From Lapland to Sápmi: Collecting and Returning Sámi Craft and Culture

 

 

From Lapland to Sápmi

Collecting and Returning Sámi Craft and Culture

 

It's been over three years since I first began to write this book, during a time before the pandemic, when I imagined long days in libraries and even a research trip to Scandinavia. How differently it turned out! Six months or so into the book the libraries closed and I postponed my trip, as it turned out, indefinitely. But through colleagues, friends, and complete strangers in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark, as well as librarians and booksellers, I managed to get the materials I needed and keep going. In fact, sometimes the marvelous things I learned and read made up for the fact that I was stuck at home for months, like most of you.

Yesterday, I finished reviewing the substantial index, and soon the book is off to the printers, with a publication date of March 19, 2023. I am so thrilled to think of this project in final form. The University of Minnesota Press has once again been such a delight to work with, and they have really expended a lot of time and resources on adding b/w and color illustrations and coming up with a fantastic cover design based on Sámi artist Britta Marakatt-Labba's textile art, History.  

Look for more about the contents in coming blog posts. Meanwhile, here's some of the advance publicity:

[from the catalog] The story of the Indigenous Sámi living in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia unfolds across borders and centuries, in museums and private collections. Deftly written and amply illustrated, From Lapland to Sápmi brings to light the history of collecting, displaying, and returning Sámi material culture, as well as the story of Sámi creativity and individual and collective agency.

"An important contribution to Sámi stories of loss, recovery, and the struggle for equality, as well as the right to manage one’s own cultural heritage on one’s own terms. As Barbara Sjoholm charts the transformation of Lapland to Sápmi in objects, joiks, and storytelling, Sámi voices emerge to share essential aspects of their history. As we say in Sápmi, ‘Čálli giehta ollá guhkás—A writing hand reaches far.’" —Káren Elle Gaup, coeditor of Bååstede: The Return of Sámi Cultural Heritage

"Barbara Sjoholm’s From Lapland to Sápmi chronicles in vivid words and images the colonial encounters of Sámi and non-Sámi as told through the objects, images, and recordings that eventually became sequestered in Nordic museums and archives. It also tells the inspiring story of efforts to recover and return these items to their rightful communities as part of Sámi decolonization and self-determination." —Thomas Dubois, coauthor of Sámi Media and Indigenous Agency in the Arctic North

"Fascinating and important, From Lapland to Sápmi presents a nuanced and enlightening look at the cultural history of objects and collections originating in Sápmi. With rich detail and riveting storytelling, Barbara Sjoholm presents a diverse picture of the north and its entangled histories of collecting in Sápmi. I heartily recommend it for students and scholars." —Trude Fonneland, The Arctic University Museum of Tromsø

"Barbara Sjoholm's new book takes you on a remarkable journey. What emerges from this insightful study is an important cultural history of the Indigenous Sámi people in northern Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Russia. This book traces how scholars, clergy, and other collectors actively worked to shape how we understand (and misunderstand) the Sámi people and their world. By exploring how the materials crafted by the Sámi have been gathered, studied, and displayed, Sjoholm offers a glimpse into how knowledge has been constructed, controlled, and disseminated over time. People have been writing about the Sámi since the 1500s, but as From Lapland to Sápmi demonstrates, the Sámi culture became a testing ground for emergent sciences like ethnography and archaeology, fields that encouraged participants to gather objects for museums across Europe and beyond. This is a story with important ramifications for the world today." —Samuel J. Redman, author of The Museum: A Short History of Crisis and Resilience and Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology