Lapponia

Translating Danish

2012-01-10T18:24:00.000-08:00

I’m just now surfacing from a long happy period of writing and reading to find myself in 2012. I’ve had good news that the university press interested in my translation of Emilie Demant Hatt’s With the Lapps in the High Mountains, first published in 1913, is soon to make a final decision on bringing it out in English. The two readers’ reports have been positive and encouraging. This has sent me back to checking and polishing the translation of this wonderful narrative line by line.

It’s been a while since I read most of text thoroughly—and many of the changes are simply to insert a comma or a tiny missed word. But here and there I find an embarrassing mistake, for instance writing “apron” instead of “scarf” because I obviously was dozing off when I translated forklæde for tørklæde. Sometimes I decide that I’d like to change the English syntax a little or just use a more interesting word—a great chance to pore through my old Thesaurus. Perhaps it’s just that I’m more familiar with the material, but sometimes I think that my Danish actually has improved (Could it have been all those Leif Davidsen spy thrillers I read during the fall?).

I started out originally as a Norwegian translator. The written languages aren’t so different, but some things still trip me up in Danish—the same word but a different meaning (rar in Danish means pleasant; in Norwegian, rar is strange or odd). Danish seems to me to have longer, more Germanic sentences, a different rhythm. While Norwegian has a staccato speed of shorter or half sentences broken up by lengthier phrases. Demant Hatt’s book is full of paragraphs of independent and dependent clauses and a forest of semi-colons, many of which I transformed into shorter sentences. I tried to keep her wit and marvelous descriptive passages in English. I hope I have. It’s certainly been a pleasure to try.

Talking about Women and the Sea Oct 18 in Vancouver

2011-10-12T15:20:00.000-07:00

I'll be giving a talk about my book The Pirate Queen in Vancouver next week. It's presented by the Charles H. Scott Gallery and the Vancouver Maritime Museum in conjunction with The Voyage, or Three Years at Sea Part II. Please join me--if you're in Canada.

October 18^th 2011
7:30pm, Theatre Rm 301, South Building
Emily Carr University of Art and Design

For more information

Helle Thorning-Schmidt and the women who went before

2011-10-11T15:20:00.000-07:00

Henriette Crone (1874-1933)
Kontorist / clerk.
Socialdemokratiet / the Social Democratic Party.

Landstinget 1920-33.

In honor of Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the first woman prime minister of Denmark, the Royal Library in Copenhagen, is displaying photographs of early female politicians in Denmark's history. Here's a link to the library's Flickr site, with text in English.

Dusting and Dreaming

2011-10-06T10:12:00.000-07:00

This year, between preparing for a long trip to Scandinavia and catching up after I returned, not to mention my journey in between, I missed my annual spring cleaning. This past weekend I began a belated book-dusting campaign in my office. First, though, the wall behind the bookcases had to be painted a luscious shade of persimmon red. All the books were taken off the shelves, dusted, and put back. Not without a lot of paging through their pleasures and some nostalgic sighing.

Most of the books in my office have to do with writing, editing, and nonfiction (the novels, seafaring, gardening, and art books are in long bookcases in the attic rooms), and most of the nonfiction is travel. Even though I’ve been trying to force myself to winnow my collections, it’s hard to give up the travel books, even the guidebooks that are hopelessly out of date. My Rough Guide to Eastern Europe from twenty years ago promises that “the stereotype of a uniform Eastern Bloc is swiftly demolished.” I spent a couple of months in 1992 in Hungary and Transylvania, poking around, in order to write my Cassandra Reilly mystery, Trouble in Transylvania, which deals in part with orphans and adoption. Romania was barely out of its long isolation and still reeling from decades under the dictator Ceausecu. All that has utterly changed. The guidebook remains a moment caught in time.

I have two shelves of books on Ireland and England and the same number on Spain and Italy, all collected during the years when I traveled more frequently in those countries. Now that Scandinavia has overtaken my interest (there are eighteen feet of much-loved books about Denmark, Sweden, and Norway) and my entire travel budget, other places in the world have receded as possibilities. But handling my travel library for an entire day brought back not only the memory of places I’ve loved but also the places I’ve never been. Some of my favorite books, in fact, are about countries and continents that I’m unlikely to ever visit––Siberia, for instance, (In Siberia by Colin Thubron) or Afghanistan (The Places in Between by Rory Stewart).

The wall is red, the books are back on the shelves, but my world is larger for having looked at my collection of travel books. I keep looking away from the computer, over my shoulder, and dreaming of far-away places.

Baiki's 20th Anniversary Issue

2011-10-04T09:58:00.000-07:00

The newest issue of Baiki is out, marking the international Sámi journal's 20^th anniversary issue. Baiki was started by American Faith Fjeld in 1991 and covers Sámi arts, literature, history, spirituality, and environmental concerns, along with posting events in the North American Sámi community. "Báiki is the nomadic reindeer-herding society's word for cultural identity and survival, ‘the home that lives in the heart.’"

The Fall 2011 issue has an articles on noiadi drums in the U.K., the meaning of play and games in Sámi culture, and a personal story of a woman finding her Sámi roots in the Lofoten Islands of Norway. Baiki also has reprinted my posts from this year about Sara Wheeler’s book, The Magnetic North into a single essay.

Information about ordering is on the Baiki website.

Travel Writing Class Hugo House Oct 8

2011-10-04T08:45:00.000-07:00

From Travel Blog to Travel Essay

You’ve been keeping journals of your travels or posting to a blog about your trip. Is there more to explore in a longer and deeper narrative about your journey and your encounters with other cultures? Bring your colorful bits and pieces of description and insight to this class, and we will work on quilting them together into essays. We will look at using photographs, research and objects to enhance the narratives, and will pay special attention to methods of revision that bring distant places and people to life.

http://hugohouse.org/class/travel-blog-travel-essay

Ismail Haji Ahmed and Hamar, Norway

2011-08-03T10:53:00.000-07:00

Ismail Haji Ahmed, a nineteen-year-old Norwegian who died at Utøya, was also known as Isma Brown. At the age of ten he came with his family from Somalia to the small town of Hamar, north of Oslo. They were asylum seekers, like many immigrants to Norway. But Ahmed wasn’t your typical immigrant teen. In a touching portrait in the August 1 New York Times, Ahmed is described as a bright, “flamboyant” young man.

I’ll say.

“In a city where ethnic Norwegians and immigrants have only started to become cohesive, Mr. Ahmed, a native of Somalia, would stroll down the streets in Lady Gaga-inspired outfits of his own making, holding impromptu public dance parties with his friends from Norway, Somalia, Bosnia and elsewhere.”

I lived in Hamar for four months many years ago. It was even more staid then, if you can imagine, when an American girl working as an au-pair was seen as exotic for wearing jeans and teaching some local kids to play softball. I would have loved to have seen Isma Brown swanning down the main street of the town and I mourn his senseless death.

The stories that are coming out of the tragedy in Norway point to the reality that the country is changing. Many people are standing up to say no to intolerance and yes to a more inclusive society.

A friend of mine from Tromsø wrote me the other day that “the Norwegian ‘we’ includes many more groups than before. I haven't always felt proud of my country, but now I am. I feel we turn out to be better than we thought we could be.”

