2024
Astrid Løken (1911-2008) was one of our foremost researchers on bumblebees in Scandinavia. Her work provides an important starting point for investigating changes occurring in the bumblebee fauna today. Løken warned against reductions in the bumblebee population.
While she was doing her major at the Zoological Laboratory at the University of Oslo in 1940, Løken was recruited for resistance work, and eventually as an agent in the intelligence organization XU. She became part of the central leadership and throughout the war she lived a double life, constantly in danger of being exposed. The XU agents were bound by a vow of silence that applied for many years after the war, so their efforts were long unknown.
... further proof that Lene Ask is among Norwegian comics' most original and thorough documentarians ... brilliantly manages to show both Astrid Løkens important role in the resistance struggle and pioneering work in international insect research in these 168 pages. It's an great achievement
The irresistible combination of bumblebee research and resistance work during the war is respectfully depicted … «When the wild flowers disappear, the bumblebee disappears", writes Lene Ask … We need the bumblebees, and we can learn from them.
Where blockbuster films about important people ... hit the public like The Truth ... , the cartoons ... expand understanding. This is a starting point that has so far resulted in three strong and delicate releases from Lene Ask, and which will hopefully give us even more in the years to come
showcases Ask's rare talent for interweaving parallel narratives. The bumblebees and flowers are with us throughout the book, and so we also get under the skin of Løken ... a story about the war that is experienced as refreshing and new
