Conflicts around Mining in the High North of Norway and Sweden

The Barents Observer has just published another deeply-reported article on conflicts between the Scandinavian states and mining interests in the north of Sweden and Norway and environmental groups and Sámi reindeer herders, as well as other concerned citizens who live in those areas. 

The journalists focus particularly on the strongly opposed Nussir Copper Mine near the Repparfjord in Norway and the Per Geijer deposit in Kiruna, near the current iron ore mines run by LKAB. The new deposit is projected to supply Europe with not just ore but rare earth elements. Many already know that the city of Kiruna was forced to move from its historic site by the LKAB mine. Further mining may well cause another move, as well as impacting the grazing lands traditionally held by the Gabna siida's reindeer herds. 

 

 

Britta Marakatt-Labba's Ancient Mother Statue on the Highline

 

Urmodern, by Britta Marakatt-Labba

For anyone in New York on Oct 7 at 12:30-1:30, the Sámi artist Britta Marakatt-Labba will be discussing her sculpture, Urmodern, located on the High Line between Gansevoort and Little West 12th Streets.

Many of us know Marakatt-Labba through her embroidered narratives of Sámi history and other two-dimensional work. Her reknown has only increased over the last years, with one-person shows at the National Gallery in Oslo (2024) and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm (2025), and she's also been represented in art exhibits in the U.S., in connection with other Arctic and Sámi artists. 

I only recently heard that she has a sculpture on the Highline in New York, at least until March of 2026, and that it is meant to represent a female deity. Here's the text from the announcement for her talk: 

 "For the High Line, Marakatt-Labba presents Urmodern, which translates to “primordial mother.” Sámi mythology is based on the belief that every stone, plant, and body of water has its own spirit. It teaches that the cosmos and the earth were created and are protected by goddesses, emphasizing the pivotal role of women in Sámi culture. Through this lens, Urmodern serves as a representation of these female deities. The boulder-like base of the work is made of granite, topped with the head of the goddess rendered in bronze. Marakatt-Labba’s contribution to the High Line underscores the importance of environmental stewardship on a global stage, engaging audiences in critical dialogues about Indigenous rights and feminism."

Katarina Barruk at the BBC Proms

Katarina Barruk, 2025

On August 31, 2025 Sámi vocal artist Katarina Barruk performed in concert with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra at the BBC Proms festival at London's Royal Albert Hall. It was a history-making event, given that she was the first Sámi performer ever to participate in the Proms. I read about this in the Barents Observer, which has a link to a broadcast from Radio Sweden, where she’s interviewed (in English). Barruk’s Sámi identity wasn’t the only thing notable about the event. Barruk sings and joiks in the Ume Sámi language, which is considered extinct in Norway and is severely endangered in Sweden. It was traditionally spoken around the Ume River in central Sweden, around towns such as Sorsele, Lycksele, Arvidsjaur, and Storuman, where Katarina Barruk was raised. Her father, one of only a handful of people to still speak Ume Sámi, is a language consultant and teacher whose work involves documenting and rivitalizing the language; in 2018 he published the first Ume Sámi-Swedish dictionary.

Katarina Barruk herself has been a language-immersion teacher as well as a musician; now she mainly concentrates on her work as a singer, appearing internationally and releasing videos and singles. Like another Sámi vocalist and activist, Sara Ajnakk, who I’ve written about before on this blog and who did not grow up speaking Ume Sámi but has painstakingly learned it and who writes many of her songs in it, Barruk has become a spokesperson for Ume Sámi. Much of the coverage of Barruk’s performance at the Proms mentioned the Ume language.

It wasn’t the first time that Ume Sámi was in the news in England—I was able to find an article in the Guardian from 2014, “Reindeer herders, an app and the fight to save a language,” which gives a good overview of the language and the efforts to revitalize it. In the article, Katarina is mentioned as a “young, passionate advocate for access to language education,” who is “currently recording her first album using Ume Sami lyrics and influences from the traditional Sami Yoik.”