A vigil in Seattle for victims of the Norwegian tragedy

2011-07-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

The Nordic Heritage Museum will be holding a vigil on Tuesday, July 26 at 6:00 pm to honor the victims of the terror attack in Norway.

There will be a moment of silence and an offering of prayers for the victims of the Oslo attack.

Please join the Honorary Consul of Norway, Kim Nesselquist, and others as we remember the victims of this tragedy. This is the time for all of us to come together, there is strength in community.

Our hearts go out to all who have been affected by this tragedy.

[from Eric Nelson, CEO, Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle]

Online Exhibit of Johan Turi's Life and Work in Norway

2011-07-16T08:48:00.000-07:00

In honor of the anniversary of the publication in 1910 of Johan Turi's narrative about the Sami, Norway's State Archives presents this digital exhibit about Turi. The introduction is in Norwegian or English. Most of the text is in Sami. The illustrations and photos speak for themselves.

Johan Turi's Book --Muitalus sámiid birra--New Sámi Edition

2011-07-07T17:25:00.000-07:00

To mark the hundred-year anniversary last year of the publication of Johan Turi's classic narrative, Muitalus sámiid birra, a revised edition came out in 2010 from the academic press, CálliidLágádu, based in Karasjok, Norway. The editor, Mikael Svonni, is a Sámi professor now at the University of Tromsø. Svonni went back to the notebooks in which Turi originally wrote down his stories, memories, and thoughts and re-transcribed them, taking out added punctuation, and restoring a different kind of flow.

Mikael Svonni was kind enough to give copies of this edition to everyone who presented at the International Conference on Johan Turi in March this year in Tromsø. I can't read Sámi but I'm happy to look at the text and illustrations of a book that's meant a lot to me.

Muitalus sámiid birra was originally composed in 1908 with the encouragement of the Danish artist and later ethnographer Emilie Demant Hatt, who had spent fifteen months in Lapland and spoke Sámi. She took these notebooks back to Denmark with her, transcribed them, and translated them with the help of Anders Pedersen and Vilhelm Thomsen, two philologists. The final book was published in an innovative bilingual edition in Danish and Sámi. It was soon translated to German and eventually to English and several other languages. It's currently being re-translated into English by Thomas DuBois of the University of Wisconsin.

This beautiful new large-format edition also includes the original artwork in the 1910 edition, etchings of Turi's sketches of reindeer and Sámi herders, often drawn as if seen from above, along with other paintings by Turi.

Olive Murray Chapman

2011-07-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

I had a call the other day from a TV producer in England. He was interested in what I knew about the British travel writer Olive Murray Chapman as his company was in the process of possibly creating a segment on her winter travels in Lapland for a documentary series on women adventurers. In the thirties Chapman visited a variety of countries and wrote books about her travels––Iceland, Cyprus, Madagascar, and Lapland––books that included photographs and watercolors.

"The Lapp Market at Bossekop", watercolor by Olive Murray Chapman

Her book, Across Lapland with Sledge and Reindeer (1932) was one of the historical sources for my own book, The Palace of the Snow Queen. I liked Chapman’s courage and spirit. She set off alone by ship from England to Oslo (“The North Sea in February can be very unpleasant”) and then took a train north to Trondheim, the coastal steamer up to Hammerfest, and then a smaller boat down to Alta. Her intention was to visit the “Lapp market” traditionally held in Bossekop outside Alta, and then drive a reindeer pulka into the interior of Finnmark. While her views on the Sámi now seem outdated, Chapman made an attempt to summarize her observations and reading for the general reader and does a credible job. Her description of the Bossekop winter market is valuable, given that with the occupation of Norway by German forces in 1940, the centuries-old tradition came to an end and was never revived.

I pulled out her slender book to reread her accounts of the intense cold and the striking beauty of the Arctic in late winter when the sun is returning and it brought back many memories of my own journey—unhappily by dogsled—over sections of the Finnmark Plateau. I wish I’d had her furs and her “leather flying helmet” (I imagine Amelia Earhart traveling by reindeer) on my trip but I didn’t envy Chapman the blizzard she encountered on her way to Mollesjok fjellstue. Having been at Mollesjok during the last days of December years ago, I can attest that the tourist cabin, while not any more luxurious than seventy years ago, was still a very welcome sight to our group, just as it was to Chapman as she imagined "the joyous thought of warmth, food, and shelter..."

Christian Jungersen's The Exception

2011-06-15T20:53:00.000-07:00

I’ve just finished the Danish novel Undtagelsen – in English, The Exception, by Christian Jungersen. I bought it in April in the Copenhagen airport on a friend’s suggestion. I’d never heard of it, had no idea it was a European bestseller, and had been translated into English (reviewed in The New York Times no less). I spent two weeks completely engrossed in this psychological thriller. It’s rare to encounter a plot so Byzantine that up until the last few pages I couldn’t have guessed how it was going to end and who would be responsible for a whole series of lesser and greater crimes.

The Exception has four main female characters, all of whom work at the small, invented office of the Danish Center for Genocide Information. There’s a great deal about genocide in the background; in the foreground are the complex and shifting relationships among the women and the petty, mean, and incomprehensible ways they treat each other. In reality I don’t quite go along with this portrait of women coworkers and the philosophical underpinning of the novel is a bit jejune (we are all evil under the surface, or no, we aren’t). But as a masterful story with a hundred twists and turns and real insight into the dark depths of office rivalries and harassment, it’s riveting.

I was thinking as I read it, about another Scandinavian mystery from earlier this year, Snowman, by Norwegian Jo Nesbø. A gruesome page-turner, but I have to say that the murderer seemed obvious to me from around page 120 or so. And for all the ratcheting up of tension, the ending seemed contrived. How exactly was someone supposed to bring in enough snow to make a giant snowman in an upstairs room while the people downstairs were around? I felt plagued by questions like this. But The Exception, while hardly a traditional thriller, had my mind spinning like a top. I’m still putting all the clues together, a day after finishing it, and full of admiration for Jungersen’s cleverness and psychological understanding.

Danish Windpower

2011-05-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

I've been back from my trip for three weeks but given a bug I picked up on the plane and visits to the dentist and paying bills, starting to revise my novel and making a living (also weeding), I haven't yet been able to sit down and organize my photos before today.

I was struck by this shot from a walk on Fur Island in the Limford in Denmark. It was early April and life seemed simple.

Maybe this picture also appeals to me because of high gas prices, wars in the Middle East and disasters in Japan. Denmark is working on becoming energy self-sufficient within a decade.

Frederiksberg

2011-04-15T08:34:00.000-07:00

Today I was working "at home" in Vesterbro and went out for a walk mid-day with my camera to enjoy the sunshine.I had been planning to go to Copenhagen's City Museum, right next door. But instead I contented myself with taking a picture of the model city (1580) in its courtyard.

I walked up Frederiksberg Alle to the large gardens and park and then back along Gammel Kongevej. Two Danish women artists I've written about, Emilie Mundt and Marie Luplau, had their home and art school on the fourth floor of number 136. A door or two away is a used music store where I found a CD set of Leonard Bernstein conducting Carl Nielsen. Although I love the Blomstedt recordings, Bernstein really captures the spirit of Nielsen, especially in the opening bars. Gammel Kongevej reminds me of the Upper West Side--a quieter version. Lots of people out and sitting around in cafes with faces turned toward the sun. Chocolate shops full of Easter eggs and bunnies. Flower shops in abundance.

