Anna-Stina Svakko and the Arctic Indigenous Design Project (AIDA)

Anna-Stina Svakko, Sámi Duojár

Anna-Stina Svakko's work has always impressed me for its beauty and preciseness. Born near Kiruna, she has been studying and making duodji and art since the 1980s and is considered one of the foremost artisans or duojárs of "soft handicraft" today. She primarily works with fabric, wool, leather, fishskin, fur, and sometimes Plexiglas to create traditional and  contemporary clothing.

 

Her creativity also manifests itself in poetry and art. Her studio website, Astu Design, showcases her range and also includes a shop where you can browse through work for sale. 

 

Svakko has participated in multiple exhibits and is also a teacher and lecturer on the subject of duodji. In the past few years she became one of the many important duojárs in the Nordic countries to participate in the Arctic Indigenous Design Project (AIDA), a cross-border collaboration in Sápmi between the Sámi Archives of the National Archives of Finland, the Ájtte Swedish Mountain and Sami Museum in Sweden, and Sámi allaskuvla in Kautokeino, Norway. 

 

AIDA "aims to establish archives for Sámi duojár and artists and to ensure the preservation and continuity of Sámi design-thinking for future generations."

 

In the digital lead-up to the Arctic Arts Summit that took place in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory in 2022, three women involved in AIDA and duodji participated in a filmed conversation about the AIDA archives. They include Gunvor Guttorm (professor in duodji at Sámi allaskuvla), Inker-Anni Linkola-Aikio (senior research officer at the Sámi Archives) and Anna Westman Kuhmunen (curator at Ájtte museum).  

 

           

The Palace of the Snow Queen: Winter Travels in Lapland and Sápmi, now in its second edition

 

Join me for a reading in Seattle from The Palace of the Snow Queen at Third Place Books in Ravenna. November 15, 7 pm. RSVPs requested. Would love to see you there!

 

Just a week ago, The Palace of the Snow Queen: Winter Travels in Lapland and Sápmi was released in a new edition by the University of Minnesota Press. I had a chance to promote the book before its official pub date when I was in the Midwest in October, doing talks about my other recent book, From Lapland to Sápmi. But only now, as I'm about to do a reading next week for Snow Queen,  has it fully sunk in that this travel memoir, which has meant so much to me, is now out in the world and available again.

The book was originally published by Counterpoint in 2007 and very well published, I might add. But time passes and books disappear from the shelves of bookstores, replaced by newer titles. A couple of years ago Counterpoint graciously returned the rights to me, and the University of Minnesota Press, which has published other books of mine on Sápmi and Scandinavia, bought the rights and set the wheels in motion for a fresh new edition. I was pleased when they scheduled the book for the same year that From Lapland to Sápmi was to be published. In many ways the two titles are bookends for my interests in the high North of Scandinavia.

Snow Queen tells the story of three winters spent mostly above the Arctic Circle in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The first trip, from November 2001 through most of February, 2022 was the most extensive. I traveled by train, bus, plane, and coastal steamer from Stockholm to Kiruna in Sweden to Honningsvåg near the North Cape, back down to Alta and Tromsø, over to Kautokeino and Karasjok on the Finnmark Plateau, and then to Inari, Finland. After going south to Rovaniemi and Kiruna again, I headed to Helsinki, and then back up to Inari. My second trip in 2004 took me from late January through early March back to the Kiruna area and Jokkmokk, and my third trip, in April, 2005 (it was still winter up there!) brought me back to Kiruna. One of the most fascinating things was to track the construction of the Icehotel from piles of snow around tunnel-forms through its melting under the April sunshine back into the Torne River. 

Building an Ice Wall, 2004

I loved just about every minute of it (the dogsledding trip not so much), and I learned a massive amount from reading and talking to people: journalists, tour guides, writers, artists, reindeer herders, and lots of Sámi and Nordic folks. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life and led me to write a number of travel articles and essays, culminating in the travel memoir of 2007. It also led to many more trips to Scandinavia over the next twenty years, some of them back to the high North, others to Copenhagen and Stockholm, where I buried myself in archives much of the time in order to write about the artist and ethnographer, Emilie Demant Hatt. It also led me to a consuming and continued interest in Sápmi, both as a translator and as a journalist-nonfiction narrative writer.

When asked if I’d like to write a new Afterword to the new edition, I answered, “Definitely.” There was much to say about the ways in which the cultural, environmental, and political landscape of Sápmi had changed in the past years. One of the issues I’d discussed in 2007 was the travel trope of “Untouched Lapland,” the phrase travel sites and brochures continually use to lure tourists to what was once the less desirable season of winter in the North. It became apparent fairly early on to me that Sápmi had been inhabited for millennia, and that it was still inhabited by the Sámi, in spite of colonization and natural resource extraction. In my Afterword I brought up the fact that the phrase was still being used. I write there about the grim news that even more of Sápmi’s landscape is under threat from mining companies and giant windfarms on reindeer herding territory. I also write, however, about the waves of activism by the Sámi and their allies, that are resisting these companies and state-owned concerns.

