mazza57's review
1.0
I read this for a challenge and it is as awfully mind numbingly boring as i expected. It was at least mercifully short
ceallaighsbooks's review
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.5
I actually went into this book having no ideas nor expectations as to what it might be exactly—and tbh was a bit nervous at reading what at first appeared to be no more than a travelogue written by a white British man 😬—but I’ve been reading about the Sámi people for a while and when I saw this at a library sale I thought I’d give it a try. And I was very pleasantly surprised to find that this is a thoughtful selection of essays covering the author’s personal experiences and relationship with the Arctic North and its indigenous peoples.
It wasn’t overly informative or academic, but it was certainly thoughtful, reflective, and emotional. I found a lot of Steven’s experiences very relatable and appreciated his acknowledgement of the nature of his particular perspective as an outsider in trying to discuss and digest the history and experiences of Indigenous peoples.
I came to this book already with quite a bit of knowledge about the Sámi people and their history so I think I was able to fill in a lot of the holes that other reads claim they found in his work and just appreciate reading from his perspective about issues I was already familiar with.
However that is another important thing to consider, I think, when reading this book: it is *not* a good introduction book. For that you need an OV author and, again, Steven is not an OV Sámi or Innuit author so I would definitely not recommend this book if you are looking for one book about those peoples or even for a good introduction to Sámi history and culture, for those you must get Veli-Pekka Lehtola’s excellent book The Sámi People: Traditions in Transition and follow that up with Nils Aslaak’s Greetings from Lapland and Johan Turi’s An Account of the Sámi. Ailo Gaup's The Night Between the Days is also an incredible book if you really wanted to immerse yourself in the modernday Sámi experience.
And yes Steven adds a random chapter near the end about how the cruise ship industry is hurting Greenland and the Innuit people who live there which many readers have claimed felt "irrelevant" to the book as a whole, but honestly, if people were really paying attention to what Steven was trying to say throughout the entire book, they would immediately see how that is a very relevant and important topic to discuss in this book.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Content Warnings
Moderate: Genocide, Addiction, and Alcoholism
More...