Ann-Helén Laestadius, the Sámi Scheherazade

Ann-Helén Laestadius is a journalist and a multigeneric writer. She has authored different YA novels, including Tio över ett (Ten Past One), which earned her Sweden’s most prestigious literary award, the August Prize. Her first novel for adults, Stolen, was Sweden’s bestseller during its year of publication and was adapted into a major Netflix movie in 2024. The novel is followed by Straff, published in Rachel Willson Broyles's English translation as Punished, and Skam (Shame), which closes out the trilogy.

In different interviews, Laestadius discusses her childhood exposure to the Sámi storytelling practice. She grew up hearing stories about her mother’s life and the supernatural while witnessing grave injustice being committed against her own community. She found her and her community’s voice writing stories that demonstrated Sámi life and struggles, particularly from the perspective of adolescent heroines.

Stolen reads as a multiperspectival meta-narrative that encompasses the stories of different members of a Sámi reindeer-herding community in a Swedish Arctic village. The Sámi are the most widely recognized indigenous people of Europe, inhabiting a large region across the north of the continent. While the novel focuses on the life of its nine-year-old heroine Elsa, we also learn about the quotidian minutiae of Sámi life through the all-seeing eyes of a third-person narrator. The bildungsroman opens with the young protagonist witnessing the horrifying murder of her favorite reindeer, Nástegallu. As the tale unfolds and intersects with other characters and timelines, the writer unearths some of the major struggles that the Sámi reindeer-herding community has endured. 

One example of this is the blatant police negligence Elsa encounters upon her frequent visits to the town’s supposedly understaffed police station to report the gruesome reindeer murders. The police treat the murders as theft, hence the title of the book, and only begrudgingly pay attention to Elsa’s eyewitness testimonies. We also learn of the police’s underestimation of Sámi concerns and of the silence that haunts and ultimately destroys Sámi individuals and communities.

Elsa knows the identity of her reindeer calf’s murderer. Indeed, the murderer threatens her with death when she first sees him hunched over the dead body of Nástegallu. She sees the same man cut open other reindeer a decade later, yet she never dares to name him. When she finally decides to confront him, she finds herself caught in a fatal battle that almost lands her brother in jail and puts her life in danger. She carries her secret beyond adolescence and is weighed down by the repercussions of her silence. Hers is a harrowing silence that reverberates through indigenous narratives. 

Indigenous silence is not a choice or a form of PTSD, nor is it a coping mechanism that could be disrupted through the talking cure. It is a socio-politically imposed mutism that spans generations and haunts offspring and, in the case of Sámi culture, other living beings too. But Laestadius’s novel, and indigenous literature in general, teach us the power storytelling has to break the cycle of (trans)generational silence. Elsa takes to social media and meets with journalists to reveal her community’s struggle with colonialism in its modern guises. Although hesitant at first, she agrees to tell her story and have her picture taken by one of the journalists reporting on the reindeer murders. The police start taking the crimes seriously only when news of the reindeer crimes becomes the subject of headlines. 

At the same time, Laestadius reveals how media platforms can also be used to weaponize settler colonialism and violence. The reindeer torturer uses social media to post a video riding on top of a reindeer with an accomplice. When Elsa glances at her dad’s Facebook, she finds the derogatory statement ‘The only good Lapp is a dead Lapp’ smeared all over her dad’s page. 

By portraying this duality of media coverage, Laestadius stirs a global conversation on the role of media platforms in voicing indigenous issues. Her choice of a teenage protagonist is a personal invitation to young readers who have grown up in indigenous communities, feeling incapacitated in the face of settler violence and politically imposed mutism. While this is not the writer’s first attempt at speaking directly to young minds, Stolen has garnered more international recognition to educate young readers, particularly a young indigenous readership, on the significance of voicing resistance through media platforms. Books such as these have the potential to create a new generation of digital Scheherazades that mobilize social media for the sake of indigenous justice. Like Elsa, Laestadius breaks the silence that haunts her community by writing stories about Sámi life. In her case, literature is a form of resistance to modern colonial structures.

