The winner of Sweden's most prestigious literary award makes her American debut with an epic, multigenerational poem about a Sámi family's quest to stay together across a century of migration, violence, and colonial schooling.
In Northern Sámi, the region once known as Lapland, the word "Aednan" means the land, the earth, and my mother. These are all crucial forces within the lives of the Indigenous family that animate this groundbreaking book: a verse novel that chronicles 100 years of change and erasure.
In the 1910s, alongside her people's ongoing displacement, Ristin, a new mother of twins, struggles to manage her family in the wake of hardship and tragedy. In the 1970s, Lise, as part of a new generation of Sámi grappling with questions of identity and inheritance, reflects on her traumatic childhood, when she was forced to leave her parents and placed in a "nomad school" to be stripped of the language of her ancestors. Moving into the 2010s, Lise's daughter Sandra, an embodiment of Indigenous resilience, is an activist fighting for reparations in a highly publicized land rights trial.
Weaving together the voices of half a dozen characters, from elders to young people unsure of their heritage, Axelsson deconstructs Sweden's legacy of social progress, forcing it to reckon with a painful history of settler colonialism. “Ædnan” is a powerful reminder of how durable language can be, even when it is borrowed. "I was the weight/in the stone you brought/back from the coast/to place on/my grave," one character says to another, from beyond the grave. "I flew above the boat calling/to you all/There will be rain/there will be rain."
