Mustan auringon paketti

Abstract

Black Sun Package. Myths and Melancholy in Irene Larsen’s Collection Sortsolsafari In this article, I analyse how the Sami poet Irene Larsen rewrites Sami oral tradition and mythology in her collection Sortsolsafari (2013, “Black Sun Safari”). I discuss how Larsen’s work differs from the mainstream of contemporary Sami poetry and other indigenous literatures. Sortsolsafari has postmodernist features, which seldom are found in Sami literature. Larsen situates mythological elements in present-day reality: a Sami goddess uses a sewing machine and a shaman logs on to the Internet. These anachronisms create a comical effect. Instead of nostalgia and anti-colonialism, which traditionally characterize the depiction of the past in Sami literature, the overall tone of Sortsolsafari is melancholic and tragicomic. In contemporary Sami poetry, fragments of mythology are often used to construct the unity of the Sami people. Larsen’s poems lack this collective, emancipatory dimension. Larsen uses Sami mythology and tradition to express the speaker’s individual experience of loss and detachment. The sun, which is the mythical forefather and a collective national symbol of the Sami, has become the black sun of depression. Instead of relying on national-romantic nostalgia Larsen constructs the past by using banal anachronisms and individual melancholia.