For people who don’t regularly read poetry, the idea of an epic poem conjures images of, well, epic stories told in verse: Beowulf, The Illiad, The Odyssey.
But Linnea Axelsson’s epic poem Ædnan: An Epic (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook) has no monsters, no warriors, nothing from the fantasy realm.
Instead, it’s a real world story with political and social ramifications that’s as relevant now as it was when it came out in her native Sweden in 2018.
With a new English language translation bringing this book to the U.S. for the first time, I was pleased to send Axelsson some questions via email for the following interview.