Johan Turi’s Muitalus sámiid birra in the Swedish Cultural Canon

 

 Still from The Seventh Seal 

In late August this year the Swedish government published a 300 page document titled A Cultural Canon for Sweden, explaining its rationale and listing one hundred works of art, literature, architecture, and concepts like “Allemansrätten,” the right to explore and enjoy nature on both public and private lands. 

The list, which includes the paintings of Karin and Carl Larsson, the children's book by Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking, and the Seventh Seal by filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, has its roots in an agreement between political parties, dating back to 2022, when the Sweden Democrats, a right-wing party, came in second in the popular vote. This party, once considered extreme, but now able to leverage concessions from the traditional parties, made it a priority to create a cultural canon that would distill Swedish culture into a list of works and activities decided upon by a committee appointed by the government. The underlying agenda, many felt, was to limit the concept of Swedishness and exclude the contributions from more recent arrivals to the country; others, especially on the right, felt it would establish criteria for assimilating immigrants by pointing out what they needed to understand about Sweden.

There was push-back from the cultural sector as well as from many Swedish citizens even before the cultural canon was published. A New York Times article from May 26, 2025, quoted Ida Ölmedal, the culture editor of the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet:

 Most of the culture world is against the idea of a canon. . . . It’s being used as a populist tool to point out what is Swedish and not, and to exclude some people from the concept of Swedishness.”

 “But even if it wasn’t nationalist, it would still be wrong for politicians to point out what is important culture,” Ölmedal added. “We have a proud tradition of the government financing culture without trying to govern culture — and this is an exception.”

Johan Turi

A friend of mine in Stockholm emailed me the report with its list of the 100 items of cultural importance; she pointed out at least one choice that would have been surprising twenty or thirty years ago. That is the inclusion of Johan Turi’s book, Muitalus sámiid birra, published first in a North Sámi-Danish edition in 1910. This title, known in English first as Turi’s Book of Lapland and in its current translation by Thomas A. DuBois as An Account of the Sámi, was first translated to Swedish in 1917 and reissued by a Swedish publisher in 1987. As far as I know, it has been out of print in Sweden for many years. The committee noted in their reason for the choice that “The oral Sami storytelling tradition has been easy to overlook in a writing-oriented culture such as Sweden's,” adding that, “This creates a multifaceted whole that transcends the sharp Western boundary between realism and magic.”

Today, Johan Turi is generally better known in Norway (he was born there) than in Sweden, where he lived in the area around Lake Torneträsk. But that wasn’t always the case. During his lifetime he was famous in Stockholm and around the world, visited by well-known figures of the time. On his eightieth birthday in 1934 he was presented with the king’s medal. Most of his archives are in Sweden, including Nordiska Museum in Stockholm, which holds his artwork and the original notebooks and manuscripts of Muitalus sámiid birra, which he was encouraged to work on by his friend, the Danish artist and ethnographer Emilie Demant Hatt. She  translated his work and acted as the managing editor of the eventual book in 1910. A government agency in Uppsala, the Institute for Language and Folklore (ISOF: Institutet för språk och folkminnen), which studies and collects materials concerning dialects and folklore in Sweden, has recently given more attention to Turi on its website (only in Swedish).

Johan Turi on his 80th birthday

Among the eight other authors of prose works listed in the report are Gosta Berling's Saga by Selma Lagerlöf, Getting Married by August Strindberg, The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg, along with the greatest of all, Pippi Longstocking. These classics make the inclusion of Johan Turi’s remarkable book based on his life as a hunter, herder, artist and writer, even more interesting, especially since Turi takes a critical view of Sweden’s treatment of his people. The Swedish Democrats, with their emphasis on nationalism and barely disguised contempt for Jews, immigrants, and all minorities in Sweden, don’t generally have a positive view of past or contemporary Sámi culture.

So, in spite of the limits of the Cultural Canon of Sweden (as many have complained, “Where’s ABBA?!”), I can only say bravo to the inclusion of Muitalus sámiid birra. It is time.

 

 

Davvi Wind Farm Rejected in Northern Sápmi

 

Raggovidda Wind Farm, Berlevåg, Norway

Reuters reported on November 4, 2025 that Norway's energy regulator had rejected an application to build a wind farm in its northernmost county of Finnmark, citing impacts to a wilderness area as well as Indigenous Sámi culture.

The projected Davvi wind farm would have joined other wind farms in the northernmost region of Norway, such as Raggovidda, which has been operating since 2014 just south of the fishing port of  Berlevåg. The landscapes of the plateaus in the north offer little resistance and the winds blow all year round with astonishing force, making the wind farm of Raggovidda one of the most efficient in the world, producing almost twice as much energy as an average farm.

