Book review | Inga Magga shows the traces of colonialism in a Sámi family

Novel

Inga Magga: Half. Like. 283 pp.

“Did you leave let's get our language into the war”, the child asks his father Inga Maggan in another novel Half.

Fluently written debut novel by Magga, who lives in Tampere A shadow boxer was chosen as the sports book of the year. Half is also different in its milieu, subjects and style.

The knowledge of the Sámi language was cut off in Finland after the Second World War, when Sámi children were sent far from home to Finnish-speaking boarding schools.

Half moves in two time planes. The present-day narrator, Ibbá, a Sámi living in Tampere, tries to find his roots with the help of a family connection and a Northern Sámi course. However, the connection between language and culture is not self-evident or easy, and even Sámi people of the same family seem to have their own relationship with it.

The narrative line that starts in 1949 follows Ibbá's father and his siblings from school in post-war Finland.

To half the genre is experiential and sensitive realism. Magga's leisurely way of narration fits well with the family saga that is slowly unfolding.

The novel aims to enlighten its default reader who belongs to the dominant culture. The dialogue is sometimes burdened by an info dump, for example the line about Sami languages ​​with the number of speakers and the like are quite heavy.

However, the transfer of information has its meaning: Ibbá has grown up in a different culture than his father's generation.

A gratifying amount of contemporary Sámi prose written in the dominant languages ​​has been translated into Finnish in recent years, for example Ann-Helén Laestadius exciting Varkaus (Steal2021), Niillas Holmbergin multi-level Halla Helle (2021) or Tina Harneskin absurdly comical Snowblowers (Folk som sår i snö2022). Half defends its place in this diverse group.

To traditional a family story needs surprising relationships and tragic events. Them In half is, but the book, with its indigenous perspective, also dismantles the assumptions of the gender novel. It seeks to understand.

Secrets, unspokenness and their effect of separating people reflect the destruction of colonialism in people's destinies. Half is a decolonialist novel that seeks to recognize colonialism and rebuild the identity it destroyed. That's what Ibbá does.

She begins to sew a gákti, a Sami dress, for the first time. Making gákti brings people together – craftsmanship requires a group.

The story of Ibbá's godmother, the puppeteer Máddjá, especially brings out the pain.

“Why were her dolls visibly ugly, while you couldn't have known that about Máddjá herself. Máddjá's name wasn't even a bad name,” says Ibbá.

Another in connection with World War II, the evacuation of the Koltsa Sámi from the territories occupied by the Soviet Union at the time has its own devastating chapter in the history of the Sámi. Jaana Kanninen and Flower Beach they say in a non-fiction book about forced finnishing of the Sámi Against the wind (2019) that the boarding school system forced the use of Finnish, but also in homes the knowledge of Finnish was considered a prerequisite for a better future.

I could say that colonialism against the Sami is history. The protests against the windmills rotating on the Rástigáisá fell in the last couple of years in Finland or Norway tell us otherwise. Finnish St1 is involved in the Davvi project. The green transition of the energy economy is yet another form of northern colonization.

Sami art easily appears very politicized. Long-practiced colonialism and neglected human rights simmer in the background. However, Ibbá's relationship with language contains possibilities:

“I started to think about what it felt like to be totally ignorant of the language and the fact that I was no longer ashamed of the language itself, but that as a languageless person I had fallen into some kind of gap between cultures, which was by no means a vacuum, but some kind of delicate boundary between sovereignty and outsideness.”

To half literary meritorious and nuanced works like this are necessary – and delightful to read.