Patrik Svensson is a cultural journalist at Sydsvenskan. Two years ago he wrote an essay on eels. Now Essen has developed into a debut book, which is about the eel and man's relationship to it.

Already Aristotle was interested in the long-haired fish. He was convinced that the eel arose out of nowhere, out of the mud, through so-called aurora - the now-disproved theory that something living can arise from dead matter. Sigmund Freud was also interested in the eel. He spent a few disillusioned months in Trieste dissecting eels in pursuit of their testicles, which he never found. He then left the natural sciences for psychology.

Patrik Svensson writes that there have been as few difficult puzzles in the natural sciences as the eel. It is unusually difficult to study due to its strange life course, its light shadows and its metamorphoses. For thousands of years, the eel has been covering science and all the uncertainties surrounding its life and journey to the Sargasso Sea have come to be called the eel issue.

Today, the question is why after 40 million years it dies away from us. 95 percent of the world's population has disappeared in 40 years. The great interest in the book, Patrik Svensson believes partly has to do with the threatened existence of the animal.

- It is a mysterious and enigmatic creature that creates interest in people. Then there is a worry and anxiety about climate change. We are interested in what is about to disappear, what we are about to lose, ”he says.

To inspire nature

In the Åles gospel, Patrik Svensson uses fictitious approaches to increase our marvel for nature, and thus follows marine biologist Rachel Carson's footsteps. In books such as Quiet Spring from 1962, she humanized animals and nature to increase human awareness of environmental degradation. Applying human emotions and behaviors to everything around us is called anthropomorphism. There is no common method in the natural sciences, but perhaps we have to inspire nature to care about it. Quiet spring had such a major impact that it is considered one of the reasons why the DDT environmental poisoning was banned in the United States in 1972.

Nowadays, Silent is hard to come by, but is still regarded as one of the most influential works ever on man's impact on nature. Patrik Svensson describes Rachel Carson as a personal hero: by identifying with the animals, she gained a greater understanding of human destructions, a rather unorthodox method for a marine biologist.

- We may need a degree of wonder for nature, and retain it without losing its grip on what is true and scientifically adequate. It is not really scientifically correct to use anthropomorphism, but here I think that science and the humanities can meet and benefit from each other, says Patrik Svensson.

The Sargasso Sea as a metaphor

In the book, Patrik Svensson asks what is really human. If there is a soul. What we can really know about another being. On the basis of the endangered eel, he reasoned about time, religion, metaphysics and existence. And the mythical journey to the Sargasso Sea is for him not only a scientific mystery, but also symbolic.

- The eel lives its life in solitude in fresh water in Europe for many years. Suddenly at some point in life it must go to the Sargasso Sea, swim the long and arduous road there. What does that need come from, that it must return to its origin? Eels do not reproduce anywhere else, they refuse to reproduce in captivity. They must return, return home, says Patrik Svensson.

He continues:

- The eel becomes a metaphor for everyone's need to seek their origin. So it was for me when I wrote the book. It is also about my own experience of fishing eel with my dad. My dad died and brought his secrets down to the depth, just like the eel. In this way, writing has been a symbolic journey back to the Sargasso Sea. My own Sargasso sea.