Lene Ask - Selected Title Author
We are happy to present our selected title author Lene Ask. She has written and illustrated Astrid Løken. Fighting with gentle hands (original title: Astrid Løken. Å slåss med varsomme hender). The book is one of NORLA’s Selected Titles of the spring 2025.
What is your book about?
The book tells the story of Astrid Løken (1911–2008), a secret agent during World War II and one of Scandinavia’s leading bumblebee researchers. Her scientific work has provided an important foundation for understanding the changes occurring in today’s bumblebee populations. In fact, Løken warned about the decline of bumblebee species as early as 1973. While working on her master’s degree at the Zoological Laboratory at the University of Oslo in 1940, Løken was recruited into the Norwegian resistance. She later became a key intelligence agent for XU, one of Norway’s most important espionage organizations. Throughout the war, she lived a double life, constantly at risk of being exposed. XU agents were bound by a strict vow of secrecy that remained in effect for many years after the war. As a result, their efforts remained largely unknown for decades.
What sets your book apart from other books within the same genre?
This graphic novel about Astrid Løken breaks away from the traditional wartime hero narrative—because Astrid herself would most likely not have wanted to be called a hero. After the war, neither she nor her fellow agents could—or wanted to—speak about what they had partaken in. This book weaves her story together through her field diaries, her work with bumblebees and flowers, and her intelligence operations. At first glance, espionage and bumblebee research might seem like completely unrelated fields—but both involve gathering and analyzing as much information as possible to gain knowledge and fight for biodiversity.
Read more
See full presentation of the book here
Read more about the author here
See all NORLA’s Selected Titles for the spring 2025 here