The novel also lays bare discrepancies in the perception of mental illness between the communities. Indigenous suicide is an issue that the reader first encounters through the character of Lasse. Lasse, a family friend of Elsa’s, is a cheerful presence at the beginning of the novel and a mentor and source of inspiration for the adolescent protagonist. But behind his resilient façade lies a psyche that is burdened by ecological and social ordeals. Lasse’s suicide is a grievous loss to the community, which had always considered him a well-travelled and adventurous member. Elsa’s brother, Mattias, is also mentally encumbered by the authorities’ oversight, the rampant violence on the reindeer, and the ominously changing landscape. He enters into a somber episode of suicidal rumination and is further devastated after a short visit to the local doctor, whom Mattias believes is unaware of the seriousness of the community’s struggles. The doctor pins Mattias’s anxiety on the reindeer and suggests that Mattias take some time off from the herding lifestyle. She also prescribes medication and recommends a psychologist. 

The doctor recreates what American journalist Ethan Watters calls in his book Crazy Like Us ‘the grand project of Americanizing the world’s understanding of the human mind.’^[1] In this book, Watters suggests that psychologists and clinicians suffer from acute ignorance of indigenous mental health issues and from a disingenuous disregard for indigenous recovery methods and the socio-political sources of indigenous trauma. They introduce foreign elements to the indigenous body and recommend a break from the lifestyle as if it were just another job. 

Indigenous health and mental state are umbilically tied to the land. The health of the land is reflected in the health of its people. In Stolen, Mattias, Elsa, Lasse, and the rest of the Sámi community dread the land’s future in light of cataclysmic climate change. The community is discouraged by the abnormally mild and rainy midwinter weather and reluctantly considers sheltering the reindeer in enclosed roundups. This way, the writer epitomizes the anticipatory ecological grief that has long haunted indigenous communities in Scandinavia and other parts of the world. The writer also relates the community’s frustration over the world’s deafness to their warnings. ‘We’ve known for a long time! For years we’ve been warning you that the climate is changing,’ says an exasperated Elsa. The reindeer orient the life of the Sámi herder. A changing climate means a changing herding style. ‘You can’t take time off from the reindeer,’ Mattias responds to the doctor’s uninformed request. 

Mattias ultimately survives his depressive episode thanks to his sister’s recommendation to join The Saami Norwegian National Advisory Unit on Mental Health and Substance Use, abbreviated as SANKS. This real-life rehabilitation institute is located in Norway and adopts an unconventional system of recovery that aligns with the Sámi lifestyle and rootedness in nature. Prescribing the talking cure to Mattias, and ultimately the indigenous individual, may be futile. On the other hand, at SANKS, ‘they have psychologists who understand’ the Sámi way of life, as Elsa explains to her brother. 

Treating and addressing mental health concerns does not always follow the Western model. One of the first conclusions I have reached through my research on non-Western narrations of trauma is how minority writers do not always espouse conventional treatment patterns for such traumas. Instead, the protagonists seek methods that may be unusual for the non-indigenous reader. Recovery itself also takes a different shape: it is communal and not merely individual, as advocated by mainstream psychology and trauma studies. It is also not always a desire to return to normal. Normalcy may, in fact, be the main traumatizing experience for indigenous and minority communities. 

Stef Craps, a leading figure in postcolonial trauma theory, suggests that indigenous and minority narratives demonstrate a vehement rejection of Western-based perceptions of mental health and recovery. Reading The Memory of Love, a novel by British and Sierra Leonean writer Aminatta Forna, Craps revisits the therapeutic obsession with recovering normalcy^[2]. Western therapy is based on the objective of restoring the normal conditions of life, i.e., the pre-trauma state. However, normal in the novel, as Craps’s analysis shows, is synonymous with chaos. The ‘normal’ state of being in Sierra Leonean life is disorder and political unrest. The Western approach to trauma is represented by the British psychologist who failingly attempts to convince the natives to talk about their traumas. He comes to realize that, like Elsa’s, the natives’ silence is politically motivated and that the restoration of normalcy is undesirable. What is required is change, particularly socio-political change. 