I’ve continued to follow environmental issues in Scandinavia through sites such as Amnesty Sápmi, the High North News, and the Barents Observers, as well as the posts of activists on Twitter/X, and I occasionally post something about them here on the blog. 

Reindeer Round-up near Gallivare, Sweden, 2004

 

Meanwhile I still cherish the extraordinary opportunities I had back in the day to see the Icehotel being constructed in Jukkasjärvi, to attend the reindeer races in Kiruna, to attend the Sámi and Indigenous film festival in Inari, Finland, and to stroll around the Jokkmokk Winter Market. My appetite for winter and snow has never abated (though it was challenged this past January and February when I struggled with fierce Arctic storms coming off the Atlantic up in Tromsø). For me winter dark and snow is always magical, even when I’m just looking at a snowfall through a winter or through the enchanted lens of memory.

 

 

Liisa-Rávná Finbog in a conversation with Maria Karlsen on duodji

This conversation, recorded a couple of years ago on YouTube  between the Sámi scholar and duojár Liisa-Rávná Finbog and art student and duojár Maria Karlsen, both in Norway, is one of the most insightful dialogs I’ve ever heard about the importance and process of making duodji. In English with Sámi subtitles. 

Liisa-Rávná Finbog (L) and  Maria Karlsen (R), 2021

Midwest Talks about From Lapland to Sápmi

 

 

In just a few days I set off for Minnesota by train from Seattle, a two- day journey. In addition to visiting friends and admiring the fall colors, I'll be giving three talks based on my book, From Lapland to Sápmi, in Duluth, Minneapolis, and Northfield. I'm more than thrilled to be visiting places with such strong connections with the Nordic countries and with Sámi Americans. 

If you live anywhere near these cities, please join me! I'd love to meet you and share a slideshow on " Sámi Collections and Sámi Museums in the Nordic Countries." 

9/28 (Thurs):   University of  Minnesota, Duluth, Library 4^th Floor Rotunda: 6 pm. Co-sponsored by the Sami Cultural Center of NorthAmerica

10/4 (Wed): St Olaf College, Tomsen Hall 280, Northfield: 4 pm

10/5 (Thurs): American Swedish Institute, Minneapolis: 6 pm

For a taste of what I'll be talking about, here's a short radio interview that just aired at "MN Reads" on The North 103.3, out of Duluth, MN 

 

 

German Museum Will Repatriate Ancient Drum to South Sámi museum, Saemien Sijte

Three hundred years ago, in 1723, the Norwegian missionary Thomas von Westen took a sacred Sámi drum belonging to Bendix Andersen and Jon Torchelsen. Von Westen and this drum, along with all the other drums he collected by coercion and force from Sámi communities around and north of Trondheim, is the subject of one of the chapters in my recent book, From Lapland to Sápmi. Unlike many of von Westen’s consficated drums, which burned in the great Copenhagen fire of 1728, this drum, the Freavnantjahke gievrie, or Drum from Frøyning Mountain, went from the Royal Kunstkammer to a castle in Germany, and from there eventually to the Meiningen Museum. The Iron Curtain kept its whereabouts mysterious until the 1990s, when staff members at the National Museum of Denmark decided to try to track it down. It was exhibited on loan in Trondheim in 2017.

In 2021, Saemien Sijte, the South Sámi museum and cultural center in Snåsa, two hours north of Trondheim, opened negotiations with the Meiningen Museum for the permanent repatriation of the drum. On June 21, 2023 Meiningen Museum decided at its board meeting to return the Freaynantjahke gievrie to Saemien Sijte. It’s the first German museum to return a drum but may not be the last. Discussions between the Sámi Parliament and other museums in Berlin and Dresden, among other cities, have opened as to the possibility of more repatriations.Birgitta Fossum, museum director at Saemien Sijte, wrote in a press release:

 "Drums have been and are important in Sami society. They were sacred and important guides in life, and they were often seen by missionaries as tools of the devil. Thomas von Westen wanted to collect drums and use the knowledge he gained to Christianize the Sami by demonizing the religion. Most of the drums preserved today were collected by missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries and later by museums. This is a painful history, and the fact that we are now finally getting the drums back is a step towards coming to terms with history. This is our cultural heritage that we can now finally manage ourselves."

The Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees of the Meiningen-Eisenach Cultural Foundation, State Secretary for Culture Tina Beer, says,

 "I am very happy about the outcome of the talks and thank all those involved as well as the Norwegian partners for their pragmatic and constructive approach. A ritual object that is important for the cultural identity of the long-persecuted Sámi people is now returning exactly 300 years after it was confiscated. It is good and important that even long-ago processes of transferring cultural property are brought to meaningful solutions. This return is an act of respect and recognition towards the northern Norwegian communities and their cultural identity. We are committed to acknowledging past injustices and ushering in a new era of intercultural dialogue and cooperation."

