This lyrical and ambitious verse novel won the August prize, Sweden’s most prestigious literary award, and has now been translated into English by Saskia Vogel. It tells the story of two Sami families across three generations of the 20th century. The Sami are the EU’s only Indigenous people, and they live in lands north of the Arctic Circle, which are now part of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
Ædnan contains echoes of epic poems and Norse sagas but also feels contemporary and accessible. There are no gods or heroes but, instead, a polyphonic chorus of storytellers who jointly narrate the lineage and history of their people. The central hero of the old texts is replaced by Ædnan itself – a Sami word meaning land, ground or earth.
