Published September 2026
Avkolonisering (Decolonization) explores how the legacy of European colonialism shapes societies, institutions, and ways of understanding the world, and how this legacy has created structures of racism and injustice that persist today. The book invites reflection and asks questions such as:
Who gets to define what counts as valid knowledge?
Who tells the story of Norway and Sápmi, and which voices are overlooked, silenced, or marginalized?
How do colonial notions still affect our view of nature, sustainability, and quality of life, and what consequences does this have for people’s lives?
The authors do not offer simple answers, but provide a thorough introduction to what decolonization can mean in a Norwegian and Sámi context. Presentations of key theoretical perspectives and classic texts provide a foundational knowledge base that has been lacking until now. Selected examples related to education, museums, and green colonialism demonstrate what decolonization can look like in practice.
Decolonization is a book for anyone curious about how history, power, racism, and knowledge are woven together in today’s society.
Editor of the book is Lars Aase.
Cover: idea Cecilia G. Salinas and designed by Bøk Oslo AS
The image on the cover is a quipu. Quipu (or khipu) means knot in Quechua, one of the largest Indigenous languages in South America. It consists of cords made from cotton or llama and alpaca wool. Before the Spanish conquest in 1492, quipus were used to record and store numerical and accounting information. In the West, written language is often narrowly defined as graphic symbols on a flat surface. The quipu challenges this, as it is a three-dimensional and tactile writing system.
