signing books. You can also purchase copies in the historic Aldrich's market (founded in 1895), also on Lawrence Street, and at our local bookstore, Imprint Bookshop, down on Water Street, in the heart of Port Townsend. One of my favorite bookstores in the Pacific Northwest, Port Book and News in Port Angeles, also has copies.

Later in February, I'll be attending an online book club meeting about The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens, sponsored by the fantastic Nordiska shop in historic Poulsbo, Washington. Poulsbo is well-known for its Scandinavian roots, but it's not as well-known that a significant number of Sámi immigrants and their descendants also called and call Poulsbo home. The wonderful moderator of the book club, which has been going for three years, is Kaja Gjelde-Bennett, who herself has Sámi family connections to Poulsbo. She is currently living in New Mexico and pursuing a Ph.D. after having been awarded a master's in Indigenous Studies at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. The Nordiska is a great spot to shop for all things Nordic, and carries a selection of Scandinavian books as well. During February The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens can be purchased in person or online for a 15% discount. 

And finally, a heads up about an event on March 20 at the Nordic Museum in Ballard, a neighborhood of Seattle. I'm really pleased to be speaking at the Nordic again and in Ballard, where a good deal of the second half of the novel takes place in 1906-1907. I'm also delighted to be in conversation with Amy Swanson King. Amy is a journalist and past president of the Pacific Sámi Searvi. She's currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington, studying issues impacting the Sámi, American Sámi and descendants, Indigenous diaspora and language revitalization. Amy and I go back a few years, and in 2023 had a chance to discuss an earlier book of mine, From Lapland to Sápmi on Crossing North, a podcast sponsored by the University of Washington's Scandinavian Department. 

Velkommen to any and all of these events!

 

 

The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens, my new historical novel

 

Sjoholm is a gifted storyteller, eloquent on the subject of Sámi prejudice and the poignant dilemma for all immigrants: Make a life for yourself in this new world, or surrender to the emotional pull of the old country? And while Dagny has her own demons, she ends up being not just a survivor, but a humane model for all of us. An engrossing novel that features a memorably strong, vibrant female character.

Kirkus Reviews

 

Through the journals of Dagny Bergland, Barbara Sjoholm has given voice to the challenges of immigration from a variety of viewpoints – Norwegian, Chinese, Sami. Their stories are complex, touching, sometimes tragic. It is above all, a story of America and what it means to be assimilated into American culture and geography.

Marlene Wisuri, Chair, Sami Cultural Center of North America

 

I’m thrilled to announce that my new historical novel, The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens, is now available in print and ebook editions. I had the idea for a novel set in Port Townsend, where I live, many years ago, but it took a long time to come to fruition. It involved a lot of research into not only this city’s boom-and-bust history in the late 1800s, but also research on the “Reindeer Rescue” expedition that brought Sámi from Lapland to Seattle, Port Townsend, and Alaska in 1898, in an ill-fated attempt to supply the Yukon Gold Rush miners with food by reindeer. I also explored Port Townsend’s Chinese district, Norwegian-American newspapers, seafaring in the waning Age of Sail, Seattle’s history, especially the Ballard neighborhood—and much more. No wonder that with all this research, in addition to a number of other books and translations I published over the last decade, that The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens took me over twelve years to complete. 

Norwegian-born Dagny Bergland and her husband arrive in turn-of-the-century Port Townsend, Washington after years of sailing their merchant ship around the globe. They’re just in time for the Yukon Gold Rush and the arrival of a group of Sámi reindeer herders from Lapland on their way to Alaska to supply the ill-prepared miners. Dagny’s journals, beginning in 1897, tell a fresh and riveting history of the Pacific Northwest and its immigrants. A novel of friendship, love, loss, and motherhood, The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens is the story of a remarkable woman who learns to steer a new course in a new country. 

 Although the official publication day is February 1, you can find it on sale now at Amazon, in print and as an ebook, or from other vendors via Draft2Digital, such as Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble. It is also available or can be ordered from brick-and-mortar independent bookstores or online from bookshop.org.

I’ll be giving a reading at the Port Townsend Library Thursday evening at 6pm on February 20. I’ll also be in conversation with Amy Swanson King of the Pacific Sámi Searvi at the Nordic Museum in Seattle on Thursday, March 20. Amy and I previously had a great talk for Crossing North about my previous book, From Lapland to Sapmi.

Barbara Sjoholm and Amy Swanson King, Seattle, Nov 2023