Scattered All Over the Earth

“You can say you want a classless society, but once you’ve boarded a big, safe ship, it’s hard to screw up the courage to switch to a dinghy. If things went on this way I’d get lazier and more depressed by the year, and maybe wind up sick like my mother.”

Knut feels guilty about his privilege as a citizen of a generous welfare state. He takes the positives and perks of living in such a society and worries that no amount of goodwill will make him sacrifice it, as he is too comfortable, even if the long-term effects are detrimental.

“A few days before, on my way to buy a sandwich at a neighborhood shop, I’d seen a sign for an embassy. Of a country so tiny and unpretentious it made me happy to know it was still around.”

Hiruko struggles with the fact that her nation no longer exists and that she is isolated on another continent. When she sees another small country’s embassy—proof that it still exists—it brings her some joy to know that this country still exists.

“While I was thinking about how I could tell stories to children in Panska at the Märchen Center, I hit on the idea of showing them kamishibai, or picture dramas. Showing them a picture for each scene in the drama would be much better than just telling them a story in words.”

Scattered All Over the Earth explores the role of language in everyday life and often focuses on language retention and development. In this instance, Hiruko realizes that learning a new language and its vocabulary is made easier by visual aids, as images help children cross the language barrier and make associations.

“Many people assume that all refugees are poor, but some of these children are from families escaping war and persecution, not poverty. It’s true that many of them left their homes and everything they owned behind, but some managed to bring a little money and a few possessions with them, or have funds sent from their home countries.”

Hiruko is one refugee of many in Europe and works with many more at the Märchen Center. Unlike many permanent residents of Europe, she understands that not all refugees are the same and that the reasons they’ve left home can be as diverse as the lives they live in their new homes.

“Though no one pays me any mind when I board a bus alone, a group of Indians riding together always results in a certain tension in the air. That’s why guiding a group of my fellow Indians around Germany makes me nervous.”

In this excerpt, Akash acknowledges the racism that exists in Europe and the ways in which it worsens with numbers. This dynamic highlights the degree to which racism in Europe is connected to fears of demographic change.

“I knew from experience that women of this type, with false eyelashes, bright red lipstick, surgically enhanced breasts, and spike heels, tend not to view people like me, who are moving from one sex to another, very favorably.”

While Akash often confronts prejudice based on race, prejudice due to her transgender identity is also very prevalent. She expects prejudice from this woman in particular because of her apparent embrace of normative gender signifiers. The very clear outward display of femininity leads Akash to expect some kind of pushback.

“‘But don’t you think the whole concept of dialect is out of date?’ she asked, sounding just as overwrought as Knut. ‘When experts decide whether what people speak is independent language or just dialect there’s almost always a political agenda behind it-you see that, don’t you?’”

When Akash, Knut, and Hiruko sit down together and discuss language, the subject of dialect forces them to confront the politics of language and its use in defining people. If a people’s language is considered a dialect instead of an independent language, it erases some of their unique individual identity, grouping them with others.

“Though his face looked exotic, he answered in fluent German. The words came out naturally, even after a bad fall, so he was obviously used to speaking our language. It would be rude to ask someone that fluent where he was from, but he seemed so very foreign, not only in appearance, but in general atmosphere as well.”

Nora is very conscious of how prejudice can influence one’s perception of others and tries her best to not let herself do this to Nanook. Though she does not believe that he looks German, his German is flawless, as if it is his first language. She recognizes the significance of asking where someone is from, and how it can make someone feel unwelcome, and refrains from expressing her confusion.

“Though I didn’t feel particularly uneasy there, it was like living day by day, with no idea of what tomorrow would bring. Like being in the middle of a snowy wasteland with no shops around and no food stored up.”

Both Nora and Nanook describe their relationship as all-consuming. Their intense closeness makes it difficult to express individuality or understand where they are going. In this excerpt, Nora describes the confusion this close bond presents for their future.

“The children learned Greenlandic as they played, and soon got used to the cold. Forgetting their ingrained fear and hatred of dogs, they happily played with them, too. The grown-ups, on the other hand, shut themselves indoors from morning to night, occasionally opening the door halfway to peer fearfully out at the snow and the dogs.”

One aspect of language and assimilation explored in Scattered All Over the Earth is the ease with which children can adjust and learn while adults struggle. Adults are very set in their ways, and their fully-developed brains can make it difficult to learn new languages or societal norms. Children, on the other hand, are very malleable and can take in and adjust to new information more easily.

“Greenland is about fifty times the size of Denmark, but when I came to Copenhagen, I didn’t feel like I was in a ‘little country.’ For starters, I hadn’t really grasped ‘country’ as a concept yet, so when people asked me where I was from I used to say ‘the Arctic Circle,’ which got me a lot of strange looks.”

Nanook explores how people perceive a country as he compares Denmark and Greenland. Though Greenland is by land area the larger country, it has a smaller population and fewer economic ties to the outside world. Denmark, though small, is a global country with the large city of Copenhagen in which many cultures intermingle.

“Seaweed has a savory taste called umami that leaves you feeling as satisfied as if you’d eaten fish even when you haven’t. I’m sure that sometime in the future, when fish are extinct, people will rely on chefs to extract fish traces, distant memories of fish from plants that grow in the sea.”

As a work of speculative fiction, Scattered All Over the Earth explores a possible future stemming from the present. In this world, climate change is advancing and the landscape of the world is changing. Part of Nanook’s interest in dashi and umami is the fact that, as the world continues to change, some animals, foods, and flavors will inevitably disappear, and new methods of producing such flavors must be explored.

