Iida Turpeinen · 2023 · sea

Iida Turpeinen's 2023 Finnish historical novel, following the bones of an extinct giant, Steller's sea cow, across two centuries. In 1741 the naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller sails on Bering's Great Northern Expedition to find a sea route from Kamchatka to America; the ship is wrecked on a barren island, where the starving crew discover and describe the gentle sea cow that will be hunted to extinction within decades. Generations later its skeleton makes its way across Russia to a museum in Helsinki. The route follows that long passage from the northern seas to the West.

1. 1
   Petropavlovsk

   At Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka coast, the young naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller joins Vitus Bering's expedition and sails east into the unknown to chart a route to America.

2. 2
   Bering Island

   Having reached the American shore, the battered ship is wrecked on a desolate island in the northern sea; as the crew die of scurvy, Steller describes a vast, gentle sea cow, a creature that will be gone within a generation.

3. 3
   Kamchatka

   Carried back over the sea to the Kamchatka shore, the sea cow's great bones begin the long journey overland, west across the whole breadth of Russia.

4. 4
   Helsinki

   Across the centuries and the whole breadth of Russia, the sea cow's great skeleton travels westward at last to rest in a museum in Helsinki, a monument to a beast humankind destroyed.