Nordic Book Club, March 2026

Join us in March as we read Aednan: An Epic by Swedish author Linnea Axelsson and translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel. Aednan was shortlisted for the 2024 National Book Award in the United States.

From the publisher (Knopf):

In Northern Sámi, the word Ædnan means the land, the earth, and my mother. These are all crucial forces within the lives of the Indigenous families that animate this groundbreaking book: an astonishing verse novel that chronicles a hundred years of change: a book that will one day stand alongside Halldór Laxness’s Independent People and Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter as an essential Scandinavian epic. The tale begins in the 1910s, as Ristin and her family migrate their herd of reindeer to summer grounds. Along the way, forced to separate due to the newly formed border between Sweden and Norway, Ristin loses one of her sons in the aftermath of an accident, a grief that…