“The roof looked like a kaku obi, the stiff sash men wear with kimono. I had almost forgotten that word, kaku obi. Perhaps meeting Tenzo would stir up the pond in my brain, bringing more words that had sunk to the bottom floating back up to the surface.”

Hiruko goes a long time without speaking her mother tongue because she has no one to speak it with. When she meets Nanook and can finally have a semblance of a conversation, she realizes how her silence has impacted her language. She has nearly forgotten some words in her native language, and she hopes that as she uses it more, like a muscle, the language will return to full strength.

“[W]hen I saw their puzzled looks I realized for the first time that I was the only one here who had actually lived in Norway, if only for a short time. And I wanted to tell that ultranationalist Breivik that of the four people here, I was the closest to being Norwegian.”

The rise of nationalist politics in Europe forms part of the novel’s backdrop. In many of the nations they visit, the characters encounter people committed to preserving what they believe to be their unique cultural traditions and identities in an increasingly global world. However, Hiruko recognizes that much of this stems from a racist conception of what it means to be from a nation and that her own time in Norway actually makes her more Norwegian than most.

“He was quite a talent for languages, and has learned several. So he was able to speak to Hiruko in her lost language as well. She wasn’t the least bit angry to find out that he was Nanook rather than Tenzo. She now says that the whole idea of ‘native speaker’ is rather childish. I suspect this will be of great interest to you.”

As Hiruko travels more and more, her perception of her own language and the importance of finding someone who also speaks it as their first language diminishes. She discovers that it is more important and beneficial to her to just be able to speak it at all, making her meeting with Nanook only briefly disappointing as she realizes the potential their friendship can have.

“The first time I heard Hiruko speak, the smooth surface of my native language broke apart, and I saw fragments of it glittering on her tongue. The homemade language Hiruko spoke was like Monet’s water lilies. The colors, shattered into pieces, were beautiful but painful.”

Hiruko’s homemade language of Panska plays an interesting role in the novel and is described in many ways by the different characters depending on their own relationship to Scandinavian languages. For Hiruko, Panska is a tapestry into which she weaves her different experiences across Scandinavia. For Knut, whose first language is Danish, Panska is a fractured language that is beautiful in its linguistic potential.

“There was even a footnote explaining that although biologically speaking the distinction between dolphins and whales is virtually meaningless, because the words whale and dolphin evoke different images culturally both were used in the article.”

This small excerpt about whales and dolphins exhibits the cultural potential of language. While whales and dolphins, separate words, describe two animals whose proximity in nature makes their differences largely insignificant, their cultural meanings are very different. It is the connotations the words build through cultural experiences and beliefs that make them so unique.

“But when Miss Hammer asked me the same question, all I could think about was how bad my English was, so managing to get even one word out was deeply satisfying. Who’d have thought such a simple conversation could be so much fun.”

Susanoo, the oldest character of the novel, travels far and wide and learns many languages as he grows into a young adult. When he first learns English, he struggles at times but finds joy in the discovery of language. Even simple conversations that he struggles to have in his own tongue are fun in English and help him create a bond with his teacher.

“From around that time, big changes started going on in my brain. The main passageway in there had been like a drainage ditch full of garbage, but a rainstorm had washed it out, and where the trash used to be a cool mountain spring now flowed, trickling into all the little narrow cracks around it.”

Languages impact the minds of the people who speak them, as every language is unique in how it describes the world. Susanoo discovers this as he learns English and can feel his own mind developing and changing as new vocabulary and grammatical structures change how he can express himself.

“Somewhere I had heard just the word for this color, a sort of dark orange with the pink of peaches mixed into it. Salmon-pink, peach-pink, brick-red, cod roe-red, tarako, tarakotta, terracotta. Sounded good.”

Once again, the beautiful diversity of language is explored in the novel as Susanoo thinks of the many different ways people have to describe the same color. Each of these words, though they mean a similar thing, is influenced not only by cultural histories but by personal experiences, as each person may pick their own way to describe it based on their own paths.

“This word natsukashii seemed to be made of mist, a mist I was wandering through with unsteady steps. In Panska, I might have said something like ‘memories of the past are so delicious I want to eat them’ instead. That seemed more fitting than natsukashii.”

When Hiruko finally meets Susanoo, she struggles to communicate with him, and as her mind moves between the different languages she knows, she recognizes the unique nature of each. Not every language has the same exact words, and every language has some words with meanings that do not exist in other languages. Because of this, she struggles to find the right words to express to him.

“Sitting across from him, I felt more relaxed. I was so sure that finally talking to someone in my native language would be wonderful, that it had to be…so maybe the pressure was making it impossible for us to talk.”

Hiruko places so much hope on the opportunity to speak with another native speaker that when the moment comes, the pressure is immense. She believes that after all she has gone through, the conversation must be perfect and their communication seamless. However, with Susanoo unable to speak, their meeting is far from her expectations.

“This reminded me of when I was in junior high school, the fun I used to have talking to my friends, seeing how far we could spin a conversation out. You got hold of a thread and just kept pulling it out, longer and longer. Not starting with something you wanted to say, just letting words lead to more words in an endless stream.”

Throughout the novel, Hiruko explores the joy of conversation with the people around her and in her memories. She believes that speaking with others is a unique opportunity that is essential to life. Her favorite conversations, however, are those with no certain purpose, that are unconstrained and develop and flourish in their own time.