Prepub discount sale from University of Minnesota Press for From Lapland to Sapmi through March 1, 2023!

 

Get 40% off From Lapland to Sápmi (coming in March '23!) when you order at z.umn.edu/lsmla using code MNMLA23. This is part of @UMinnPress's Humanities and Arts sale, the full list of which can be found at z.umn.edu/mla23. Offer expires March 1.

Reindeer herders fear Arctic industry boom

 

A well-researched article on the BBC website about challenges facing the Sami as the so-called Green Revolution pushes forward with more mining and wind farming in Northern Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Depressing but crucial reading.

 

Ice Music

 

I'm enchanted by the sounds and sight of instruments made of ice played in a concert hall made of ice and snow. Tim Linhart speaks about his journey as a musician and ice carver in this short video from National Geographic.

 

 

 

Over the Border to Asylum in Norway: Russian Sami Andrei Danilov's story

 

Andrei Danilov  Photo: Thomas Nilsen

The always interesting Barents Observer, which covers politics and life in the European Arctic, has this story today on Andrei Danilov. Born in Lovozero, the main  Sámi settlement in Russia's Kola Peninsula, Danilov fled Russia for Norway in February, 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. He is currently seeking asylum in order to stay in Norway. 

 For the past thirty years, the Russian Sámi have been part of the Sámi Council representing all Sámi in the four countries, Russia, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Now that cooperation has been suspended, in part due to the fact that some of Sámi on the Russian side are actively supporting Putin's actions. 

I found this development distressing to read about, given how harshly the Sámi themselves have been treated by the Russian state, and how meaningful it's been for the Sámi in every part of Sápmi to be able to connect and work together.

Several other cross-border long-term cooperations are also being suspended in the face of the continuing war in Ukraine, as reported by High North News. They include The Norwegian Barents Secretariat and  Barents Press International, "a network for journalists and editors in the Barents region in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. The network was founded after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the start of the 1990s."

 

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

Publishing Children's Books in South Sámi: One Way to Save and Develop a Language

 

 

A friend first told me about an article in English by a Norwegian librarian at the Trøndelag county library in Norway. Morten Olsen Haugen is working with the Sámi community to translate and publish more children's books, everything from picture books to YA to audio books, in the south Sámi language.

Morten Olsen Haugen, librarian and publisher

South Sámi is one of the smaller Sámi language groups, with an estimated 600 to 2500 speakers, mostly in Norway (compared to at least 20,000 speakers and readers of North Sámi in Norway, Sweden, and Finland). Although more adults and children now study and speak south Sámi, there have been fewer resources for them. 

Until around ten years ago when the Trøndelag county library jumped into publishing. Since then around a hundred books have been published. 

According to Morten Olsen Haugen, "While we acknowledge the need to develop indigenous voices and literature, we could not sit and wait for these books to emerge.

"We needed to publish a large quantity of books at a rapid pace. When we started, there were 2-3 new children’s books in southern Saami each year. We’ve published more than 10 each year.

"There is also the matter of language policy here. We want to bring the Saami language outside the traditional areas of their users’ culture. Saami children should be able to use their heart language even when they read – and talk – about pets, football, pirates, princesses, ghosts and monsters."

 

 

 

 

For readers of Norwegian (Nynorsk), here's a link to one of Haugen's own posts describing the project in greater detail. The images here are taken from that post.

By the Fire: Now in Paperback

First published in English translation in 2019, By the Fire, an engaging collection of Sami folktales from Scandinavia  illustrated in the early twentieth century, is now available in paperback from the University of Minnesota Press. 

These stories, collected by the Danish artist and ethnographer Emilie Demant Hatt (1873–1958) during her travels in the early twentieth century among the nomadic Sami in Swedish Sápmi, grant entry to a fascinating world of wonder and peril, of nature imbued with spirits, and strangers to be outwitted with gumption and craft. This first English publication of By the Fire is at once a significant contribution to the canon of world literature, a unique glimpse into Sami culture, and a testament to the enduring art of storytelling.