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

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

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

“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.