“Do homosexual reindeer herders exist?” So begins Moa Backe Åstot’s tender, poignant debut novel, Fire From the Sky (Levine Querido, 2023), the story of an Indigenous teenage reindeer herder coming to terms with his sexuality in northwestern Sweden. (The book was translated from Swedish by Eva Apelqvist.) The main character, Ánte, is Sámi, and his ancestors have lived in Scandinavia for tens of thousands of years. Ánte loves his culture, but he’s also in love with his best friend, Erik, whose covert touches make Ánte wonder if the feeling is mutual. Although he longs to address their relationship with Erik, revealing his queerness wouldn’t just cost Ánte his best friend: It could cost him his community, his family, and his home.

On a recent video call, I spoke to the talented, optimistic, and perspicacious Åstot—who herself is Sámi—about technology, indigeneity, and the concept of home. Our conversation, conducted in English, has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you decide to write this story as a young adult novel?

I was actually 15 years old when I started writing about Ánte. Since I was just a teenager myself, it made sense to me to write about other teenagers. I continued writing it [when I was older] because the story really mattered to me. So, it wasn’t really a choice—it kind of just happened.

When I was a teenager, I wanted to read fiction about other Sámi teenagers. But there aren’t a lot of Sámi young adult writers—there’s not really any tradition of writing for young adults where I come from—so I just found a few books. I started writing what I wanted to read. That’s why this book was important to me.

How do you think your Sámi background influences your craft?

I used a little bit of Sámi mythology. There’s one scene where Ánte and Erik are watching the stars, and I mention one of these ancient stories. The book’s title also comes from that story.

Although some parts of the book are obviously [drawn] from my heritage, there are some things that I did not see myself but others did. For example, nature is very present [in the book], which is not something that I was intentional about, but readers said nature is almost like a character in the story. That’s something that I was not aware of when I was writing it, but in almost any Sámi art form, nature is very, very present.

Another thing I discovered was that I write in dialect. I thought that I was just writing regular Swedish, but apparently I was not! My editor, who’s from Stockholm, made a long, long list of words and phrases that were dialect. She didn’t want me to change them; she just wanted to point them out. I kept a lot of those words and phrases because I wanted the book to feel like it’s from this region.

You often use symbolism in such sophisticated ways. How do you think of these symbols, and how do you decide where to place them in the plot?

It sort of happens when I’m writing. I never plan what I’m going to write, so I don’t know exactly where the story is going, and then these images pop up. A lot of times I don’t know where they come from. It’s part of what’s so exciting to me about creating and writing.

Another theme in this book is the impact of Swedish colonization. In many countries, colonizers erased existing Indigenous queer traditions. Did this happen with the Sámi?

We don’t really know about queerness before colonization in the Sámi community. But I think the hate that Sámi people show Ánte [in the book] is actually fear, and that fear definitely comes from colonization.

Because the Sámi people have been violated for such a long time by the Swedish government and the church, if one Sámi person stands out in any way that doesn’t suit the Swedish perspective—like with queerness, because there’s this stereotype of how family should be—the whole community gets scared. And that is not something that we Sámi have made up. It comes from the outside: that you have to work with reindeer, you have to speak the Sámi language, and so on.

Although a lot of Sámi readers from the younger generation have been very happy about this book and feel it’s important to talk about these things, some of the older people might not like it as much. Because to them, I guess, it’s a little bit scary to talk about these things.

The omnipresence of technology in this story—and, specifically, social media—was such a wonderful contrast to the stereotypes you mention. Why did you include so much social media in the plot?

A lot of conversations happen through texts and social media because the story is about teenagers who use their phones all the time. It wasn’t that long ago that I was a teenager, and I used Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, so that part just came naturally.

But I also thought about how, when you’re a Sámi teenager today, [you live with] a lot of contrasts. We have these ancient traditions, and then we’re living in this modern world like everyone else and using social media. I wanted to show that tension for Ánte, who really, really cares about these old traditions but also wants to move forward.

I loved that Ánte rejects the idea that leaving his home is a viable solution. He wants to be himself, but he also wants to stay.

We have a lot of books here in Sweden where the main character wants to get away, to move to a larger city. And we also have specifically Sámi books about young people who want to move to Stockholm and don’t want to keep herding reindeer. So that story’s already been told. I wanted to tell a story about someone who wants to stay—someone who thinks that his home is very important, and who loves his culture and his heritage.

Sámi people should be able to read about someone who shows that you don’t have to want to get away from here. You don’t have to leave to live a modern life. That story has not been written here in Sweden, at least.

You mentioned that you still live in your traditional home and work with reindeer?

Yes, I do. Home is very important to me. [Herding] is not what I do for a living, but my family owns reindeer.

Some people don’t want to do this—they were born in a Sámi family, but they don’t really care. And that’s fine as well, of course. But I think for a lot of teenagers, home is important. They want to stay, but [doing that becomes] harder because they can’t just leave everything they are and be someone else. They want to be who they are. With Ánte, he can have his queerness and his love for his best friend and he can be Sámi. I wanted to show that it’s possible for these contrasts to coexist. You can do everything and be everything that you want at the same time.

Mathangi Subramanian is a novelist, essayist, and founder of Moon Rabbit Writing Studio.