However, the large farms come with a cost for the fragile biodiversity of the high north. Along with the turbines themselves come an entire infrastructure of roads, power lines, and buildings in areas once used only for reindeer herding.

The projected Davvi wind farm had been contested ever since its proposal some five years ago by a coalition that has included reindeer herders, political activists, and environmentalists. The Saami Council has strongly protested the giant industrial windpower development project, noting that it "would require an area equal to 8 000 football fields or 63 square kilometres and over 100 kilometres or service road networks." This would have been in a area of great natural beauty near Laksefjordvidda, near the sacred Sámi mountain of Rásttigáisá in the Tana and Lebesby municipalities, south of the Barents Sea and not far from the Finnish border.

Rásttigáisá Mountain 

In their initial 2020 public response, the Saami Council also pointed out that:

"Little attention has been paid to the fact that the Davvi wind power plant is part of St1’s Power-to-X or hydrogen industrial plans in Kemi, Finland. St1 is planning to build a refinery which produces synthetic fuels from CO2 emissions of a pulp mill and windpower from the Davvi wind power plant. The project requires the building of new infrastructure, ie. a new powerline from Norway to Finland via the Sámi reindeer-herding cooperatives Galdoaivi ja Báišduottar. The powerline is included in the Lapland regional land use plan 2040."

I can't do better than quote at length from a statement produced in 2020 by the Friends of the Earth Norway, criticizing the application by the corporation Grenselandet AS:

"The planning area for Davvi wind power farm is in Laksefjordvidda, one of the largest areas without major interventions in Norway. This arctic nature is undisturbed by industry and buildings, and one can walk for days surrounded only by nature, a totally unique experience. There are very few such areas left in Norway. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in August that almost three-quarters of the world's ice-free land is affected by human activities, and the remaining proportion is shrinking rapidly. Such large intact nature areas are thus very valuable and important to preserve - both for the outdoor experience and for nature's intrinsic value. Building hundreds of wind turbines with associated roads and construction sites in an area the size of Stavanger will for the foreseeable future destroy the priceless nature of Laksefjordvidda.

"The area is very poorly mapped for biodiversity. However, we know that the Arctic is an important ecosystem. At first glance the area may seem like deserted stone rubble, but it is in fact the habitat for a number of species, several of them on the red list for threatened species. Here lives the rock ptarmigan, which is a bird species that Norway has an international responsibility to protect, and tiny beautiful flowers grow close to the ground. In the summer of 2016, a nesting of the critically endangered lesser white-fronted goose was discovered just over three miles from the plan area. Birds of prey such as ravens and snowy owls hunt for the lemmings and other small rodents. This area is an important route for Arctic foxes wandering between Varanger and Nord-Troms. To get a good overview of the diversity of species there is a need for thorough survey and field work, but we already know that the Arctic landscape is richer and more impressive than one might at first assume.

"In addition to the great natural and landscape values, the area is very important for the Sami indigenous people. The sacred mountain Rásttigáisá is located in the immediate vicinity of the planning area for the wind farm, and construction will be very negative for the reindeer resources. The rocky mountain peaks are also important for the reindeer, as a refuge from troublesome insects. Reindeer herding is already under severe pressure from a number of developments, and this burden will soon make it impossible for the next generation to continue the traditional way of life."

 

Sámi Folktales from the Near and Far Worlds

 

I'm thrilled to present the cover of my next book, Sámi Folktales from the Near and Far Worlds, the most extensive compilation of Sámi narratives recorded from Sámi storytellers ever published in English translation. 

Although the publication date is some months away--April 28, 2026 to be exact--it's now in the catalog on the University of Minnesota Press website. I love how the photograph captures the sense of mystery and spaciousness of Finnmark in Northern Norway/Sápmi, where the narratives were collected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

I'm also really pleased to see Isak Saba's name on the cover as a second collector. When the initial volumes of these folktales were published in the bilingual Norwegian Sámi edition in 1927-1929, only the name of Just Knud Qvigstad, the eminent linguist and folklorist, was listed. Isak Saba, a teacher, politician, and folklorist, was relegated to a role as a contributor, particularly of stories from East Finnmark. 

But my research showed that Isak Saba had also been a collector and translator of Sámi folklore. Only his untimely death kept him from publishing his own works of narratives by Skolt and Varanger Sámi storytellers, fifty of which are included in this book.

