ANN-HELÉN LAESTADIUS Stolen. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Translated from the original Swedish, Stolen reveals the dangers – and prejudice – faced by the reindeer-herding Sami people.
This is gentle but strong story about Elsa, a young Sami woman, growing up in her homeland, Sampi, in the Arctic north of Sweden. It is also a heartfelt story (written by a woman of Sami and Tornedalian descent) steeped in the life of Sami people fighting to keep their traditional, reindeer-herding way of life in a rapidly changing world.
The story starts in winter, when the sun hardly appears over the horizon before vanishing again. Nine-year-old Elsa is proudly skiing by herself to the reindeer corral, knowing that Mum and Dad and Mattias would be coming later to feed the animals but wanting to surprise them by getting everything ready for them.
Her cheeks were windburnt. From the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of her dark hair sticking out from beneath her hat and turning silvery grey with frost. Her eyelashes had changed colour too, and she could feel the cold moisture when she blinked. It was like she was becoming a different person.
What she does not expect, is to find someone else there before her, bending over a dead deer in his snowmobile headlights. She hides, but he sees her and holds his finger to his lips, ‘shhh’, before ‘drawing his finger across his throat’ and speeding away. Elsa is terrified; and she recognises the slaughtered deer as her own beloved Nastegallu.
The man is someone Elsa knows. He had been in the process of cutting off the identifying marks on the animal’s ears, but in his hurry he dropped one. Elsa finds it and hides it in her pocket, later secretly drying it and using it for comfort as she tries to come to terms with her grief and with the threat to her and her family if she tells anyone the man’s name.
Elsa’s family are reindeer-herders, and their people’s right to carry on this tradition is protected by Swedish law. There are some who resent this – who regard the reindeer as a nuisance, the cause of road accidents, and road closures at certain times of the year. There are others who poach the animals for profit or hunt them for sport. There is racism, too, and, as Elsie experiences, Sami children are often bullied and isolated at school. The Sami school and the Swedish school are separate but share playgrounds and meal areas.
All of this is part of Elsa’s story, and Laestadius is good at seeing the world though a child’s eyes, and, later, through those of an angry and scared young woman. As she gets older, Elsa determines to stop the killing of reindeer by men like Robert Isakkson, who had killed Nastegallu and has viciously murdered and mutilated other deer.
Isakkson lives in the next village to Elsa’s family. He is a bitter and dangerous man whose Social Insurance payments for a back injury are about to end because the SI Office’s physician has deemed him capable of working. He is a known poacher, but the police rarely investigate these issues, partly because he destroys what evidence he can but often because local people are afraid to give evidence against him. Time and again the police fail to follow up the reindeer kills, and when Elsa’s father reports the killing of Nastegallu and insists that she accompany him to the police station, Elsa is too scared to identify the man. She suffers agonies about telling lies when she is questioned, because ‘Ahkku’ (Grandmother) had told her that liars go to hell.
Elsa’s father has photographs of the slaughtered deer and of fresh snowmobile tracks which might identify the vehicle. ‘We called you, the police, but no-one came,’ her father tells the interviewing officer, whose response is dismissive: ‘We were busy dealing with a car accident in town. And also, our snowmobile helmets were past their inspection date.’
Isakkson and his accomplice kill more deer; once, seemingly taunting the Sami by draping a slaughtered deer over a sign for a market that brought the Sami people together, and smearing the sign with blood. Elsa’s outspoken anger makes her unpopular but this does not deter her. After one particularly gruesome kill when, again, the police do not turn up, she takes matters into her own hands.
She dumps bags full of tortured reindeer cadaver outside the empty police station and phones the regional police command post. The respondent is typically dismissive:
‘I’m standing outside the police station with evidence of a poaching.’
‘Oh, OK … have you filed a report?’
‘That’s what I’m doing right now. Can someone come take care of this?’
‘I mean, the patrol unit isn’t in town right now. What is it you have?’
‘The remains of two reindeer that were shot.’
‘So, theft.’ He took a patronizing tone as he corrected her. ‘Reindeer are on a par with domestic animals like dogs or sheep, so it’s not a matter of poaching. Moose, however –’
As Elsa begins to publicly confront the discrimination and the lack of action over the slaughter of the deer that are the Sami’s livelihood, Isakkson starts to send her anonymous, abusive texts, and to intimidate her in her own home. When a video she makes of a man riding a reindeer after a particularly horrible killing is aired and reported in local media, the threats to her and her family increase, and Elsa comes close to breakdown. A dramatic personal confrontation with Robert Isakkson takes her, again, to the police, who, again, dismiss the whole thing, but she never wavers.
To reveal what happens next would be a spoiler, but it is thrilling and troubling.
Through Elsa, her family and her friends, Ann-Helén Laestadius immerses the reader in the Sami reindeer-herders’ lives and it is clear that such a life, where the men are often away from the family for long periods caring for the animals and guarding them from predators, including poachers, is not easy – for them, or for their wives.
Elsa, in spite of being small and skinny, is determined to carry on her family’s deer-herding, although for her older brother, Mattias, and for other young Sami men, the stress of it all may prove too much. The beauty of the land, the strangeness of living where the days are often spent in darkness, the ways of herding and caring for the deer, and the closeness of family and friends, are all very much part of Elsa’s story, and through her Laestadius brings the Sami culture to life.
Other things help, too: the Sami language is used for chapter numbering and for each of the three parts (Dálvi/ Winter 2008; Cakcadálvi/ Autumn–Winter 2018; Giđđageassi/ Spring–Summer 2019); the Sami words for mother (enna), father (isa), grandfather (addja) and grandmother (ahkku) are used frequently, and Elsa is unna oabba (little sister). I did have to look up the word gákti early on, but the description of Elsa and her mother sewing coloured ribbons onto their gákti, and of men and women wearing this traditional costume, is almost self-explanatory. However, it is worth seeing pictures of the Sami people dressed formally and traditionally for their festivals in their colourful gákti, with elaborate silver brooches fastening the women’s shawls. Elsa and her friends tolerate the tourists who want to take their picture, but it is a pity that the tourists never engage with this indigenous but threatened culture in any other way.
‘What beautiful clothing! May I take a picture?’
She didn’t wait for a response, was already fumbling with her phone, winking and smiling. She asked her husband to hold her bags.
‘Close together, there. Fantastic Sami costumes!’
Anna-Stina grinned and put her hand on her hip. Elsa sighed and tried to force a smile. This was the third time they’d been stopped for a photo.
‘We should charge a fee,’ she whispered to Anna-Stina when they were finally moving again.
Stolen was a bestseller in Sweden and is set to be a Netflix film.
Ann-Helén Laestadius Stolen translated by Rachel Wilson-Broyles Bloomsbury 2023 PB 400pp $32.99
Dr Ann Skea is a freelance reviewer, writer and an independent scholar of the work of Ted Hughes. She is author of Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (UNE 1994, and currently available for free download here). Her work is internationally published and her Ted Hughes webpages (ann.skea.com) are archived by the British Library.
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