Time & Location
May 11, 2021, 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM CDT
Zoom
About the Event
Read books by Nordic authors (or on Nordic topics!) and participate in a discussion with other readers. The Nordic Book Club meets online though Zoom on the second Tuesday of the month from 6:00-7:00pm Central Time.
Didn't have time to finish the book? We get it. Join us anyway!
Facilitated by Lisa Huntsha, Swenson Center archivist/librarian.
Cost: Free for Swenson Center members and Augie students/$10 nonmember
May's book is By The Fire: Sami Folktales and Legends, Emilie Demant Hatt (compiler), 2019
Although versions of tales about wizards and magical reindeer from northern Scandinavia are found in European folk and fairytale collections, stories told by the indigenous Nordic Sami themselves are rare in English translation. Between 1907 and 1916 Danish artist and ethnographer Emilie Demant Hatt recorded tales of magic animals, otherworldly girls who marry Sami men, and cannibalistic ogres or Stallos. Many of her storytellers were women, and the memorable tales included in this collection tell of plucky girls and women who outfox their attackers (whether Russian bandits, mysterious Dog-Turks, or Swedish farmers) and save their people. By the Fire, first published in Danish in 1922, features Demant Hatt’s original linoleum prints, incorporating and transforming her visual memories of Sápmi in a style influenced by the northern European Expressionists after World War I.