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An Arctic Thriller
by Olivier Truc
Book Reviewed by:Tomorrow, the sun will rise for the first time in 40 days. Thirty minutes of daylight will herald the end of the polar night. But in the last hours of darkness, a precious artifact is stolen . . .
Tomorrow, the sun will rise for the first time in 40 days. Thirty minutes of daylight will herald the end of the polar night in Kautokeino, a small village in northern Norway, home to the indigenous Sami people.
But in the last hours of darkness, a precious artifact is stolen: an ancient Sami drum. The most important piece in the museum's collection, it was due to go on tour with a UN exhibition in a few short weeks.
Hours later, a man is murdered. Mattis, one of the last Sami reindeer herders, is found dead in his gumpy.
Are the two crimes connected? In a town fraught with tension - between the indigenous Samis fighting to keep their culture alive, the ultra-Lutheran Scandinavian colonists concerned with propagating their own religion, and the greedy geologists eager to mine the region's ore deposits - it falls to two local police officers to solve the crimes. Klemet Nango, an experienced Sami officer, and Nina Nansen, his much younger partner from the south of Norway, must find the perpetrators before it's too late...
The breathtaking beauty of Sápmi, of the Arctic tundra, is the real scene-stealer. Almost every chapter begins by noting the date and the minutes of sunlight received. Tuesday, January 11, for example, receives 27 minutes of sunlight. There is cold and then there is Kautokeino cold. That the locals zip around on their snowmobiles and skis anyway, is a testament to our capacity to endure even the harshest conditions. The panoramic setting, the Northern Lights, the snow-draped landscape - together make for a heady mix which is alone worth the price of admission...continued
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(Reviewed by Poornima Apte).
Forty Days Without Shadow sheds light on the native Sami people of northern Norway, most of whom are Lutherans. The Sami also take part in shamanic rituals that emphasize strong connections between the natural and spiritual worlds, although Christianity has been slowly making inroads over the centuries forcing the practice of the native religion underground.
A central aspect of the Sami shamanic rituals is the usage of drums as a conduit to channel spirits. The Sami also used a drum to forecast weather and other natural events. In fact, Mattis Labba, the Sami who is killed in the story, has ancestors who were skilled in such practices. They channeled higher spirits through use of a drum, a skill Labba did not fully learn, even though ...
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