Confronting an antropcentric perspective – advocating an ecocentric perspective

Project summary

“An analysis of the value a writer recognizes in a landscape might begin by looking at the roles which the narrator or point-of-view character plays in the landscape.” (McDowell 1996, p.386-87)

Taken McDowell’s words as a point of departure, my paper will examine the role, which the narrator plays in the landscape as depicted both in the text and the map in Frida Nilsson’s Ishavspirater (2015, in English, “Pirates of the frozen seas”). The novel is nominated for the Nordic Council Children and Young People’s Literature Prize 2016 (NCCYPLP 2016), and is part of an ongoing project on Representations of Nature in Nominated Nordic Children’s Literature, which in turn is part of a larger research project on Nature in Children’s Literature: Fostering Ecocitizens at Bergen University College.

The analytical tools are grounded in ecocriticism, green humanities and studies in environmental literature. In addition, all the nominated books will be explored through the particular matrix developed by the research group:

http://blogg.hib.no/nachilit/theoretical-framework/approaches-hypotheses-and-choice-of-method/

In many respects Ishavspirater echoes Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series (1968–2001) when depicting a wintry archipelago where the pirate Vithuvud (White head) terrorises the population and abducts their children to work in his mine, and when questioning human greed and exploitation of nature in the pursuit of wealth. The story is a first person narrative told by Siri, a girl living at an eastern island together with her father and her little sister Miki. One day the pirates kidnap Miki, and Siri sets out to find Vithuvud’s mine and her sister. During her journey, she learns to read and reflect upon various landscapes and various human attitudes towards different forms of life. The journey may be read as an exercise in ecological thinking.