A multi-generational saga courses across the pages of Ædnan, by Sámi-Swedish author Linnea Axelsson, translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel. The verse epic follows an Indigenous Sámi family who have herded reindeer for generations, as the forces of colonialism and modern development of their ancestral lands threaten their culture and livelihood. The story is told by a small chorus of characters from the 1910s through the current day, and we become especially close to Lise, who left her Sámi family, following her brother Jon-Henrik, to be educated at a residential school for “Nomad” children. This excerpt from Chapter XII takes place in the early 1970s, along the Great Lule River Valley, where the state-owned Vattenfall company was developing hydroelectric resources, and Lise is graduating into a world unimaginable to her parents.
The river climbed
silently up the hills
as soon as Vattenfall
whistled it came
creeping:
Streamed backwards
up its deep channel and
drowned the earth
When the great
Suorva Dam for the third
time was to be regulated
She explained
clearly to the Swedes
that the fishing will suffer
if the water rises
There was probably
no one who understood
what she was saying
After the social
studies lesson
I went with the others
to sit on the
gymnasium floor
Almost all of
Malmberget’s students
had been dismissed
from class
–
To participate
in the miners’
strike meeting
Someone had heard
that Olof Palme
was coming
that he would travel
all the way up here
To the mining company’s
and Vattenfall’s world
the one that he
himself had helped
build
It is what
he is guarding
It is all that
he can see
flowed wildly above the
crowded hall which was
hot with bodies
His voice was so robust
his conviction
so intense
I glanced at Anne
who was sitting beside me
leaning against
the wall bars
and she smiled back at me
Soon we would
be leaving school too
And could start working
join the union
You took the job you wanted
that’s all there was to it
Switchboard cleaner or cook
with the old folks at
the Pioneer
or the children
in day care
I spend the weekend
up at Mama
and Papa’s
Watching the river
flow murky
across the slope
where he and I
used to go
it’s underwater now
How are our tracks
ever to be heard
Among the Swedes’
roads and
power stations
It’s Jon-Henrik
who says this
he had also
been drawn down
to the dam
To work
for Vattenfall as soon
as school was done
I’m surprised
when he says
That he’d preferred to have
taken up with the reindeer
Been elected into the
Sámi community
And learned to guide
that wandering gray
soft ocean
across the world
of the fells
Just as the lot of us
were once taught
at the Nomad School
that this is what the Sámi do
that this is how
we all live
Who knows what
the spring flood
will bring with it
this drowned
earth may yet
be fertile
More on this book and author:
Learn more about Ædnan by Linnea Axelsson.
Check out The Rumpus for a conversation between Linnea Axelsson and Susan Devan Harness about Axelsson's Sámi heritage and the decision to write Ædnan in verse.
Click here to read Linnea Axelsson's op-ed piece for LitHub on Scandinavia’s hidden history of Indigenous oppression.
Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.
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