Last night around eleven I was sitting here reading a thriller (Liza Marklund) and all of a sudden: bang, bang, bang. It sounded like gun shots in the street. I looked out the window and a short distance away, fireworks shot up into the sky. Why? The Queen's birthday? But that's on Saturday.

No, it was Tivoli. Celebrating its opening April 14th.

A star magnolia at Frederiksberg Have

Moler cliffs of Fur

2011-04-13T01:28:00.000-07:00

Raining steadily in Copenhagen. I’m staying at a friend’s flat while he’s away, high up in a converted apartment in Vesterbro. Even though the sun’s not shining it is light here and a pleasant place to be writing up my notes from research at the National Archives.

Time to post a photograph of a brighter day a week or more ago, on the island of Fur in the Limford. Part of my novel about Emilie Demant Hatt takes place there. I’ve long been fascinated by the geological story of Fur and its fossils. The cliff formations of ash and clay date from the Eocene. Read more about Fur here.

Sunday in Copenhagen

2011-04-10T12:37:00.000-07:00

I've been working hard the last couple of days in the National Archives here in Copenhagen, reading through Emilie Demant Hatt's letters. It was time to take a break today. My friend Lis took me to Ingolf's Kaffeebar for brunch. The Danes are now into brunch big time; if you order it, a plate of small delicacies arrives, everything from gravlax to scrambled eggs to cheese slices and homebaked bread. We sat outside in the back terrace in the sunshine. It was easily in the 60s today. Blissfully spring.

Encouragement from the Dalai Lama at the Skive train station

2011-04-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

You know how it goes. You get to the train station in a foreign country and the print-out you have of a schedule turns out to be wrong. Instead of waiting twenty minutes for the train, it turns out you have to wait over an hour. And the waiting room isn't possible, because the cleaner has poured soap and wax all over the floors and wants to get on with doing a nice scrub while no one is around. So you go down to the platform (this was in Skive, Denmark, and I was on my way to Aarhus this morning to retrieve a suitcase and then to Odense) and it's windy and chill.

And suddenly you see a Danish railway poster with a cheering recommendation to be kind and you look more closely and it's a quote by the Dalai Lama and there's even a fun picture of him. The message, translated is:

Be kind and friendly
when it's possible.
It is always possible.

I like Denmark for so many reasons. This is one of them.

Airports

2011-04-01T01:20:00.000-07:00

Back in Denmark on a pale spring day in Aarhus and heading over to the Limfjord for several days on the island of Fur. One of the problems, at least for me, with trying to keep up a blog while traveling is that so much energy is consumed getting from place to place. I've been either flying on Icelandic or SAS and in one Scandinavian airport after another. I always imagine myself writing interesting posts about new experiences and thoughts, but in fact I've either been talking with people, working in archives, or sleeping. Or walking down long airport corridors.

Yesterday en route through Copenhagen's Kastrup Airport from Stockholm to Aarhus I was struck by the otherworldly look of this endless corridor to Gate A25.

More on Tromsø

2011-03-31T10:39:00.000-07:00

A few days after leaving Tromsø, the snow is already a blur in my mind. Three days of snow blanketing the town and then clearing briefly, then snow again. I’m posting two more photos to help remember the thickly swaddled streets.Out at night walking, taking a taxi from a friend's after dinner down the steep streets back to the hotel, I felt like I was dreaming.

Tromsø, Norway

2011-03-26T03:38:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Tromsø a couple of days ago in a snowstorm and it’s been on and off snowing ever since. My hotel room looks out at the bridge between Tromsø (an island) and the mainland, so my view is of the ship’s traffic and docks below as well as of the large mountain and Arctic Cathedral across the water.

My work here is done—meetings with researchers at Tromsø museum and the International Johan Turi Conference yesterday at the university—so I have a day to play hooky with my writer friend Ragnhild Nilstun. Now I’m glad I brought all my winter clothes, even though when I fly south again tomorrow to Stockholm, I’ll be wondering how to lighten my load.

Tromsø is shockingly far north—70 degrees I remember—and yet it has a cozy feel: lots of wooden houses, sometimes brightly painted, and many people in the streets. It’s a university town and a fishing town, a polar research center, a tourist destination (though far more so in summer).

Copenhagen Botanic Gardens on a mild spring day

2011-03-23T12:26:00.000-07:00

Sami talks and videos online

2011-03-15T16:18:00.000-07:00

Great links to Sami talks and videos from Kari Lie, Visiting Assistant Professor of Norwegian,
St. Olaf College, who teaches a course on the Sami.

"Magne Ove Varsi came to St. Olaf as a part of an
Indigenous People's Conference. His talk, in English, is archived and
accessible online.

http://www.stolaf.edu/multimedia/streams/playevent.cfm?eventid=472

"On a related note, I have collected a number of videos that are available on
YouTube that I use in my Sami course (which includes the three that he shows
during his talk)."

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5A0F62D2B3B6D7DE

Swedish Center in Seattle Celebration of 50 years on Dexter Ave

2011-03-08T18:00:00.000-08:00

Friday, Mar. 11. Our Building Turns 50. The neighborhood has grown up around our building since it opened half a century ago, but it's still the pride of Dexter Avenue. If you look this good at 50, you'll be celebrating too. Put on your skinny tie and come to our dinner dance. We'll party like it's 1961! Keynote speaker: architect/historian Susan Boyle. 7 p.m. $50 includes dinner and dancing to ’60s-style DJ music. RSVP by Thursday, Mar. 9, by e-mail or call 206-283-1090. Or print and return the reply card.

“Four Legs Good”: Sara Wheeler on the Sámi

2011-03-07T10:40:00.000-08:00

Just one last post about Sara Wheeler’s new book about the Arctic, The Magnetic North, and then I’ll move on. I'm now reading Gretel Ehrlich's book about her travels in the circumpolar Arctic, In the Empire of Ice.

In a post a week ago I talked about a likely mistake she made in her chapter on Lapland with Johan Turi, so no need to rehash that. Instead I’d like to express a little consternation at the sketchy nature of the chapter, “Four Legs Good,” and then add a few specific comments about Sámi culture.

Most of Wheeler’s hands-on knowledge of Scandinavian Sápmi seems to come from a couple of days she spent in the company of Lennart Pittja, who runs a company called Pathfinder from his home district near Gällivare, Sweden. Pittja, whose father is Sámi, is a likeable and informed man and believes strongly in providing tourists with correct information. He’s not the only Sámi to engage in tourism; he is certainly one of the best guides you could have. I, too, spent some time with Lennart Pittja and his assistant Anders, in 2004, when I was writing a long article for Slate about traveling in Sápmi, and Lennart appears in my book, The Palace of the Snow Queen. The problem I see is that Wheeler doesn’t seem to have talked to anyone else in Sápmi, but instead cobbles together a chapter about the Norwegian resistance, Johan Turi, and assorted statistics about the Sámi people from written material.

As a result, she doesn’t write anything that’s exactly wrong, but much of it lacks context and the multivoiced resonance that good journalism can provide. As an example, Wheeler writes, “A Sámi parliament of sorts does exist in Sweden, based in Kiruna, the most northerly town, but it has no constitutional status and, according to Pittja, is little more than an advisory service.”