Sámi Connections with Polar Expeditions

It’s been very warm here on the Olympic Peninsula in the Pacific Northwest the last week. Not compared to Phoenix, of course, but high for those of us more used to summer temperatures in the sixties and low seventies. The heat encourages me to continue on with polar themes.

Recently, for my travel book North Coast of the North, about Arctic Norway, I’ve been doing some research into a handful of Sámi from Northern Norway who accompanied some of the famous polar explorers on expeditions to Svalbard, Greenland and Antarctic. A good source has been the website, Polar History, sponsored by the Polar Institute and the Arctic University in Tromsø. 

Along with biographies of over two hundred men, including six Sámi,  is a separate category listing twenty-eight women who had a connection to one or both of the poles, whether as cook, wife, hunter, scientist, or explorer. One woman appears in both categories. 

Margarthe Kitti

This is Margarthe (Lango) Kitti. As a young girl from a reindeer herding family outside Tromsø, Kitti was approached for her skill in sewing and commissioned to create the Sami-style gákti, fur and skin clothing and shoes, for Roald Amundsen’s Gjøa Expedition through the Northwest Passage.

 The idea of employing Sámi men, known for their abilities as skiers, on expeditions to the frozen ends of the earth seems to have originated with Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, who participated in three geological trips to Svalbard. On one such expedition in 1872, he purchased forty reindeer and hired four Sámi men to take care of them, only one of whom is named: Nils Mathisen Sara. After Nordenskiöld’s successful transit of the Northeast Passage, he set his sights on Greenland. In 1883, Nordenskiöld recruited two hardy Sámi men, Pava Lars Tuorda and Anders Rassa, to sail with him and his team of scientists to the west coast of Greenland and from there see if they could cross overland to the east coast.

Pava Lars Tuorda

Pava Lars Tuorda was born in the Tuorpan siida, in the mountains west of Jokkmokk, Sweden in 1847. He early showed himself to be a skier of great endurance and an excellent hunter of wolves and bears, with spear and rifle. In the 1860s he was hired as a guide for Swedish geographers who were in the process of mapping areas of Norrbotten province. In addition to bearing large loads, Tuorda was adept at finding routes through challenging terrains. Asked for other recommendations, Tuorda suggested his neighbor Anders Rassa. The two men sailed off in the Sophie from Göteborg with the rest of Nordenskiöld’s team in June 1883 for the west coast of Greenland.

One of Nordenskiöld’s theories was that he might discover a warmer center to the world’s largest island, where trees and other vegetation could conceivably thrive in a drier climate away from the coast. But the team, burdened with a massive amount of equipment, found it difficult to navigate their sledges across Greenland’s glacial fissures and the deep snow that hid wet pockets underneath. Tuorda took the lead, but eventually Nordenskiöld decided the sledges could no longer go on. Instead, he sent Tuorda and Rassa ahead. With two compasses, a barometer, and a pocket watch, they were to ski as far as they could inland. Tuorda also took his bear spear. In the next fifty-two hours the two Sámi skied east 143 miles and then turned around and skied back, resting only two hours during that time, when they were enveloped in a snowstorm and had to dig themselves into the snow until it passed. They found no grass or trees, only endless vistas of ice and snow.

Per Saivo (l.) and Ole Must,1898 

 

Another pair of Sámi men who participated in Arctic exploration were Ole Must and Per Saivo from Kirkenes.   These two young men had their photographs taken by Elissif Wessel before they left for the South Pole on the British Antarctic Expedition 1898-1900, headed by the Norwegian-British leader, Carsten Borchgrevink, and with the aim of collecting scientific data, including fixing the location of magnetic south pole, and then advancing as far as possible towards the pole itself. The expedition’s crew, almost all Norwegian, successfully spent the winter of 1899 in two prefabricated houses on the Antarctic mainland and managed to get by sledge to 78° 50′ S., setting the “farthest south” record of the time.