ABSTRACT
This chapter takes its approach from the concept of the mother tongue, which is demonstrated to be inhabited by ambivalence. Elisabeth Friis argues that this concept functions as a point from which contemporary Nordic poetry can engage in a nuanced and inclusive critique of colonialism, racism, linguistic homogenization and cultural (re-)production in the broadest sense. This critique, in turn, is based on a negotiation of the very nature of linguistic borders. In her analysis of poems by Jessie Kleemann (Greenland), Athena Farrokhzad (Sweden) and Ursula Andkjær Olsen (Denmark), Friis shows how their work reveals what the notion of the mother tongue actually carries along with it in terms of division, confusion, pain and profound ambivalence, and how this, in turn, functions as the point of departure for a critique of society.