First, of all, it is not a parliament “of sorts.” It is a parliament with elected representatives and a budget. Not every Sámi person thinks much of it but many are proud that it exists at all. It’s true that the parliament has no particular power to change Swedish government policy, but to disregard the Sámediggi (the parliament) as a symbol of autonomy seems rather disrespectful. Several generations of Sámi activists worked hard to establish its structure and demand its recognition.

If you want to look more closely at institutions that the Sámi have created in the last forty years, you would look not only at the parliaments in Norway and Sweden, but at the Sámi libraries in Karasjok and Jokkmokk, the community college in Jokkmokk, the Sami studies programs at the Swedish University of Umeå and the Norwegian University of Tromsø, at the natural history and ethnographic museums in Karasjokk, Tromsø, Jokkmokk, and, perhaps most interesting of them all, Siida in Inari, Finland, where gatherings are held regularly, and film festivals, musical events, art exhibits, and conferences all take place.

One of the things that the Swedish Sámi movement does very well, I think, is to have created material in print and online about modern Sámi lives. This material is available in English at Sápmi. The Tromsø Museum also has a wealth of information in English about the Sámi people. The Sámi have an uphill job explaining to the rest of the world that they are not all reindeer herders, do not live in tents, and do not get about in sledges drawn by reindeer. They are designers for Ikea, college professors, office managers, artists, teachers, journalists, and cab drivers. In Sweden a few years ago, I was waiting at a bus stop after getting off the ferry from Gotland and fell into a conversation with a young woman listening to her iPod. It turned out she was Sámi and an air traffic controller, originally from Gällivare (she knew Lennart Pittja).

Only ten percent or fewer of the Sámi now own reindeer. Therefore, Sámi identity rests on many different aspects of life, from certain dishes, to religion, to family memories, to music and culture—not just from the past but from a culture that is constantly being created. To write about Sámi mainly as disenfranchised herders and to cast them as only victims of land grabs and pollution is simplistic and robs the reader of a truer picture of life in the North. The Sámi have been persecuted and defamed for centuries, but they are far from dying out. Their culture has made a strong resurgence in the last decades and their resilience should be applauded. The point might also be made that the Scandinavian Sámi are also Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish citizens and, as such, have access to better health care and benefits than most people in the United States, not to mention the developing countries. A number of Sámi use their relative privilege to connect with other indigenous peoples around the world and find common cause.

To end, it’s important to also point out that Fennoscandia is quite different in geography and population than many of the places that Wheeler has visited. The entire “Northern Skullcap,” as it’s often called, is a rich mix of peoples: Finns, Norwegian-Finns, Sámi, Russians, Norwegians (even a small colony of Sri Lankans who now live in the North of Norway and work in fish factories). The fishing cultures along the coast go back many generations; these people are also affected by climate change and are responding to it. A visit to Vadsø or Hammerfest might have been an interesting counterpoint to Wheeler’s other stories of Arctic cities like Murmansk and Fairbanks.

I notice that Gretel Ehrlich doesn't have a chapter about Fennoscandia in her book, perhaps in recognition of the complexities involved in trying to write about Northern countries that have a very different cultural and economic base than the rest of the Arctic.

Sara Wheeler’s The Magnetic North

2011-02-28T11:02:00.000-08:00

I’ve found it difficult to approach writing about this book, and not because I hated it. What Sara Wheeler does well, she does very well. Much of her descriptive language, particularly about Alaska, is fresh and lyrical. Her sense of outrage and melancholy about melting icecaps and warming seas is contagious. This is a book that will doubtless have an effect on perceptions of the Arctic, its fragile environment and its threatened species. The notices have been uniformly glowing and reviewers have also noted Wheeler’s humor and ability to summarize scientific research with panache.

I don’t disagree with those reviews insofar as they concern Wheeler’s humor and literary style. But my own impression of The Magnetic North, which grew steadily as I read, is that Wheeler might better have stuck to what she does well, which is travel writing and delightful potted biographies of polar explorers, rather than taking on issues of the people who live in the circumpolar zone all year round. Wheeler is fine when it comes to describing scientists who hunker into labs and barracks for months out of the year. In scenes reminiscent of those at McMurdo in Antarctica (Terra Incognita), she gives amusing portraits of the men and women of the Arctic programs sponsored by the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. She clearly feels at home in often cramped quarters and trying conditions.

She’s less adept at describing the lives of people who live full-time above the Arctic Circle, some of them indigenous, others not. Her time with them is brief, accidental, or purchased (some are hired guides). She tends to rely on writings about indigenous people rather than investigating their own writing about themselves. Consequently her attitude often comes across as condescending and pitying. To me it smacks far too much of the colonialism that she decries so often.

Arriving in Iqaluit, her first experience of the Canadian Arctic, en route to a geological station, she writes “They should have called it Fattytown, not Iqaluit. Obesity was a sad symbol of cultural collision. It represented exile, metaphorically speaking. Cut off from a traditional diet of marine foodstuffs and berries, people had ballooned into grotesque parodies of the white man. Canadians had tried hard to put things right, but they couldn’t turn the clock back.”

Leaving aside the obvious point that Inuit are also Canadians, this is an offensive way to characterize an entire populace and unfair, too. Obesity is on the rise in every Western Country. In fact, England has the highest obesity rates in Europe and the West Midlands is judged to be the most obese place in the EU, according to a study reported in December, 2010 in the Independent.

Are the overweight people of the West Midlands “grotesque parodies of the white man?” Would Wheeler not take some flack in her native England for characterizing Birmingham as Fattytown?

This is a particularly egregious example of fly-in/fly-out travel writing––generalized observations about the exotic laced with ignorance disguised as wit. Elsewhere in The Magnetic North, the native peoples are more remarkable for their absence. In the same chapter on the Canadian Arctic, we hear a great deal about the film Nanook of the North and Farley Mowat’s books, but little about the still-continuing culture, art-making, and spirituality of the Inuit and the strength and resilience of many communities. Noah, a “bear monitor,” employed with the Canada-Nunavut Geoscience Office, is one of the few natives with a voice. To him is given a few pages that hint at what Wheeler missed. He says, “I feel we at least have a voice now, and some political power, so we can express our position.” Noah is a blogger on the site Igloo Talk. This is a rare mention of agency on the part of indigenous peoples in the Arctic, and welcome.

A great weakness in Wheeler’s book is her puzzling lack of attention to the scientific and cultural work that indigenous people of all the circumpolar countries are doing, separately and together in multicountry organizations, to document and respond to climate change. Obviously climate change affects the entire globe and it’s reasonable that scientific organizations based in the U.S. and U.K. are up in the Arctic taking salinity measurements and monitoring the meltdown of Greenland. The developed world is responsible for this climate crisis after all. But Wheeler shows little or no interest in recording what native peoples are doing, as scientists, researchers, and politicians. She doesn’t mention the many exhibits, books, and conferences that take place among Arctic peoples and the coalitions and sharing of knowledge across state boundaries.

Here I want to mention at least one resource about indigenous people and climate change in the Arctic, the Snowchange project, based in Finland. Here’s a description of the work they do, from their website.

