Swedish Contemporary Fiction 1
Linnea Axelsson (b. 1980) Linnea Axelsson is an a
rt historian. She grew up with a Sámi mother and a Swedish father. Her maternal grandmother came from one of the Sámi families who were forcibly relocated from Karesuando, a village on Sweden’s northern border, in the 1920s. Cross-border reindeer grazing had long been a source of political conflict between Sweden and Norway and the Swedish government used a variety of methods to force North Sámi families to relocate to unfamiliar areas further south. The collective memory of this oppression remains painful for the descendants of those who were uprooted from their lands. That is the pain for which Linnea Axelsson provides an outlet in her writing. Axelsson made her literary debut in 2010 with the novel The Twin Jewel (‘Tvillingsmycket’), subtitled ‘A sibling legend’. It tells of a woman called Anja who gives birth to twins while on the run, trying to reach the northern fells. The story of the twins’ lives is told in a highly distinctive, archaic style with elements of folk tales. Linnea Axelsson achieved real literary acclaim with Aednan (‘Ædnan’, 2018), a grand lyrical epic that depicts North Sámi life from the early 20th century to the present day. Three women – Ristin, Lise and Sandra – speak directly to the reader from three different eras. Their experiences of oppression, rootlessness and conflict are distinct yet shared. Aednan is a story of land rights being denied to a people. Of lives hemmed in by mines and dammed rivers, a vanishing language and the humiliation of being subjected to pseudo-scientific ethno-racial experiments. But it is also a story of people searching for their roots, trying to preserve whatever they can of their culture. Linnea Axelsson portrays their individual stories in spare, stark stanzas as clear, pure and resonant as a mountain stream. In her verse, the Sámi experience is not reduced to a single voice; the numerous narrators form a multifaceted chorus that leaves no reader untouched. Linnea Axelsson was awarded the 2018 August Prize for Aednan. A dramatic adaptation has also been performed in Sweden. Yukiko Duke Rights sold to: 2 countries The Magnificat 150 p. 2022, Albert Bonniers Rights: Bonnier Rights The Magnificat is both an immediately present and mythically tinged story of love and sorrow, about seeking a home in a world that remains alien. Linnea Axelsson’s tonality is distinctively lyrical, terse, with hidden depths of emotion. Aednan 766 p. 2018, Albert Bonniers Rights: Bonnier Rights In Linnea Axelsson’s stunning verse novel, she narrates the story of two Indigenous Sámi families in northern Sweden, whose fate mirrors Sámi history from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. 5 Swedish Contemporary Fiction Foto: Sofia Runarsdotter