 Here are a few things that early readers have said about this edition of three hundred narratives, translated from the Norwegian: 

“Beautifully written, the introduction to Sámi Folktales from the Near and Far Worlds captivates the reader from the very beginning with poetic descriptions of the Sámi landscape, the historical context and thematic characteristics of the storytelling tradition in Sápmi, and an exploration of the relationship between Just Knud Qvigstad and Isak Saba. This book is a valuable collection of Sámi stories.” —Line Esborg, Head of Norwegian Folklore Archives, University of Oslo

“For decades, these stories have provided contemporary Sámi literature with drama, detail, and inspiration. This collection is a treasure trove for every writer and reader to choose from, and it's a gift to the English language that these folktales are now translated.” —Elin Anna Labba, author of The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow: The Forced Displacement of the Northern Sámi

“Sámi Folktales from the Near and Far Worlds is invaluable to anyone even remotely curious about the Sámi. The deeper you dig into this collection, the more satisfying it gets. Often mysterious and magical, sometimes scary, occasionally funny, the tales are always captivating. They are told with an immediacy and sense of the storyteller’s voice that does more than entertain, it passes on insights into Sámi culture not readily found anywhere else. Including extensive historical information, translator Barbara Sjoholm’s introduction is worth its weight in gold.” —Lise Lunge-Larsen, author of Seven Ways to Trick a Troll

 

 

The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens, Reading at Village Books in Bellingham Oct 12, 4 PM

A heads up for anyone living north of Seattle: I'll be reading from my historical novel, The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens, at the fantastic Village Books in Bellingham's Fairhaven district on Sunday, October 12, 2025, at 4:00 PM. Details here.

The novel has been out since February, and I've done a number of events in person and online, as well as interviews on radio and book clubs on Zoom. Unsurprisingly, since a good portion of the novel is set in Port Townsend, it's been very popular with locals and there's always a waiting list to read at our library. I'm still having interesting conversations with people about things they didn't know about Port Townsend, including the existence of a large and thriving population of Chinese who lived here in the last decades of the nineteenth century. I also get asked which house Dagny Bergland, the narrator of the story, lived in (the house is invented but some of the Victorian homes on Morgan Hill with a view of Admiralty Strait were inspirations). Although parts of the novel also take place in Seattle, Alaska, and Norway, it's the Port Townsend settings that really seem to stir the most interest. "I can see Dagny and Edward on Lawrence Street," they tell me. It's a wonderful feeling when I hear that readers can visualize the bustling wharves on Water Street and the more refined churches and shops in Uptown and see my characters walking past them! 

I've also had the chance to hear from Sámi-Americans about their family experiences of immigration to the US. One memorable event took place at the Nordic Museum in Seattle, where I spoke with Amy Swanson King, herself a descendant of Sámi immigrants and an active member of the Pacific Sámi Searvi in the Northwest. I've been happy to contribute to a stronger sense of this historic and contemporary community. 

See you in Bellingham!  

 

 

 

 

Conflicts around Mining in the High North of Norway and Sweden

The Barents Observer has just published another deeply-reported article on conflicts between the Scandinavian states and mining interests in the north of Sweden and Norway and environmental groups and Sámi reindeer herders, as well as other concerned citizens who live in those areas. 

The journalists focus particularly on the strongly opposed Nussir Copper Mine near the Repparfjord in Norway and the Per Geijer deposit in Kiruna, near the current iron ore mines run by LKAB. The new deposit is projected to supply Europe with not just ore but rare earth elements. Many already know that the city of Kiruna was forced to move from its historic site by the LKAB mine. Further mining may well cause another move, as well as impacting the grazing lands traditionally held by the Gabna siida's reindeer herds. 

 

 

Britta Marakatt-Labba's Ancient Mother Statue on the Highline

 

Urmodern, by Britta Marakatt-Labba

For anyone in New York on Oct 7 at 12:30-1:30, the Sámi artist Britta Marakatt-Labba will be discussing her sculpture, Urmodern, located on the High Line between Gansevoort and Little West 12th Streets.

Many of us know Marakatt-Labba through her embroidered narratives of Sámi history and other two-dimensional work. Her reknown has only increased over the last years, with one-person shows at the National Gallery in Oslo (2024) and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm (2025), and she's also been represented in art exhibits in the U.S., in connection with other Arctic and Sámi artists. 

I only recently heard that she has a sculpture on the Highline in New York, at least until March of 2026, and that it is meant to represent a female deity. Here's the text from the announcement for her talk: 

 "For the High Line, Marakatt-Labba presents Urmodern, which translates to “primordial mother.” Sámi mythology is based on the belief that every stone, plant, and body of water has its own spirit. It teaches that the cosmos and the earth were created and are protected by goddesses, emphasizing the pivotal role of women in Sámi culture. Through this lens, Urmodern serves as a representation of these female deities. The boulder-like base of the work is made of granite, topped with the head of the goddess rendered in bronze. Marakatt-Labba’s contribution to the High Line underscores the importance of environmental stewardship on a global stage, engaging audiences in critical dialogues about Indigenous rights and feminism."