Snowchange is a not-for-profit independent cooperative organisation with headquarters in Finland. The international community network of Snowchange spans all eight Arctic states. Most of the member communities and families are from the various Arctic Indigenous Nations and other subsistence communities.

Our work involves working with the various Northern areas and peoples on the topics of ecological, especially climatic and weather changes from the scientific and traditional knowledge point of view. In addition to the community documentation Snowchange as well works to advance local Indigenous knowledge in the global context and advance decolonisation of the North in the face of rapid changes.

The scientific priority of Snowchange is currently in the following areas of the North:
- The Saami territories of Finland, Russia, Sweden and Norway
- Republic of Sakha-Yakutia, Murmansk and Republic of Karelia in Russian Federation
- Savo, North Karelia and Kainuu, Finland
- Iceland and Faroe Islands
- British Columbia, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, Canada
- Alaska, USA

In addition to the operations in all Arctic countries (United States / Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Greenland and Faroe Islands (Denmark), Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russian Federation) Snowchange has partners in Bolivia, Nepal, Ghana and New Zealand.

I have one of the Snowchange Project’s books, from 2004, sent me by its editor, Elina Helander, a Sámi reindeer owner and a scientist at the Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland. Snowscapes, Dreamscapes is almost 600 pages long and includes voices from North America, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Greenland, Fennoscandia, and many parts of Russia. In addition to research articles, there are photographs, poems, artworks. It is out of print, sadly. For those who would wish to know more about the people of the Arctic, it is the kind of work we need more of.

SNOWHOW

2011-02-25T15:30:00.000-08:00

A friend from Stockholm is flying up to Tromsø, Norway for a conference and mentioned this exhibit. I wish I could see it—sadly, it will be over before I arrive in March. I love the poster. This is Nansen, by the way, one of the coolest of the Polar explorers and a Norwegian national hero.

It’s cheering to see the centuries-old Sámi and Inuit knowledge of snow and ice being recognized as contributing to Arctic exploration.

Sara Wheeler and Johan Turi

2011-02-21T17:54:00.000-08:00

I’ve been reading Sara Wheeler’s new book, The Magnetic North, about her circumpolar travels in the Arctic. I’ve been a fan of Wheeler’s since I read Travels in a Thin Country, about Chile. I thought her narrative about Antarctica¸ Terra Incognita, was a superb piece of travel writing.

I’ll have more to say about The Magnetic North when I finish it. It’s certainly an ambitious project and a rather magical journey around the top of the world.

But today I’d like to look at her chapter on the Sámi, “Four Legs, Good,” and make some specific comments on one section of it, the pages that deal with Johan Turi (1854-1936) and his book, Muittalus sámid birra. Turi is often on my mind because I’ve done so much research on Emilie Demant Hatt, the Danish artist and ethnographer who played a large role in shaping and publishing Turi’s book about his people. I had an essay published last fall in Scandinavian Studies (“How Muittalus Samid Birra was Created”) about their publishing collaboration and will be delivering a paper on that subject at a seminar next month in Tromsø, Norway. The seminar is in honor of the 100^th anniversary of the publication of Turi’s book in its first Danish-Sami bilingual edition and the speakers will include Mikael Svonni, a professor at the University of Tromsø who’s preparing a new Sámi version of M.S.B., and Tom DuBois, who is retranslating the book into English.

I was glad at first to see that Sara Wheeler had included material on Johan Turi in her travel book. After all, M.S.B. has played a significant role, both literary and visual, in Sámi culture. It’s a marvelous narrative and the voice, even in the Danish-to-English translation from the 1930s, sings with poetry. But in continuing to read I found myself confused by Wheeler’s choice to introduce us to Turi through the eyes of the writer Axel Munthe. Munthe was a Swedish psychiatrist who lived an exciting life and traveled frequently, particularly in Italy. He eventually married a British aristocrat and settled in England. His memoir, The Story of San Michele, from 1929, was a bestseller in English. Wheeler quotes from this memoir in describing Munthe’s visit to Johan Turi up in Swedish Lapland.

As soon as I read about Munthe sitting down with Turi and his wife Ellekare, I was suspicious. Johan Turi was a bachelor (although he apparently had at least one child out of wedlock). It was said that he couldn’t attract a wife because of his baldness. He complained about his unmarried state to Emilie Demant Hatt, hinting that she was the one for him. Demant Hatt and Turi’s friendship has often been discussed in print, with some people assuming they were lovers. After researching Demant Hatt for the last decade, I think this is unlikely. There was an age difference of almost twenty years and they came from very different backgrounds. Yet their attachment as friends was real—and complex.

I was further confused in continuing to read the section in Wheeler’s book by the mention of Turi’s “granddaughter, Ristin.” Johan Turi’s brother, Aslak Turi, had a daughter named Ristin—she’s mentioned in Demant Hatt’s book, Med lapperne i højfeldet (“With the Lapps in the High Mountains”). I decided to look at Axel Munthe’s memoir to see what he’d said, and found that Munthe had indeed visited the Turi family. However the Turi he describes seems to be Johan Turi’s father, Olaf. I knew when I read that “Old Turi” had five sons, a thousand reindeer, and spoke Swedish very well it couldn’t be Johan Turi. Olaf was wealthy and a well-known man in the district. His son Johan Turi was widely known not to be all that interested in reindeer-herding; he subsisted as a wolf-hunter and guide. Johan and his father have been conflated here in Wheeler’s recounting.

I think the original source of Wheeler’s mistake might have come from the website of an expedition that took place in 2007 in Finnmark, one that was organized by Adam Munthe, the grandson of Axel Munthe. This expedition, by dogsled, was meant to bring awareness to issues of global warming and the Sámi reindeer herders. But the account on the site of the relationship between Axel Munthe and Johan Turi contains a few errors. While it’s quite possible Johan Turi guided Axel Munthe on his travels in Lapland (Turi acted as guide to many tourists and wrote an amusing book about one of them, Frank Hedges Butler), Turi wouldn’t have invited Munthe to his tent and introduced him to his wife and numerous children—he didn’t have them.

Adam Munthe’s account of his 2007 expedition also includes a diary entry of finding his way to Turi’s house near Torneträsk. “April 4^th 2007. Today we travelled from beneath Cokcu (the Holy Mountain) to Lahtteluokta, where, at the beginning of the 20th century Johan Turi lived and wrote the first book ever written by a Sami. My grandfather was one of those who helped him get it published, and about one hundred years ago they made a journey together through parts of Sapmi where Turi showed the famous physician, ‘real things that should be known by all people.’”

Not quite right. First of all, after years of talking about wanting to write a book about the Sámi, Johan Turi sat down for six weeks in the fall of 1908 in a mining shack near the railway station at Torneträsk with Demant Hatt, who spurred him on to write his memories and impressions in a number of small notebooks. Demant Hatt then took the notebooks back to Denmark where she spent two years transcribing them with the help of scholars in Finno-Urgric, and translating them into Danish. The bilingual book was published with the financial support of Kiruna’s mining director, Hjalmar Lundbohm, who also helped Turi construct his house in the mountains in 1912.