Three New Books From Sápmi

 

Today I want to highlight several books about Sápmi published in the last couple of years: a novel, an autobiographical graphic novel, and a book of writing published in connection with the 2022 Sámi Pavilion at the Biennale in Venice.

 

The End of Drum-Time by American author, Hanna Pylväinen, is a historical novel set in Sweden in the mid-1800s, at a time when the new pietistic Lutheran movement called Laestadianism was taking root in northern Scandinavia, particularly among the Sámi and Kven people. Named after the Swedish-Sámi pastor Lars Levi Laestadius—dubbed “Mad Lasse” in the novel—the novel follows the paths of several characters: two of the pastor’s daughters, and several reindeer herding families. One of the great pleasures of the novel is Pylväinen’s deep knowledge of the weather and terrain of the Torne Valley and the small church village where most of the action takes place. Pylväinen has apparently visited Northern Sweden and Norway often and embedded herself with a reindeer-herding family. Her research shows in detailed descriptions of the herds and tent life.

The writing is rich, though the sentences are often long, and parts of the story move a little slowly. The novel has been billed as a love story, but the awkward erotic relationship between Willa, Lars Levi’s odd daughter, and Ivvár, a troubled young herder whose father has converted to the new faith, was not the most compelling aspect of the story for me. I savored instead the scenery and historical aspects of the book. Pylväinen herself grew up in a Laestadian sect in the United States, and she captures the strangeness of a world steeped in sin and redemption, but also in the wide-open spaces and community life of the Sámi siidas before industrialization and assimilation.

 

I picked up the autobiographical graphic novel, Da vi var samer (When We Were Sámi) by Mats Jonsson in Oslo this past February. It was translated in 2023 from Swedish into Norwegian. Sadly, it’s not too likely to find its way into English, though one of Jonsson’s autobiographical graphic novels, Hey Princess, was translated ten years ago. That book was described as taking its place “in the proud tradition of self-deprecating, confessional, sex-obsessed and guilt-ridden autobiographical comics, but stakes out a unique identity by virtue of its Nordic setting and biting social criticism.”

https://swedishbookreview.org

 “When We Were Sámi” is also full of self-deprecating humor, satire, and insight, but its subject matter is more somber and searching. Jonsson tells the story of learning after his grandfather’s death that the family comes from Måla, Sweden, and that until early in the twentieth century they considered themselves Forest Sámi. The discovery of papers and photographs in a hidden chest leads Jonsson on a quest to find out more about his family’s history. In doing so, he also goes back in time to illustrate Swedish history and the deliberate erasure of the Forest Sámi’s existence. Unlike the reindeer-herding Sámi who were allowed to keep their reindeer, while subject to ever-greater state control, the Forest Sámi were continually pushed out of their territories to make room for settlers, loggers, and farmers from Finland and Southern Sweden. Eventually Jonsson’s family gave up, assimilated, and did not talk about their past.

This is a part of Swedish history that even Swedes don’t know, much less those of us from other countries, and it’s presented in a vigorous black and white images and lively monologs and dialogs with family and friends. “When We Were Sámi” is the first graphic novel to have been nominated for the prestigious August Prize in 2021 and one of a only a few works on the Sámi to be nominated throughout the prize’s long history. I found it engrossing and sometimes unbearably sad, as well as straight-talking and funny. 

 

Čatnosat: The Sámi Pavilion, Indigenous Art, Knowledge, and Sovereignty, edited by Liisa-Rávná Finbog, Katya Garcia-Anton, and Beaska Niillas was published in 2022 in conjunction with the Sámi Pavilion’s chosen artists that year at the Venice Biennale. Pauliina Feodoroff, Máret Ánne Sara and Anders Sunna. The book’s format is intriguing: spiral-bound and non-linear in the sense that each of the three sections can be opened around the spiral as wished, giving a feeling of a circle. Something that’s true of other Sámi art forms, like the joik.

 The contributions by the artists themselves, the editors, and a few other respected Sámi authors and poets such as Sigbjørn Skåden, Timimie Gassko Märak, and Ánde Somby, are in English and/or Sámi. I see the intent of the book project, but somehow didn’t find it always reader friendly. Perhaps because in the course of presenting my own work I continually encounter readers who are encountering Sápmi—its inhabitants, its creativity, its history, its political relevance—for the first time. I could have wished for these editors to have supplied a little more introductory material for those new to Sápmi. What I did very much enjoy about the book were the photos of the artworks displayed at the Biennale, and the words and background photographs supplied by the artists of friends and family. The different personalities and intentions and sheer talent of the three artists were explored in personal ways that were easy to connect with.