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Iida Turpeinen:Elolliset (Beasts of the Sea)

I’m very certain that I have never read a novel before where a major character is an extinct marine animal. The animal in question is a Steller’s sea cow, an animal that was last seen in 1768 and is therefore almost certainly extinct. Reading this book, you will learn a fair amount about how sea cows evolved – there used to be quite a few varieties- but most are now extinct partially because of climate change and in the case of Steller’s sea cow, because they were hunted by humans to extinction. For humans in the East of what is now Russia they had several advantages. They provided food, blubber, and a very strong hide. The animal was slow and ponderous and therefore easy to catch. I hope this has not put you off reading this book because of course quite a few humans are involved in the book, including Georg Wilhelm Steller, a German scientist who went on scientific expeditions sponsored by Peter the Great. Also on the expeditions was Vitus Bering a Danish-born explorer, after whom various places were named after, most famously the Bering Strait, and he also participated in expeditions sponsored by Peter the Great.

Steller was the first Westerner to recognise the sea cows as a separate species. Some earlier explorers thought they were mermaids hence the name of their genus, Sirenia . They had been widely spread but gradually disappeared because of hunting and climate change and only a few were left in the Aleutian Islands. where Steller spotted them. They are now extinct, there are four living relatives, three different types of manatees and the dugong.

Our story, as well as telling us about these various animals, involves an expedition sponsored by Peter the Great to explore and map the East of what is now Russia and, in particular, the discovery of various natural features such as animals, plants, rocks and so on. Steller stands out from the rest of the personnel on board as being particularly enthusiastic and he finds numerous plants and animals unknown and the rest of the world, including Steller’s sea ape not seen by anyone before or since.
We follow their very difficult journey and the very many problems they have including bad weather, difficult tides, a problem of finding good quality freshwater and food and inevitably the problem of scurvy which many of them get. However, eventually they get marooned on an uninhabited island. They try to explore but find there is no way off and assume , probably correctly, that no-one is going to search for them on this island.

Steller is happy as there are a lot of plants and animals for him to study and classify. In particular there are a lot of sea cows. The others are less happy as they seem to be marooned, the ship is not in a state to sail and they are running out of food. They try to kill the sea cows by shooting them but it has no effect as the bullet bounces off their hide. Eventually, he managed to harp on them and therefore adequate food. They also decide to build a new ship, with the sole remaining carpenter in charge, which will hope take them to an inhabited island not too far away. When this new boat is finished, it is very small andSteller is unable to bring the bones of a sea cow which she has carefully prepared or indeed any other samples because there is simply no room.

They do manage to escape and do manage to get home, but some of the others are going to use transport to get back to Moscow while Steller is determined to walk because he is sure he will find some f interesting specimens on the way, including the giant northern elephant. But things do not go well for him. He has a certain amount of conflict with the authorities and tries to push himself too hard with the inevitable result.

We now change focus completely. We are still in Alaska, but we have a very different story,albeit one linked to extinct animals. We are now in the mid 19th century and Johan Hampus Furuhjelm has been appointed governor of Alaska. It seems at this time as Alaska is still shared by Russia and the United States. However, do we do follow his activities, the focus is more on his wife, Anna Elisabet von Schoultz,. Because of certain misdeeds my other male officials. The governor, who is not married, is required to marry and he marries.Anna Elisabet von Schoultz,. She is of course quite proud to be the wife of a governor and have a certain amount of importance but, inevitably, it doesn’t all work out smoothly. He is often away. He brings in his sister, Constance, who is subject to falling fits and appears to be somewhat neurotic. Anna struggles with pregnancy and,at the insistence of her husband, her daughter is given to a local wet nurse and then becomes more attached to the nurse than to her mother.

One of the problems that her husband faces is that hunting for skins is diminishing because the animals are being overhunted and the hunters are diminishing’ The new governor,’ task is to deal with this issue which he finds increasingly difficult.

However, we have not forgotten the sea cow. The new governor is very keen on having a skeleton of the sea cow and eventually gets a collection of bones from sea cows. (plural) which a professional taxidermist is hired and he is assisted by Constance. He is not happy about this but as she is the governor sister he has no choice.

We also follow further developments in Alaska, such as the sale of Alaska to the United States and the discovery of gold.

We move on to the Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki and Alexander von Nordmann, a famous biologist and we learn of the involvement of a woman in his work, Alice Olsson. She is hired to do drawings for him and goes with him on expeditions, which is unusual for a woman, and these focus interestingly enough,h mainly on spiders though inevitably the sea cow turns up in Helsinki and Olson gets involved in drawing it and the display of the skeleton.We have not finished with animal protection as we move to the modern day and a group of men w who were working hard to protect wild birds which are shot by hunters.

Yes, this book is about animal extinction and particularly extinction caused by a human activity of which there is far too much. While the sea cow maybe the standard-bearer, as we have seen there are a lot of animals whose extinction, is caused by humans, which we learn about. Indeed, right at the end of the book Turpeinen gives us a fairly lengthy list of animals who have become extinct during the time in which she was writing the book. It makes for sad reading.

So we have a lot of key characters in this book and while the sea cow may be deemed to be the hero, we are also dealing with feminist issues and the involvement of women in this field as well as is learning that is the extinction of animals has been going on for a long time and he still, sadly, very much continuing. You will learn a lot reading this book. It also makes for an excellent read as you follow as a story of the various scientists and the poor sea cow.

Publishing history

First published in 2023 by S&S
NFirst English translation in 2025 by Maclehose
F
Translated by David Hackston