The Landscape of Longing and Belonging

Abstract

The article examines Kola Sami literature, focusing on the autobiographical nature poetry written by the Skolt Sami author Askold Bazhanov (1934–2012) in the 1970s–2000s. The focus is on landscape and temporality in the contexts of Sami and Soviet literature, especially the literatures of small northern peoples. What characterises Bazhanov’s nature-centred texts in general is the complex way in which temporality and human and non-human existence are manifested in the northern landscape described. As a case study, the article examines nostalgic discourses, which in Bazhanov’s texts are associated with longing for the childhood landscape in Sami villages that were submerged in the 1960s. These discourses are often combined with romanticised idyllic depictions of reindeer herder life, which I analyse as arctic pastorals. In Bazhanov’s nature poetry, the temporality of the landscape, particularly the Sami history conveyed within the landscape that is described as strongly local, is an important means by which the identity and agency of the poems’ speakers are constructed and reinforced.