Tr. from the Swedish by Elizabeth Clark Wessel
[University of Minnesota Press; 2026]
Sweden’s Lake Akkajaure (Áhkájávrre in Sámi) is one of the largest reservoirs in Sweden, formed after four successive dammings in 1923, 39, 42, and 70. Sámi journalist Elin Abba Labba’s debut novel, The Home of the Drowned, tells the story of Iŋgá Sokki, her mother Rávdná, and other Sámi people in northern Sweden who were displaced by the hydroelectric dam construction and expansion of the reservoir. Our story opens in 1942 when Iŋgá is thirteen years old and the third dam has been completed: “The lake had reached the goahti’s [a round structure covered in turf or canvas] window beams, touching the peeling white paint.” Her mother and her Aunt Ánne have waited until the last possible moment to move. They are packing their possessions as the water enters their home.
In Labba’s previous book, The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow, translated by Fiona Graham and awarded the August Prize for Best Nonfiction in Sweden, she wrote: “Boundaries have always existed, but they used to follow the edges of marshes, valleys, forests, and mountain ranges. The new borders of the Nordic nations cut across all natural systems. They cut through pastureland, family ties, and transhumance routes that have been in use for thousands of years.” The seasons, traditions, and environment dictated the way the Northern Sámi people lived, how they organized their travel in summer and winter, how they grazed their reindeer and herded them across the straits between the mainland and the islands. When Norway gained independence from Sweden in 1905, Christopher Hornsrud, leader of the Norwegian Labor Party, said, “The nomadic way of life places a burden on the country and the settled population, and is hardly in keeping with the interests and the order of civilized society.” A new word entered the Northern Sámi language: bággojohtin, forced displacement.
After this most recent displacement, Rávdná has decided she doesn’t want to move anymore and wants to build a permanent house to live in. Her husband (Iŋgá’s father) died years ago and she’s unable to get a loan. Iŋgá has to read the rejection letters to her, as Rávdná is unable to read. A permit is also required, and that is denied as well. Rávdná is persistent, and her friend Dette thinks she should give up: “We are a people who don’t argue.” Rávdná responds: “I’m not arguing. I’m not greedy. I’m not easily offended. I just don’t want anyone to dam me over. I want a roof over my head and I don’t want anyone to control me. I can make my own decisions.” The permit is still denied and Rávdná starts to build anyway.
Elizabeth Clark Wessel’s English translation from Swedish and Sámi is a delight; she leaves us bits of untranslated Sámi in a context where the reader can make a guess as to what the words are (Google translate confirmed I was correct most of the time). We quickly learn “bourre iđit” is good morning, “vuoi” is an interjection that translates roughly to “oh” in English: “Vuoi, she lived well. Vuoi, such waters and such smells.” When Rávdná gets caught in tree branches as she’s rowing her boat along the lake shore she swears, “biro juo” in aggravation, meaning something like “this is the devil.” Sometimes a meaning is not so obvious. When Iŋgá is standing and watching as their village is flooding and people are hurriedly packing, Aunt Ánne grabs her by the shoulder and says, “Boađ’e.” She then steers Iŋgá away to place for her to sit and rest—it turns out boađ’e means “come.” Iŋgá hears Ánne use the word “reassi” as they are standing on the eroded beach that is being formed as the lake rises. It’s a word Iŋgá has never heard before and she asks Ánne what it means. Ánne tells her it is what this specific type of beach is called, usually a word for beaches by the sea, and explains to Iŋgá, “You can never learn all the words. The language is in the ground and you’ve never seen beaches like this. They’re usually by the sea.”
Iŋgá had seen the floor plan that Rávdná had drawn for a prospective new home, but was dismissive of it until Rávdná started actually gathering building materials. Aware that permits are required prior to construction, Iŋgá asks Rávdná about it and Rávdná tells her that she had obtained permission:
What was a house anyway? What distinguished a house from a peat goahti? Was it just the shape; a goahti was round and a house square? Both a house and a goahti had a roof and walls. Iŋgá had never lived in a house, unless the hut in Myran counted, and she hadn’t quite decided if whatever Rávdná was building really was a house. Rávdná had given her whole summer to that house. Every minute of every day.
Rávdná is of course fibbing, and it isn’t long before letters start arriving ordering Rávdná to destroy the building. How did the government even find out the house was there? Rávdná speculates someone in the village, likely envious, reported her. Those aren’t the only letters arriving—everyone in the village is being told to keep their windows covered at night. Military planes are often thundering overhead. World War II is underway, though the people in the village are mostly unaffected by it.
Rávdná ignores the letters. She fishes and Iŋgá works part time cleaning the electrical power plant. Oddly, no one comes by to enforce the demolition order, but one day Rávdná notices a group of white men on the mountain above her marking trees and boulders with spray paint. She asks them what they are doing. They are marking what the expected level of the lake will be—after yet another dam is built. Rávdná is furious, but for Iŋgá it barely registers. As a young Sámi girl, Iŋgá is practically the polar opposite of Elsa, the Sámi main character in Ann-Helén Laestadius’s 2021 Swedish novel Stolen. When Elsa was nine, she witnessed her reindeer being poached by a Swedish man. The Swedish authorities take no action, so she vows revenge despite the near impossibility of her situation. Iŋgá is much more placid, a go-along-to-get-along type.
The people in the village had let the company know in repeated meetings that they did not want to be relocated to a reservation and were opposed to the building of the dam. Their words of protest were to no avail—the construction of the dam was greenlighted anyway. Since their words weren’t enough, the people of the village set up a protest camp on the road leading to the construction site, blocking it. Not everybody, though. Iŋgá won’t go despite Rávdná’s urging. “I can’t stand to talk anymore about dams,” Iŋgá said. “It is what it is. That’s the only thing people here talk about. You wallow in it. A person can get fed up.” Iŋgá does, however, see the newspaper coverage of the protests. She notices Swedish women wearing the traditional Sámi gákti incorrectly at the protests (they have them on inside out) and she thinks it disgraceful. Rávdná’s friend Dette says it made her ashamed to wear her own gákti: “Makes it feel dirty to wear my own clothes.” The police are summoned to break up the protest and arrive mocking the protesters. One gets a feeling of complete hopelessness and cynicism throughout Home of the Drowned, but none as such as when the dam builder’s executives are telling the Sámi people that they will benefit along with all the people of Sweden when the hydroelectric dam is complete.
Both compliance and rebellion have a cost. In her first book, Elin Anna Labba asked if she had the right to mourn for a place that had never been hers (she was born a decade after the fourth dam was constructed). But ancestral and emotional connection transcend physical place and ownership. She dedicated The Home of the Drowned to the ones in the villages under the lake.
Hugh Blanton’s latest book is The Pudneys. He can be reached on X @HughBlanton5.
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