Scenes from Copenhagen

A late spring.

The teachers in Denmark have been locked out of the schools for almost two weeks.

Construction on 18 new metro stations. Only 5 years until they open.

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How strange the spring

Printed on a window at the airport in Keflavik: a poem by Mattias Johannessen. I was between planes, en route from Seattle to Copenhagen. Red dawn from the east as we flew over Iceland's southern coastline. And there were the small lights of fishing boats below in the rocking sea.

Lovisa Negga

It's time for some music on this blog! Lovisa Negga is young French-Sami electropop singer from Linköping, in Sweden. I came across her when checking out the events at Umea University's Sami week, currently in progress. Program here.

Herdswoman

 This February 6, at 3 p.m. Pacific Lutheran University celebrates Sami National Day with a program that begins with the showing of the film Herdswoman, about three generations of Sami women reindeer herders.

"Aina, Elisabeth and Lisa belong to different generations. Their stories reflect life in Sápmi (Lapland) and the transition from nomadic existence to modern society. The film relates their pleasure in working with the reindeer. They live with and for their herds. When a court case questions their ancient rights to the reindeers’ pasture their life as reindeer keepers is at risk."


I love this photograph.

At 7 p.m. Harald Gaski will lecture on  “Celebrating the Return of the Sun and the Recognition of a People: The Sami National Day in the Context of Myth and Poetics.”

For the full schedule and  more information

Mumintrolls Meet Liv and Ingmar, only in Seattle

For those who live in the Seattle area, next weekend is a time to see Nordic films on Queen Anne. I'll be there--can't wait to see a short film about the Mumintrolls (Moomins to English speakers) and a documentary about Liv Ullman and Ingmar Bergman, among many other fine offerings.

Nordic Lights Film Festival
January 18 - 20, 2013

"This cutting-edge cinematic event offers an immersion into the world of Nordic films, focusing on contemporary, award-winning feature-length films, documentaries, and short films from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, presented at the SIFF Film Center (at Seattle Center)."

New Emilie Demant Hatt website

I've now launched a stand-alone website about Emilie Demant Hatt. Although it's still in progress, the site has pages about her life and art and one dedicated to With the Lapps in the High Mountains, which is in production now with the University of Wisconsin Press and will be published in May.This is my translation from Danish of Demant Hatt's remarkable and engaging book of traveling and living among the Sami of Northern Scandinavia in 1907-8.

I'm really pleased with the cover, which features a painting by Demant Hatt from 1940, "Ice Bridge," and thrilled that Hugh Beach, an American professor of anthropology who lives and works in Sweden, wrote a  foreword. Professor Beach is the author of one of my favorite books of all time, A Year in Lapland: Guest of the Reindeer Herders.

I'm also delighted with some of the book's advance blurbs including this one by an anthropologist whose work I admire greatly, Luke Eric Lassiter. He's written The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography, as well as many incisive articles about the art and challenge of collaborative ethnography.

“Emilie Demant Hatt’s With the Lapps in the High Mountains is an important and significant contribution to the history of anthropology and ethnography. Weaving artful description and personal narrative, Demant Hatt recounts a story that, until now, has been largely unknown to English-speaking anthropologists and ethnographers. Many perhaps know of her collaboration with Johan Turi, but this work sheds further light on Demant Hatt’s role as an observant participant involved in the daily lives of Sami people. Thanks to Barbara Sjoholm’s careful and skillful translation, Demant Hatt’s work is fortunately now available to a much larger audience.”

                                                                                                  -- Luke Eric Lassiter