Although Turi’s book wasn’t the first book to come out in Sámi—there had been bibles and other religious texts—it was the first literary text. It made both Turi and Demant Hatt well-known and it was soon translated to German and Swedish (and eventually other languages). The English-language edition finally appeared in 1931 from Jonathan Cape as Turi’s Book of Lapland. I don’t think there’s any evidence that Axel Munthe had anything to do with its publication in the U.K.

I know as a travel writer myself that it’s terribly easy to get something half right. However, there’s quite a bit of research on Johan Turi in English, given his fame, and some things might have been better to check. Adam Munthe’s errors are not Wheeler’s. Still, I question the use of Axel Munthe as a reliable source on the Sámi. While I applaud Wheeler’s intent in writing about Johan Turi, I wish that the story had been factually correct and that other sources had been cited.

The Lapland Express

2011-02-15T15:14:00.000-08:00

Carl-Henrik Berg, a Swedish friend and intrepid librarian outside of Stockholm, sends me this film clip of a 1911 train trip through the Swedish mountains, from Narvik to Riksgrensen. This particular train route, one of the world's most northerly, was constructed with enormous labor in the first years of the 20th century, primarily to bring iron ore from the rich mines of Kiruna and Malmberget to the ice-free harbor at Narvik in Norway. As soon as the route opened, however, hikers and tourists began to make use of the train. The Swedish Touring Club (STF) constructed huts and hostels along the route. The Sami people, too, began to take the train into Kiruna from their mountain homes. The Danish painter and ethnographer, Emilie Demant Hatt, first came to Lapland in 1904 on the so-called Lapland Express. And it was on an iron ore train that she met the Sami wolf-hunter and author Johan Turi, thus beginning a decades-long friendship.

http://filmarkivet.se/sv/Film/?movieid=70&returnurl=http://filmarkivet.se/sv/Sok/?q%3d1911

Harvard Review Online, from the Archives

2011-02-14T08:36:00.000-08:00

A few years ago The Harvard Review published my essay, "Lapponia, " about the death of Descartes in Stockholm one freezing day in winter and about the cross-dressing, soon-to-be-abdicating Queen Christina. HR now has an online presence and has just begun a new feature, "From the Archives," showcasing prose selections from the past ten years. I'm delighted that "Lapponia" is one of two historical essays in this issue. Read it at Harvard Review Online .

Swedish Name Changes

2011-02-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

The New York Times published a fascinating article the other day about Swedish couples changing their last names when they married. Andersson met Karlsson but who wants to be "Andersson-Karlsson" these days? Swedes are going back to earlier family names or just making names up.

The article went on:

"In most cases, couples adopt a new name for the same reasons the Wetterlunds did: to rebel against the hegemony of traditional Swedish surnames ending in “-son” — Johansson, Andersson and Karlsson being the most common. And it does not end there. Of the 100 most common names here, 42 end in “-son.”

"Sweden abounds in names ending in “-son” because of an old Nordic practice, before hereditary surnames were introduced, of using the father’s first name, and the suffix “-son” for a son, or “-dotter” for a daughter"

As someone who changed her own name ten years ago from Wilson to Sjoholm, I have long been interested in Scandinavian naming practices and learned a great deal about them when I was traveling in the maritime countries of the North Atlantic. I wrote about some of these practices in The Pirate Queen, a travel-history of women and the sea.

My father's Swedish grandparents were Svanssons (he was adopted by the Wilsons), so another -son ending wasn't very inspirational. I chose instead a Swedish place-based name, Sjoholm, meaning sea island (or lake island). Now I find I was right in line with contemporary Swedish practice.

Swedish Crime fiction Seattle Event Feb 7 Elliott Bay

2011-02-04T09:50:00.000-08:00

This event may be of interest to readers in Seattle interested in
crime fiction

Before there was Stieg Larsson, there was Leif GW Persson.

In Sweden, Persson is considered the "grand old man" of crime fiction.
Since his first book was published in 1979, Persson has been among the
foremost crime novelists in Sweden. Now he has finally been published
in English.

Between Summer's Promise and Winter's End (Pantheon) is a story that
spirals around the assassination of the "prime minister" (not named in
the novel, but understood to be Olof Palme) on the night of February
28, 1986.

The Boston Globe has called it “unquestionably the best Swedish crime
novel I've read so far.”

Please join us on Wednesday, February 9 at 7:00 p.m. at Elliott Bay
Book Company for a reading, talk and conversation with Persson's
translator, Paul Norlen.

How the Fisher Came Back Home

2010-01-30T14:28:00.000-08:00

The Antioch Review has just published my essay about the reintroduction of the fisher to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. The fisher is a member of the weasel family, about the size of a cat, and until about 50 or 60 years ago lived on the peninsula. The reintroduction project has been in process for two years, sponsored by the Olympic National Park and Washington State Fish and Wildlife. The U.S. Forest Service, Conservation Northwest, and several tribal nations have also played an important role.

Although I'm far from a scientist, I had a chance to see the process up close through my partner's work as a wildlife biologist here on the peninsula. I was moved and fascinated and knew I had to write about it.

Here's the link to an excerpt from my essay, "How the Fisher Came Back Home." The Antioch Review has been a wonderful home for many of my essays and I'm always pleased to have something in their pages.

For more on the fisher reintroduction, here's a link to Washington State Fish and Wildlife's pages on the project, with lots of photos and the most recent updates. And another link to a video clip of a fisher release last year.

What We Want, an essay about art and life

2010-01-19T18:16:00.000-08:00

The most recent issue of Feminist Studies is carrying an art essay, "What We Want," about two Danish women painters, Emilie Mundt and Marie Luplau (early teachers of Demant Hatt). Ardent feminists and terrific painters who ran a school that taught 400 women art students in Copenhagen from the late 19th century through the early 20th, they deserve to be better known. Feminist Studies has also beautifully reproduced some of each of their paintings on the cover and inside.

What We Want, by the way, was the name of a women's newspaper in Denmark in the 1880 and 90s.

2008-08-26T18:00:00.000-07:00

With the Lapps in the High Mountains

2008-08-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

The wonderful environmental literary magazine Orion has just published two excerpts from my translation from the Danish of Emilie Demant Hatt's book about her 1907-8 travels with the Sami in Lapland: With the Lapps in the High Mountains.

You can read them online at http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/3244

Book Reviews of Cold Subjects

2008-04-17T14:39:00.000-07:00

Here is a selection of my reviews for the Seattle Times about ice and snow, reindeer, and Northern places:

"The Future of Ice"
by Gretel Ehrlich
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20041114&slug=erlich14

"Ice: The Nature, the History and the Uses of an Astonishing Substance"by Mariana GosnellKnopf, 560 pp., $30
"Ice": Brrrr! A tale with thrills, chillshttp://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2002685802_ice18.html

"The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia"by Piers VitebskyHoughton Mifflin, 464 pp., $28

"The Sami People: Traditions in Transition"by Veli-Pekka Lehtola, translated by Linna Weber Muller-WilleUniversity of Alaska Press, 144 pp., $27.95
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2002694579_reindeerpeople21.html

"In a Far Country: The True Story of a Mission, a Marriage, a Murder and the Remarkable Reindeer Rescue of 1898"by John TaliaferroPublicAffairs, 400 pp., $26.95
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2003466487_bookbriefs10.html

Karl Tirén, Joik Collector

2008-02-17T07:09:00.000-08:00

I was in Stockholm recently and had the opportunity to visit the collections of the Music Museum with the director Hans Riben, who kindly showed me the original wax cylinders from an old gramophone recording machine. They were what the musician Karl Tirén used to make his recordings of Sami joiks nearly a hundred years ago.