In Stolen, which is based on real-life events, ‘normal’ is shaped by socio-political discrimination and settler colonialism. One of the main issues with which the novel’s community struggles is the authorities’ tendency to treat the reindeer as Other. Non-Sámi residents view the reindeer as good for meat and hide. The authorities are unbothered by the crimes against the reindeer and remain indifferent even when two bags of butchered reindeer parts turn up. The police reports keep piling up, and the crimes are always classified as theft instead of murder, a classification that the writer herself picked up from actual reports that reindeer herders shared with her. In Sámi life, as the novel demonstrates, normal is a day-to-day struggle with political injustice and standard Othering. 

The police’s indifference stems from a deep-seated anthropocentric bias that is exposed and upbraided in indigenous ecofeminist literature. This tendency is famously highlighted in the trailblazing The Eye of the Crocodile^[3] by Australian ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood. Plumwood’s account, like subsequent ecofeminist works, challenges the Western dichotomy that situates the land and non-human living beings as ‘Other.’ Plumwood suggests a holistic approach that decentralizes hegemony over the non-human world and removes human-made barriers from the natural hierarchy. 

Reading Plumwood’s theories in my indigenous ecofeminism class, I could not help but recall the same pattern in Stolen. This all-embracing approach is exemplified by Elsa, who not only fights for her community’s rights but also for the rights of the reindeer to live in and roam the land freely. Elsa and her community exhibit an ecofeminist ethic of care. They are haunted by ecological grief that stirs uncertainty about the future of the reindeer and the land. 

Elsa is preoccupied with challenging bureaucratic anthropocentrism and settler discrimination while also countering gender bias within her own community. Through this dual battle, Laestadius shares a tendency to resist the Othering of women and nature that is at the heart of indigenous literatures written by women. In Solar Storms^[4], the Chickasaw environmental novelist Linda Hogan stresses the existential significance of an ancestral interconnectedness of land, particularly water, and the self. In this, the protagonist’s coming-of-age journey is shaped by a generational struggle against ecoviolence and an ontological resistance to past traumas through communal and natural belonging that is similar to Elsa’s. In both narratives, the adolescent quest is inclusive and not merely individualistic. It involves the community, the land with its living beings, indigenous tradition, and history.

Elsa’s struggle is one and the same as her community’s. Like other minority bildungsroman heroines, Elsa is haunted by intergenerational traumas that intrude into her coming-of-age quest. Laestadius empowers the novel’s Sámi community through Elsa’s endeavors. Elsa’s recovery journey is synchronous with the well-being of the community and landscape. Elsa’s all-embracing ethic of care, which transcends human members of the community and extends to reindeer and landscape, invites the non-indigenous reader to self-reflect and adopt a more sustainable and less self-serving approach. 

Another pattern that I investigate in my research is the atypical route of the coming-of-age journey in minority women’s literature. In the classical male-centered bildungsroman, the protagonist is set on a quest to an unyielding world beyond home where he heroically battles external threats and forces. It is a battle that reshapes his existential compass, ushers him into maturity, and grants him social recognition. The epilogue of a classical coming-of-age novel often features celebrations of the prodigal hero’s dawning competence and reliability. 

The heroine of a coming-of-age novel, conversely, embarks on a different journey that delves into the deepest layers of society. For her, it is a ‘voyage in’ instead of a ‘voyage out.’ ^[5]Instead of treading the outside world, the minority bildungsroman heroine remains in her community with the earnest mission of slaying the dragons of gender- and ethnicity-based discrimination. Her stay is punctuated by didactic confrontations with the dominant culture’s exclusivity and the fight for gender inclusivity within her community. 

Last year, I interviewed Arab-American writer Aisha Abdel Gawad, author of the American Book Award winner Between Two Moons^[6], on her protagonist’s voyage within the Arab-American community of New York. She explained that it was important that her heroine realize that she was an integral member of the community, despite her initial wish to leave it. Her character’s journey is marked by what she terms the ‘double gaze.’ The adolescent journey is surveilled by the larger American society as well as the Arab-American community in Bay Ridge. Both view her with suspicion, the first for being an Arab American and the second for being a young woman. 

This dual battle is echoed by Stolen. Elsa defies the authorities’ belligerent dismissal of Sámi concerns and defends her living and non-living community against settler violence. These confrontations are concurrent with an internal battle against gender bias. Elsa boldly asserts her stance in the community meetings despite disapproving looks from male members. She challenges gender norms within Sámi culture and questions the patriarchal authority that establishes women’s unsuitability for reindeer herding. 

