#BlogTour ‘Dálvi’ by Laura Galloway

About the book…

One woman’s story as an outsider in a reindeer-herding village in the Arctic Tundra, forging a life on her own in one of the most unknowable cultures on earth

An ancestry test suggesting she shared some DNA with the Sámi people, the indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic tundra, tapped into Laura Galloway’s wanderlust; an affair with a Sámi reindeer herder ultimately led her to leave New York for the tiny town of Kautokeino, Norway. When her new boyfriend left her unexpectedly after six months, it would have been easy, and perhaps prudent, to return home. But she stayed for six years.

Dálvi is the story of Laura’s time in a reindeer-herding village in the Arctic, forging a solitary existence as she struggled to learn the language and make her way in a remote community for which there were no guidebooks or manuals for how to fit in. Her time in the North opened her to a new world. And it brought something else as well: reconciliation and peace with the traumatic events that had previously defined her – the sudden death of her mother when she was three, a difficult childhood and her lifelong search for connection and a sense of home.

Both a heart-rending memoir and a love letter to the singular landscape of the region, Dálvi explores with great warmth and humility what it means to truly belong.

My thanks to the epic Gabriella from Midas PR for asking me to join the blog tour for ‘Dálvi’ by Laura Galloway which is published by Allen And Urwin (UK) who kindly gifted me with a review copy.

This is no mere autobiography, though it holds several threads of what are the best of that field, nor is it a travelogue, again, it holds elements of this-what it is to me is a revelation, with moments of epiphany that it landed, on my doorstep at exactly the time I needed it to.

Laura’s internal, and external journey is marred by so many issues that are not of her making-the life she was born into as the youngest of 4 children, to a medical doctor and a mother described as arty and creative, whose heart gave out when Laura was very young, had so many points at which she could have stopped and given up.

Made to feel an outcast in her own family by her stepmother who effectively gaslit her out of belonging, whilst simultaneously adopting her and discarding Laura’s older siblings, her childhood was full of challenges which were to make her feel small, needy and insignificant. This pattern was then repeated throughout adolescence though thankfully there were those who looked out for her, and made her feel taller.

A husband who treated her terribly and then discarded her follows , so when , in spite of her career success and striding forward in the field of journalism, she is given the opportunity to move to Norway, more specifically, to live amongst the Sami people, she leaps at the chance.

It is a complete revelation, moving from a 24 hr society fed by need and the means of delivery to soothe that need, whether by medication, social media, or substances, to one where the only off licence opens for a couple of hours on the weekend.

This is not the back of beyond, this is a place which has restructured what is meant by the word ‘need’ and changed it to what is meant  by ‘sustain’. These are entirely different notions and, by living within a small indigenous population that most of outside world isn’t aware exists (even me) Laura learns the difference between being alone and lonely. Always made to feel insubstantial and irrelevant, manifesting itself in OCD and anxiety disorders, this is a revelation of an existence, where her outsider perspective and journalist skills combine beautifully to form a journey that encompasses all this reader’s sense.

Interwoven with historical incidents in her past, are the paths she takes to learn the ways of the Sami, her relationship with reindeer herder Ailu, what happens after he leaves her (spoiler alert-she stays! I cheered!) and the animals who become her family along the way.

”I was breaking open and falling apart, and to reveal this weakness and vulnerability to anyone might have caused me to die of shame. But the universe seemed to have plans for me, ones that would take me outside of everything I knew, and everything that I thought made me me , to a place where I now think nothing of not showering for three days straight, and Saturday involves helping chop wood for a fence-post, or cutting reeds to braid into shoes for the brittle winter to come, or smoking reindeer meat in a tent called a lavvu while drinking bitter black coffee, the smoke clinging to my hair and clothing and settling into my pores. This is a place where you have to be with yourself because there are no distractions. Only work and nature and time,”

A view into the Sami culture is endlessly fascinating and wonderful, there is so much to take away here in terms of resilience, acknowledging that home is an abstract concept which, if you go looking for it, you will not find-it is a sense of hiraeth, something deep inside.

There are moments of pure joy as well as heartbreaking lows, you are broken when her cat, Boo, goes missing, and , having read about the way the Sami treat their animals as work colleagues, it is joyous when they join in looking for him, knowing how much he means to her.

The journey she begins because of a gifted DNA test kit, looking for a place where she belongs, is epic in scope and intention, and I loved absolutely every page. I could not stop reading it. I am Welsh and we have this whole concept of ‘belonging’ as in ‘I know you! You are belonging to John The Box!‘ (pretty much most of us are known by professions so it would be Dai the Meat, Trev The Van and so forth. And where I live, we still refer to the New Tesco, as New Tesco, even after 20 plus years! So it can be hard to come in and see how we live and often inexplicably so to an outsider. But then you begin to reflect and , essentially, isn’t everyone an outsider? We all come from somewhere, but where we go to, is entirely another matter.

When you take a breath and stop defining yourself by the specifications which other people have for you, that is a powerful and freeing lesson. I genuinely felt that a weight was lifted when I finished reading. What a journey, what a woman and what a gift of a book.

About the author…

Laura Galloway is a writer and communications strategist.

She began her career at the Los Angeles Times and holds a Master of Arts in Indigenous Journalism from the Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Kautokeino, Norway, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Southern California.

An ardent animal lover, she and her partner live with her two reindeer-herding dogs and two cats.

Twitter @lauragalloway @midaspr @gabriellamay @AllenAndUnwinUK