Ædnan an Epic by Linnea Axelsson

Ædnan an Epic by Linea Axelsson

Swedish fiction.

Translated by Saskia Vogel

Source – Review copy

I am on the list of books coming out this year. This was one of the ones that really caught my eye. An epic novel set in Sweden around the Sami community appealed to me as there aren’t enough books in translation from indigenous writers. So I was pleased when pushkin sent me a review copy, Linea Axelsson was born in the north of Sweden around the area, the book is set. She studied art history at university and then moved to Stockholm. This is her debut novel and focuses on the last century in a Sami community following three generations and their struggles in an ever-changing Sweden. This book won the August prize when it came out.

Through the Rosta River Valley from Lake Adjávárddojáurrit. Past the rivers

Tamok and Dapmoteatnu, 1913

(BER-JONÁ)

My brother and I

Aslat

we sang nothing

we no longer sang forth the earth and the memories

–

Vessels of song formed by the voice

When words were not enough for the lives we lived

They had trudged through hate

They had waded in sorrow

The birth of the twins in 1913 a harsh world they are born into

The title of the novel means the land , the ground the Earth. This is an epic verse novel. that felt like you were sitting by a campfire as a family recounting that history over the century. the book is the history of two families over three generations from 1900 until nearly modern day. The book opens with a young couple heading to the winter feeding grounds as they are expecting twin boys. Aslat and Nila, but when Nila, the smaller twin, is found to be too weak to be of use and his brother suffers an injury. add to this the fact they have Norwegians have closed the border, meaning families and couples are separated. And it is a hard life. We meet the twin’s father and when he is a much older man and living in a Swedish city in Projus. The family is now part of the indigenous studies by the Swedish government at the time. At this point, the narrative switches to the other family, neighbours Off. Ristin, and we follow Lise’s story. so we get the next generations to take on being indigenous as their natural  grazing band is being looked at and may be taken over to build a dam and a hydroelectric plant. This is in the 70s. The book just goes on after this, but I will leave you to discover the end of the book.

The little needlecase

made of reindeer horn that she had on her belt that one time

The seaplane made

an emergency landing in the fells and she was there

and had to mend a tear in the wing with sinew thread

You didn’t usually have the needlecase on you Mama

But that time you did

–

You who always said that you were sure I’d marry a Swede

I loved a lot of the little details thrown in like the little needle case here.

Ever since Lisa has done her indigenous reading weeks, it has made me more conscious of writers from indigenous backgrounds. what really grab me to know about this book, I was the style of writing a three verse with no punctuation in short bursts of three lines. Something almost hypnotic times about reading it. Have you really got the feel of an Icelandic epic or those great verse poems? It’s almost as though the World she wrote about has lost it anyway is it is this is it testament to the struggles of the Sami People in the 20th century; it is also a description of how hard the nomadic life can be when we follow the life of the twins in a harsher world, and where life is a struggle day to day.She also little snippets of everyday life from the way they live or what they carry, those little things that set them apart but mean so much in their nomadic world. One of the reasons I wanted to get to this book was I felt it would be a strong contender for the Man Booker International Prize, and it is always handy to get those 500-page novels out of the way before the long list is announced. I found, but to be fair, this book is nearer half the size in pages as it is all told in three lines and that means about fifty to sixty words on each page. So if you like sparse yet powerful family histories and growing up in an indigenous background, this is a book for you. Have you read this book?

Winston score A I gave this book an A as it already feels like it could be one of my books for the year