Apologies for the Long Absence

 Hello Again!  Hei!  Bures!

It seems strange to me now that I didn't publish any new posts for such a long time, but of course as I look back over the past two years plus I see a few reasons. I was very busy in 2019 with two new books from the University of Minnesota Press, By the Fire and Clearing Out. While in Minneapolis promoting them, my editor at the press and I got talking, and by the end of the summer I was embarked on a new project for UMP, one that I'm still very excited about. I was away in Europe traveling that fall, and the next thing I knew Covid had changed all our lives. 

But you know all about that. 

It was good to have a book project to focus on intensely, but I admit I slumped on the blogging front.

It's not over yet, but I'm still feeling a bit more hopeful. Or maybe it's just the promise of 2022. At any rate my resolution is to return to writing about books and other related subjects in a more regular way and to mentioning podcasts and Zoom panels that have to do with Scandinavia and Sapmi. I've changed the title of the blog from "Lapponia" to "Northwords" to suggest a larger focus.

My new book, From Lapland to Sapmi: Collecting and Returning Sami Craft and Culture , is moving soon to the production stage, with a publication date in February, 2023. It's been a complicated but enormously satisfying project to work on over the past months. For a long time the libraries were closed, and it was challenging to gather all the research material and books I needed. I had expected to be able to visit or revisit some museums in the Nordic countries. Nope. Fortunately, colleagues and kind librarians and scholars in Scandinavia and England were helpful, as well as curators at many Sami museums. I came in contact with dozens of helpful people along the way and made some new connections and friendships. 

Now that this book is beginning to wrap up, I hope to share here some of the research and reading I've done over the past months. 

ONWARD! (from Olaus Magnus, A History of the Northern Peoples, 1555)