Karl Tirén (1869-1955) was a railway inspector based in Northern Sweden. He came from an artistic family — his brother was the artist, Johan Tirén, who painted landscapes of Lapland — and Karl Tirén was an accomplished violinist and violin maker. He was, like many musicians of the time, greatly interested in Sweden’s long heritage of folk music, much of it played on the fiddle as country dance music. But Tirén was also, unlike most Swedish musicians, intrigued by another Swedish tradition in music, an even older tradition, which was the joik music of the Sami.

Around 1909, Tirén began a long project of collecting joiks or jojka as they’re called in Swedish, from the Sami verb, juiogat, meaning to sing a folk song. Although a variety of enthusiastic amateur ethnologists were at the time photographing and documenting in one way or another the culture of the Sami, no one had yet began to listen seriously to their joiks. At first Tirén tried to transcribe the joiks he heard through a notation system that he could then play on the violin, but soon he realized that the words or repeated sounds and the vocal style of the joik were just as or more important than the melody.

Tirén decided to use a form of recording in the field that was not well known in Sweden outside anthropological circles. In fact he borrowed his recording equipment from the Natural History Museum’s ethnographic department. Tirén was instructed in working with the wax cylinders and clock-work mechanism of the recorder by Yngve Laurell. Laurell had spent time at the Berlin Phonogram Archive in order to practice the techniques of recording in the field; he was to use his knowledge in Australia among the aboriginal peoples there.

Supported by some small grants from the Folk Music Society, Tirén set off in the winter of 1913 to the markets of Arvidsjaur and Arjeplog to make his first recordings. That May a selection of the best recordings were played at a program sponsored by the Natural History Museum, titled “Exotic Phonogram and Gramophone Concerts.” In June Tirén was again up in Lapland, traveling from Abisko over to the Norwegian coast, and then back into Swedish Jämtland. He made recordings again the following winter and summer of 1914. Again in 1915 he made some group recordings at the wedding of his Sami friend Maria Persson, who had been a primary source of information about the joik and who’d facilitated his travels and introductions to Sami communities.

The recordings Tirén made always begin with his announcing the name of the performer, the title of the piece, and then a short tone, which was used to calibrate the speed of the recording when it was re-played (given the spring-drive mechanism in the phonograph, the speed could vary). Each cylinder could hold two joiks, about two minutes worth of singing. Tirén’s method of collecting was democratic and comprehensive; he recorded joiking by children, very old people, men and women. In contrast, when the Swedish Broadcasting Company undertook to collect joiks in the fifties, they searched for the oldest Sami singers they could find and attempted a chronological system that was not necessarily representative of a community. Tirén included everyone who wanted to sing.

The wax cylinders were transferred digitally in the 1980s, and a selection of Tirén’s gramophone recordings from 1913-15 is available on the CD, Samiska Röster. Unsurprisingly, they have a scratchy, authentic sound, but the enthusiasm and joy come through beautifully, as well as the skill in mimicking animal sounds. Many are joiks to the memory of other people. The cylinders themselves are fragile and are never played now; they are in the collection of the Swedish Music Museum, in their original cardboard tubes with Tirén’s inscriptions on the outside.

Tirén continued to collect joiks for a few more years but spent more time transcribing his recordings and writing about what he had heard. He produced a beautiful book about joiking, published in 1942 in the Acta Lapponica series. The book was translated and published only in German, as was the case with all the early Acta Lapponica volumes, German being the scholarly language of the time.

Although this master work, Die Lappische Volkmusik, has never appeared in Swedish, there is a book available in second-hand shops and in Swedish libraries about Karl Tirén by Gunnar Ternhag: Joiksamlaren Karl Tirén (Umeå, 2000).

Copies of the CD, Samiska Röster (Sami Voices) may be ordered directly from the shop of the Swedish Music Museum at http://www.musikmuseet.se/ (shop@musikmuseet.se).

A librarian friend in Sweden, Carl-Henrik Berg, who takes a great interest in Swedish tourism (see his website with many links ) gave me a copy of a 1912 travel essay by Maria Himmelstrand, which was published in the Swedish Tourist Society’s yearbook. In the section I’ve translated below, Maria, a self-described modern woman, and her two girlfriends are traveling by train up in Lapland and run into Karl Tirén.

From “Wandering in Lapland” by Maria Himmelstrand

In Abisko we met the station inspector Karl Tirén, painter, musician, inventor, mountain climber, a person known all over Norbotten. If we mentioned his name among Lapps and settlers, their eyes lit up and the words rushed out: Someone had heard him play the violin; another had even played the violin with him; a third had walked — no, run with him in the mountains. He was a man who jumped off a train going full speed, who sprang into bogs and dashed over mountains and swamps straight to Kebnekaise [Lapland’s highest mountain], scorning all paths. “And they say, Miss, that he can put a spell on the violin.”

That part about the violin is the most remarkable thing to the Lapps. As is known, Tirén has made a singular invention. He has, after twenty years of work, succeeded in producing a liquid with which he prepares wood for violins. With this wood they immediately have a full warm tone, that usually only exceptional violins have after many years of assiduous and skillful use. Along with this he constructs violins.

During the summer, Tirén wanders on a mission for the folk music society among the Lapps to study and note down their national melodies and songs, and he told us a variety of interesting things about that. For us, who were going to travel into the interior of Lapland, it was of course doubly interesting to get a glimpse into one aspect of the Lapps’ spiritual life. Among other things he described his first visit to a Lapp camp. The Lapps were, to begin with, quite reserved. They were very unwilling even to confess that they had their own songs with their own melodies, partly from distrust and partly from religious reasons. A large number of Lapps in Norrbotten are in fact strict Læstadians [evangelical Lutherans]. A significant portion of their verses are old pagan songs and such devilish abominations they don’t want anyone to hear about.

Then Tirén told them about a dream he’d had that came true. With these simple words and in all secrecy they opened up to the mystery of the dream. They began to interpret it, came out with one supernatural experience after the next, and at the end verses and melodies flowed from their lips. And so, as early as that first Lapp camp, he made a rich harvest of old original songs. And the remarkable thing was that until recent times it was considered that the Lapps lacked a national music, even musical talent.

They were extraordinary melodies that Mr. Tirén sang for us, small, short stanzas often only within a range of 4-5 tones. The rhythm was singular, quite unlike our usual musical rhythms; it would probably have been very difficult to devise any sort of accurate classification of the measures. There were formal stanzas to the spirits of the air, earth, and water. There were humorous stanzas. There were tonal pictures from surrounding nature. “How the reindeer runs” was a quick little melody, where the rhythm really brilliantly expresses a reindeer herd’s swift, light, measured race over the snow. “How the white snow flakes fall,” was a masterpiece about the melancholy mood of nature.

