Scandinavian missionaries wreak destruction on the Sámi way of life in an atmospheric tale of love and colonial conflict
Hanna Pylväinen’s engrossing novel The End of Drum-Time brings to light the world of the Sámi – who with their reindeer herds inhabit the northern regions of the countries now called Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia – as they coexisted and clashed with Scandinavian missionaries and settlers during this turbulent time. Lars Levi Laestadius, who plays a central role in this story, was a historical figure, a Lutheran minister, himself part Sámi, who worked to convert these nomadic people from their traditional religion and way of life. Pylväinen, who was raised in the American midwest in a sect that evolved from Laestatius’s movement, drops the reader immediately and arrestingly into a bitter northern climate that she makes intimate and familiar through the richness of her descriptions and the honesty of her characterisations.
“Mad Lasse”, as the minister is known for his fervour, attempts to pull his parishioners away from the evils of the alcohol introduced by Swedish settlers. His daughter Willa falls in love with a young Sámi man, Ivvár, himself the son of an important figure in his community, Biettar. In a sense the novel is a Romeo and Juliet love story: one in which whole cultures, rather than specific families, are at odds. Pylväinen, who spent six months living with Sámi reindeer herders in Finland to research this novel, grounds this opposition in her characters’ lives. When Willa’s younger brother Lorens is deathly ill with what seems to be consumption, a Sámi healing woman, Old Sussu, comes to tend to him, making her traditional ministrations as the family recites the Lord’s prayer: “Willa said it with them but she couldn’t have said where she was in the prayer, which line was next.”
