This audio-visual essay documents the experience of translating personally traumatic material: sections of the 2023 Norwegian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. The report, which addresses harms inflicted upon Sámi, Kven, and Skogfinn communities, is more than 600 pages long. This translation of a small portion into English is contextualised within creative explorations—text, sound, and archival video—as well as more academic discussions, all of which are delineated by Sámi runic calendar symbols. Through in-situ reflections on the act of translation and the bodily, cognitive, and emotional demands of moving between English, Swedish, Norwegian, Sámi, and Finnish, the author considers the value of language in mediating experience and intergenerational trauma.
In the earth my berry lies/Maassa marjani makaa
Svea Vikander is a researcher and media producer specialising in minority journalism, trauma, and storytelling. An award-winning writer with a background in psychology, she studies journalist safety at the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, and is part of the AI and Journalism research group at OsloMet. She is unintelligible (yet deeply emotional) in seven languages, and can usually be found researching media ethics, producing Indigenous films, or struggling valiantly to make language say the unsayable/write an email. Svea comes from a creative lineage that includes an Oscar-winning actress, a human rights journalist, and a 17th-century woman beheaded for witchcraft. She lives in Norway.
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