One time Tirén came to a Lapp camp, where the Lapps were markedly reserved. Then an old granny had spoken up and strongly rebuked them. “It’s shameful,” she’d said, “that my family’s young men forget their father’s songs!” And the granny was plainly a figure of authority, because after that the Lapps didn’t need any encouragement to recite one song after the next. Among the Lapps Mr. Tirén has found magnificent voices, really gifted singers, both women and men.

Excerpted from Svenska Turistföreningens Årsskrift 1913
English translation copyright© 2008 by Barbara Sjoholm

What is joiking or yoiking? And how can you hear it?

2008-01-18T15:20:00.000-08:00

Ursula Länsman, member of the Sámi Band Angelit, describes it very well. http://www.folkworld.de/9/e/sami.html

"A yoik is not merely a description; it attempts to capture its subject in its entirety: it's like a holographic, multi-dimensional living image, a replica, not just a flat photograph or simple visual memory. It is not about something, it is that something. It does not begin and it does not end. A yoik does not need to have words — its narrative is in its power, it can tell a life story in song. The singer can tell the story through words, melody, rhythm, expressions or gestures."

In one of the earliest published Sami texts, Johan Turi describes it as "the art of recalling other people." But in the past the Sami also joiked animals, landscapes, and weather. The earliest joiking was unaccompanied voice, but in the last twenty or thirty years it's been backed by many different instruments and performed in a variety of styles. There's even Sami rapping now.

Ande Somby is a Norwegian Sami lawyer and musician. He writes about joiking in this article on the Web. http://www.uit.no/ssweb/dok/Somby/Ande/95.htm

Although I described the general idea behind joiking in The Palace of the Snow Queen and mentioned two powerful modern singers––Mari Boine from Norway and Wimme from Finland––who've taken the traditional form to new places, my descriptions aren't the same as experiencing the sound of the joik. Here are some links to sites where you can learn more and hear samples:

Arran has a comprehensive list of Sami musicians, both traditional and contemporary, including their web sites and Myspace pages where you can listen to streaming mp3 tracks and download. http://home.earthlink.net/~arran4/siida/sami-yoik.htm

Another possibility to hear joiking on-line is at Amazon: Folk Music In Sweden, Vols. 21, 22, 23: A Presentation Of Saami Folk Music

Although this 3-volume collection of traditional acoustic joik is not available for purchase, the nearly 200 songs, on everything from reindeer to weather to love, and sung by a rich variety of male and female voices, is there for the listening. It's a great introduction to the form.

On Amazon, you can listen to samples from the albums of Mari Boine and Wimme too. Better yet, you can go to the website of NorthSide, an independent music company based in Minneapolis. Their focus is Scandinavian folk and new music, and they have an awesome deal: three collection of Nordic music from all over Scandinavia, which includes some cuts by Sami singers. Nordic Roots 1, 2, 3. each only $5. They also carry the full discography of Boine and Wimme.

The History of the Snowman

2008-01-18T13:57:00.000-08:00

Since my travel book The Palace of the Snow Queen was published last October, some readers and reviewers have said things along the lines of, "I have to admit that Lapland is not the first country that comes to mind in my quest for good travel literature," and "That's one place I'm never going." In the Seattle Times, Lynda V. Mapes wrote, "This is the coldest I've ever been reading a book, but it was worth it." I'm glad she qualified that.

Okay, so I haven't converted everyone to my fascination with the far north of Scandinavia. On the other hand I have heard from a lot of people who love the northern climes and who have stories to tell about Scandinavian forebears and Sami relatives who emigrated to Poulsbo, Washington and Nome, Alaska, and who harbor fantasies of their own about ice hotels and dark, starry nights brushed by the northern lights. People who for mysterious reasons don't mind the cold and who are drawn to the cultures and landscapes of the far north, whether watery or icy.

One reader recently wrote me, "I go on my trips alone because no one I know can afford to go and also no one I know wants to go to the north. They want the tropics and warm beaches." A woman after my own heart, she had recently returned from not only Lapland, but St. Petersburg, and Tallin in Estonia. She wrote she'd also been to Iceland, the Faroe Island, the Orkneys and all those other cool (and cold and wet) places I'd traveled to myself in writing The Pirate Queen a few years ago.

One of my favorite Christmas presents this year was a lively little book by humorist Bob Eckstein (whose cartoons appear in The New Yorker). The History of the Snowman: from the Ice Age to the Flea Market (Simon & Schuster, 2007). I love books about topics that are hiding in plain sight. It turns out there's a lot to say about snowmen as cultural icons, and this eclectic book is by turns hilarious and erudite, with chapters such as, "Early Belgian Expressionism," "Early American Snowmen in the Seventeenth Century," and "The Dean Martin Years." He sniffs out some of the earliest representations of snow people in art and ponders why snowmen also are seen to have a sinister side ("Number of movies with snowman in the title: 22. Number of those in which the snowman is the killer: 6").
Copiously illustrated with color ads, postcards, magazine covers, and with as many black and white illustrations, including a great selection of the best of the snowman New Yorker cartoons.

The Palace of the Snow Queen

2007-08-09T14:36:00.000-07:00

“This book is a thoroughly researched, funny, lively and—yes—warm book about what humans can discover and create in the cold. In addition to the reindeer herders, dog sledders and Santa’s elves we might expect to find in such far northern climes, Barbara Sjoholm introduces us to ice sculptors, indigenous filmmakers, a teenage anthropologist and actors in a Sami language version of Macbeth, in other words, more varieties of Northern Lights than we ever imagined.”
—Rebecca Brown

"The Palace of the Snow Queen is an exquisite book. I would recommend it to anyone interested in Lapland in particular, or travel in general.”
—Vendela Vida, author of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

From Kirkus Reviews:
An American travel writer details how the Arctic winter in Lapland warmed her heart. With a childhood affinity for Hans Christian Andersen’s "Snow Queen" and a desperate need to emerge from the fog of grief following a painful breakup in 2001, Sjoholm (Incognito Street: How Travel Made Me a Writer, 2006, etc.) sought a dramatic change of scene. So the Washington state native decided to take a Norwegian friend up on her offer to spend Christmas with her. “I wanted extremity and silence, a winter world to mirror my sense of loss,” writes the author, “an absence of sunshine while I found my bearings again.” That three-month sojourn led to another two years later, followed by a third excursion the year after; the experiences of all three trips comprise these engaging tales of winter in the northern reaches of Finland, Sweden and Norway. Sjoholm took off for Sweden in late 2001. Her first stop was the village of Jukkasjärvi to witness the annual construction of the renowned Icehotel, a marvelous 60-room structure of snow and ice built by architects and artists each fall to host about 13,000 visitors then melt the following spring—what the author aptly dubs “a fine example of art for art’s sake.” She then attends an unforgettable performance of Macbeth, staged outside in the Ice Globe Theatre in temperatures as cold as -13° F. Other trip highlights include a visit to the post office in Rovaniemi, Finland, the unofficial North Pole and recipient of all unstamped letters to Santa; an enchanting encounter with reindeer; and a traumatic attempt at dogsledding. Sjoholm also offers thoughtful sociopolitical ruminations on the plight of the nomadic Sami—the indigenous people of Sapmi, which today includes parts of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia—and, somewhat paradoxically for one in search of darkness, numerous moving descriptions of the ever-changing, often ephemeral natural light.

An enticing entrée for those in search of extreme weather in a scenic clime.