Cecilia Ekbäck’s Wolf Winter, set in the Sami region of Sweden in the early 18th century, creates a similarly expansive vocabulary to describe the coldest and least hospitable of weather conditions, although this isn’t even the most chilling aspect of the novel. Secondly, I want to learn all these words for the next time it inexplicably snows in April here in the climatologically inclement UK. Firstly, I am now in love with Sami punctuation. Thus the two unlikely companions must venture out of the sophisticated city, up the coast and across country, to the rough-hewn religion and politics of the settler communities, the mystical, pre-Christian ways of the people who have always lived on this land, and the strange, compelling light of the midnight sun.įor Lovisa and Magnus, nothing can ever be the same again.If, like me, you were devastated to learn that Eskimos do not, in fact, have several dozen words for snow, take solace in the fact that the Sami people of northern Scandinavia have twenty according to Lingo, Gaston Dorren’s superlative book on European languages, the Sami use “šleätta” to describe wet, melting snow, and “lavkke” to refer to snow fallen on black ice, so smooth that reindeer hooves cannot grip it. Disgusted by the wayward behaviour of his daughter Lovisa - Magnus's sister-in law - the Minister demands that Magnus take her with him on his arduous journey. Is there some bigger threat afoot? Blackasen seems to be a place of many secrets.īut the Minister has more than a professional tie to Magnus, and at the last moment, he adds another responsibility.

When the Minister sends him to survey the distant but strategically vital Lapland region around Blackasen Mountain, it is a perfect cover for another mission: Magnus must investigate why one of the nomadic Sami people, native to the region, has apparently slaughtered in cold blood a priest, a law officer and a settler in their rectory.

Neither is prepared for the journey into the heat, mystery, violence and disorienting perpetual daylight of the far North. A rich young woman incapable of living by the conventions of society. An orphaned boy brought up to serve the state as a man.

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