For the seventh book of the History & Heritage Book Club, we will be reading The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow – The Forced Displacement of the Northern Sámi by Elin Anna Labba.
The deep and personal story—told through history, poetry, and images—of the forced displacement of the Sámi people from their homeland in northern Norway and Sweden and its reverberations today.
More than a hundred years have passed since the Sámi were forcibly displaced from their homes in northern Norway and Sweden, a hundred years since Elin Anna Labba’s ancestors and relations drove their reindeer over the strait to the mainland for the last time. The place where they lived has remained empty ever since.
We carry our homes in our hearts, Labba shares, citing the Sámi poet Áillohaš. How do you bear that weight if you were forced to leave? In a remarkable blend of historical reportage, memoir, and lyrical reimagining, Labba travels to the lost homeland of her ancestors to tell of the forced removal of the Sámi in the early twentieth century and to reclaim a place in history, and in today’s world, for these Indigenous people of northern Scandinavia.
When Norway became a country independent from Sweden in 1905, the two nations came to an agreement that called for the displacement of the Northern Sámi, who spent summers on the Norwegian coast and winters in Sweden. This “dislocation,” as the authorities called it, gave rise to a new word in Sámi language, bággojohtin, forced displacement.
The first of the sirdolaččat, or “the displaced,” left their homes fully believing they would soon return. Through stories, photographs, letters, and joik lyrics, Labba gathers a chorus of Sámi expression that resonates across the years, evoking the nomadic life they were required to abandon and the immense hardship and challenges they children left behind with relatives, reindeer lost when they returned to familiar territory, sorrow and estrangement that linger through generations.
Starkly poetic and emotionally heart-wrenching, this dark history is told through the voices of the sirdolaččat, echoing the displacements of other Indigenous people around the world as it depicts the singular experience of the Northern Sámi.
For her extraordinary work, Labba was awarded Sweden’s most important national book prize in 2020, the August Prize for Best Nonfiction.
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Gammelgården Museum is launching a new program in 2025, History & Heritage Book Club!
From May through December 2025, we will be exploring 8 books related to Nordic history and heritage; and Swedish lifestyles and traditions. There are both fiction and non-fiction books; and authors from the United States and Sweden.
Join others book lovers every first Friday of the month from 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM. (Note: July’s book club meeting will be held on the second Friday of July due to the 4th of July holiday.)
The History & Heritage Book Club will be held at Gammelgården Museum at 20880 Olinda Trail North, Scandia, MN 55073. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with others in the community who love to read and want to discover some great books!
2025 Book List:
May – Swede Hollow by Ola Larsmo - *F
June – The Open-Air Life by Linda Åkeson McGurk - *N
July – The Lagom Life – A Swedish Way of Living by Elisabeth Carlsson - *N
August – The Sisterhood of the Enchanted Forest by Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle - N
September – Giants in the Earth – A Saga of the Prairie by O.E. Rölvaag - F
October – My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman - *F
November - The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow – The Forced Displacement of the Northern Sámi by Elin Anna Labba - *N
December – The Palace of the Snow Queen – Winter Travels in Lapland and Sápmi by Barbara Sjoholm - N
* - Swedish, Sámi, or Swedish-American author
F – Fiction
N – Non-Fiction
Email:
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Phone: (651) 433-5053
Facebook Group: History & Heritage Book Club
You may also like the following events from Gammelgården Museum of Scandia:
- This Thursday, 26th June, 10:30 am, Children's Storytime in Scandia
- This Saturday, 28th June, 10:00 am, Make Paper Flowers at Midsommardagen at Gammelgården Museum in Scandia
- This Saturday, 28th June, 10:00 am, Artists, Crafters, & Vendors Fair in Scandia
Also check out other
Arts events in Scandia,
Literary Art events in Scandia,
Meetups in Scandia.
