| Summary: | Journal home page http://revue-nordiques.com/fr/ . The Kvens are a national minority in Norway long subject to a policy of assimilation. This article examines the Kven-language novels of Alf Nilsen-Børsskog as counter-narratives and descriptions of Arctic nature and the Kvens' living environment. Norwegian fiction has depicted the Kvens since the 1870s, but Nilsen-Børsskog’s series Elämän jatko 1-4 (Life Goes On, 2004-2015) is the first to assume a native perspective to the Kvens’ living environment and experiences. It forms an exceptional counterstory, focusing on the power of the writer’s native background instead of describing a crisis in the minority culture. The descriptions of Arctic nature in Life Goes On differ significantly from previous ones, where Arctic is often depicted as a place of extreme experiences and catastrophes. In addition to nature, the Kvens and Sámi have been subjected to this exoticising description. Nilsen-Børsskog instead describes the Kvens’ everyday and spiritual life, in which nature and the cultural environment are in harmony and form an important part of Kven identity.
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