Barbara Sjoholm loved studying Norwegian and Danish cultures so much that she decided to turn her historical research into storytelling and a series of books.

She will be talking about her most recent effort, “The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens” published this year by the University of Minnesota Press, at the Port Townsend Public Library at 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 20. 

“I’ve spent a lot of time in Scandinavia, and my grandparents came from Sweden,” said Sjoholm, a translator of the Norwegian and Danish languages. “I’ve written tougher academic texts, but I’ve long loved the imaginative possibilities afforded by literature.”

It’s no coincidence that turn-of-the-century Port Townsend serves as one of her novel’s primary settings.

“The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens” follows the fictional Norwegian-born Dagny Bergland through her journals, which begin in 1897, as she and her husband arrive in Port Townsend after years of sailing their merchant ship around the world.

The Berglands’ arrival in town coincides not only with the Yukon Gold Rush, but also with the arrival of a group of Sámi reindeer herders from Lapland, who are on their way to Alaska, to supply gold miners with reindeer.

Sjoholm was interested in exploring the stories of an eclectic assortment of immigrant groups, from the Norwegian and Sámi to the Chinese, as they made their way through the Pacific Northwest, since she felt the “flavor” of their experiences warranted more attention.

“Dagny’s perspective is of someone who doesn’t fit in, and who doesn’t know what to expect,” Sjoholm said. “In addition to her journal entries, I also include articles that she writes as an aspiring newspaper reporter, so she’s a journalist in both senses of the term.”

As part of Dagny’s evolving cultural perspective, from Norwegian to Norwegian-American, Sjoholm also highlights the plight of the Sámi, who are faced with prejudice as they, and Dagny, seek to balance their emotional ties to their former homelands against the degree of acculturation required for them to make lives for themselves in the new world of America.

Marlene Wisuri, chair of the Sámi Cultural Center of North America, even went so far as to praise “The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens” as a “complex, touching, sometimes tragic” story “of America, and what it means to be assimilated into American culture and geography.”

Sjoholm said she was proud and fascinated to be able to research, and help disseminate broader knowledge of, Port Townsend’s history, as she gushed over how much fun she had while digging through local libraries, as well as the archives of the Jefferson County Historical Society and the Museum of Art and History.

“I was going through history as far back as Fort Townsend,” Sjoholm said. “It really helped to put myself back in that era of history.”

In 2023, Sjoholm saw the publishing of her historical books “From Lapland to Sápmi: Collecting and Returning Sámi Craft and Culture” and “The Palace of the Snow Queen: Winter Travels in Lapland and Sápmi.”