While everyone, including the male senior villagers, acknowledges Elsa’s impressive reindeer roping skills, nobody is willing to go as far as acknowledging Elsa’s exclusive right to her reindeer. For the moment, Elsa is considered a member of her father’s household. Marriage for her would mean the passage of her rights and reindeer to another male reindeer herder. ‘…if it was up to the men,’ Laestadius explains, ‘everyone would stick to their clearly assigned roles.’ The ambitious protagonist feels excluded in the male-majority local meetings where she devastatingly realizes that she is ‘not needed here.’ 

We find the same twofold battle in another coming-of-age tale by Ugandan-British author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. In her award-winning novel The First Woman^[7], the adolescent protagonist, Kirabo, explores the restorative potential of storytelling as we learn about the destructive ideological residues of colonialism and the need for an indigenous reformulation of feminism. The pursuit of the ‘first woman’ trope, which is the nucleus of Kirabo’s coming-of-age quest, leads the protagonist into a confrontation with patriarchal restrictions on female agency within her native Ugandan belief system. Kirabo delves into local folktales thanks to the village’s notorious witch. She learns that women’s original state, characterized by boldness and strength, has been distorted by misogynistic interpretations. The sight of a woman is now considered a bad omen, and the female body is regarded as a curse that brings shame onto whoever beholds its nakedness. As is characteristic of indigenous and minority bildungsroman books, the coming-of-age pursuit is also narratively shaped by turbulent political circumstances. 

Laestadius, Hogan, Abdel Gawad, Makumbi, and other minority women writers portray multilayered and complex protagonists to counter mainstream unidimensional representations. They trace the transgenerational traumas that indigenous and minority women have suffered at the hands of both the broader (neo)colonialist community and their male-dominated surroundings that oftentimes inherit the former’s patriarchal preferences. 

While some of these writers, Laestadius included, may not personally identify as activists, their writing showcases a subtle form of literary activism that resists Western-based narratorial practices. Following Scheherazadian narration, they rebel against the Western hegemonic definition of temporality and create tales that meander through different timelines. Scheherazade survives by cutting the storyline short and starting a new story at dawn. 

Like Scheherazade, indigenous modern storytellers adopt polyphonic storytelling to relate various perspectives and embed stories within stories. Their metanarrative encompasses the stories they tell. Scheherazade tells us tales of ‘The Fisherman and the Jinni’ or ‘The Three Apples,’ which in turn contain more stories within stories. Her seriatim storytelling keeps her alive and saves the entire community from a tyrant’s femicidal obsessions.

Laestadius offers her readers multi-angulated perspectives on Sámi life. We read the stories of different members of the Sámi community while glimpsing Laestadius’s meta-story. She, too, tries to rescue her community from the clutches of settler colonialism and eco-anxiety. The story skips timelines while tracing the continuity of native trauma. The writer recreates such disrupted temporality in her latest novel, Punished, where she offers vignettes of the characters’ scarring episode in the nomadic school and travels through time into adulthood where past scars remain hauntingly present. 

State-mandated nomadic schools are among the focal points of indigenous ecofeminist literature. Reading Punished brought to mind the novel Five Little Indians ^[8]by Indigenous Cree writer Michelle Good. Both novels reveal the long-lasting psycho-social effects of nomadic schools by traveling through temporal and spatial settings. In Stolen, Laestadius touches upon the outcomes of nomadic schools on native life through áhkku, Sámi for ‘grandma.’ Elsa suspects that her grandmother has stopped joiking because she believes it to be a sin, a belief she may have adopted from the Christian education she received in the nomadic school. 

Laestadius’s Stolen belongs to the nascent branch of ecofeminist writing in indigenous literature. It follows the same thematic and narrative patterns outlined in indigenous fiction and shares in the struggles of indigenous communities worldwide. Settler colonialism, ecological grief, and transgenerational trauma are at the heart of these narratives. Laestadius’s works, along with other Sámi novels, can be read and studied comparatively with Native American, Maori, or Indigenous African narratives to document the universality and distinctiveness of indigenous reality and suffering. By choosing the coming-of-age tale, indigenous ecofeminist writers like Laestadius are appealing to a rising generation that has the potential to overturn the cycle of generational trauma.