Serious narrative about a hot topic
By Kamilla Lövström
Sila is the Greenlandic word both for weather and for sense or reason. This means that it is truly a climate word, even though it originates from a time before we started getting worried about climate change in Greenland and the Arctic. The word is explained in the introduction, and in the same way the book’s final pages contain factual information about climate change and CO² reduction. The aim of Sila is evident right from the start, namely to make the reader aware of the importance of looking after natural resources.
There is nothing new about the message that we have to look after nature. On the contrary. This is something nature people all over the world have always known, and there are many old sagas and myths on precisely this theme. Lana Hansen has chosen to retell – or adapt – an old Greenlandic saga about the Mother of the Sea, who as a punishment for human greed gathers all the animals hunted by man in her long matted hair at the bottom of the sea so that the settlement is forced to starve. A shaman is sent down to pacify her and to persuade her that people will improve their ways. This is successful, and he combs out the tangled hair of the Mother of the Sea so that the animals can escape.
In the new version the shaman has been exchanged for the boy Tulugaq, who goes to school and is in love with Asiaq from his own class. Tulugaq means ‘raven’, and Tulugaq has the ability to be able to transform himself into that bird. It is, therefore, he who is chosen by the chief of the ravens to make his way down to the Mother of the Sea to comb out her hair. The animals help Tulugaq, not only the ravens but also the polar bear, the eagle, the reindeer and the whale. But there is also a stupid raven, which is envious of our hero and tries to prevent him completing his mission. The stupid raven is slightly reminiscent of Tulugaq’s tormentor at school, and by the same token Asiaq turns out to be the Mother of the Sea in human form.
The adventure about how the raven-boy saves human kind brings together an ancient narrative form and a highly relevant and up-to-date subject, but it also brings together the real world and the world of fantasy, in which boys can transform themselves into ravens and travel down to the bottom of the sea. The story is told in such a way that on the level of reality it is just a dream that Tulugaq completes the mission, but he nevertheless ends up bringing the comb with which he unravels the hair of the Mother of the Sea with him over into the real world, which allows him to give it to Asiaq, with whom he is in love. She is not in the least surprised at the gift.
Georg Olsen’s illustrations vary from pure graphics to naturalist drawings that underpin the text and make it easier for children who may have just learnt to read to read the story by themselves.
Translated by John Mason
