Linnea Axelsson
Aednan XIV Great Lule River Valley. Spring 1945 (Ristin, Ber-Joná)
Translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel
Long forest rivers
rushing icy through the land
their mouths at the coast
–
Iron-bearing regions
sparsely populated
wood- and bogland
–
Inexhaustibly
currents flowed
from springs
in the mountains
and roared
from the slopes
Farther down
the river channels quieted
–
Leash harnesses
muffled the water
and instances of
fishing waters
farmland
became more frequent
–
Then it feebly met
the bog belt
the currents
strained
through the moss
–
The soft permeable
marshes allowed
the rivers to swell into
wide gliding lakes
on their way
to the coast
–
There they would disperse
in the waves
dissolve in the sea
But the Swede
was out and about
he’d caught
the scent of game
–
Wild rivers
untouched rushing
in their deep channels
And strong men
were sent up through
the forests
–
They were to tame
the river and yoke
the rapids’s power
Even though our kin
had long moved with
their herds across
the river valleys’ hills
–
Fine winter roads
they had on the river when
it froze over
–
Their songs and
memories could have been
cast
in the young river’s
foaming white
wild forms
But the Swede he dammed
And the river was left
reduced and silent
behind the dams’ dark
rocky blind walls
–
The hidden currents glided
down among turbine halls
deep below the mountains
and flowed up
in some unexpected place
–
Bit by bit the herds
had to make way
And there I came moving
in with our Nila
–
A rocky river’s edge
we were allotted
Straight down into the deep
that hill sloped
–
And the eyes of our kin
stared at us:
–
Go home
there’s no room for you here
Your men aren’t keeping
the herd together like ours are
Your reindeer are eating our grasslands
they’re ravaging
our forefather’s paths
–
During the days
our feelings shied away
from the fight
in the evenings
we licked our puncture wounds
–
All the while
the Swede was damming
and the water rose
up the hills
–
Place by place
the Swede
constructed
–
Streets of iron
houses of stone
Great heavy
hard constructions
–
Swedish women arrived
to buy
from me
things I had crafted
from antler and leather
–
There I sat by the fire
crafting
while their men
dammed
until the hill where we
had been allowed to build our hut
was submerged again
–
Twice we had to
tear down the peat hut I’d built
and move it higher up
the hill
Nila and I
Then we lay still
and listened
to the tortured
river’s silence
–
I could feel him
writhing
in our narrow bed
like a fish
flung onto land
–
He stormed
and scratched
until it tore
my mother-heart
We didn’t belong to
those who still remembered
this river’s
voice in song
when it had flowed freely
–
Out in the mountains
Ristin
skidded the herd
across the ices
–
We had taken a new path
across the great
frozen mountain lake
A few reindeer herders we’d met
the kind who’d moved here
in olden times
had said the ice would hold
–
The ice creaked beneath
the herd which lowed
and ran and
slipped on their hooves
–
I thought I saw Aslat’s old
dog sitting there
waiting in the dark
across the lake
in utter silence
as though it could sense
everything
–
Then I heard the sound
of ice breaking
–
I saw waves rising
and recharging
–
At the same time I
with my own eyes saw
the whole herd
safely cross
to the other side
and just keep going
through the snow
–
But what you heard
Ber-Joná wasn’t
the ice breaking
it was me
–
When a doctor came
from a hospital
by the sea
–
His very own bed
was what he promised Nila
and walks
along the beach
Saskia Vogel reads “Aednan XIV Great Lule River Valley. Spring 1945 (Ristin, Ber-Joná)”
Linnea Axelsson was born in the province of North Bothnia in Sweden, and now lives in Stockholm. She studied humanities at Umeå University, where she earned her PhD in art history in 2009. She debuted as a novelist in 2010 and in 2018 won the August Prize for the epic poem Aednan.
Saskia Vogel is a writer and translator from Los Angeles. Vogel’s debut novel Permission (2019) was longlisted for the Believer Book Award and translated into five languages. Her translation of Jessica Schiefauer’s Girls Lost (2020) is a finalist for the PEN Translation Award.