Although Lappish wizards and magical reindeer are found in
European folktale collections, stories told by the indigenous Nordic Sami
themselves are less known in world literature. The sixty-odd tales in
By the Fire, gathered first-hand by the Danish
artist and ethnographer Emilie Demant Hatt (1873-1958) and originally published
in 1922 in Denmark, are an exception. Between 1907 and 1916 Demant Hatt
traveled through the mountains of Swedish Sápmi and occasionally Norway,
recording tales of magic animals, otherworldly girls who marry Sami men, and
cannibalistic ogres or Stallos. Many of her storytellers were women, and some
of the most memorable tales in this collection tell of plucky girls and women
who outfox their attackers—whether Russian bandits, mysterious Dog-Turks, or
Swedish farmers—and save their people.
By the Fire is shortly to come out from the University of Minnesota Press and will be available in bookstores and online around mid-April. The hardcover edition includes Demant Hatt’s original linoleum prints and an afterword by me.
It's been my pleasure to translate from Danish these stories collected and illustrated by Emilie Demant Hatt, as an addition to other titles I've published by and about this remarkable woman. But it's also been important to me to identify her original storytellers, to tell something of their lives, and to add their distinctive voices to Nordic folklore. I was able to research women like Anni Rasti from Karesuando and Margreta Bengtsson from Pite Sápmi, and to learn more about Sami resistance to colonization in South Sápmi in the folklore archives in Uppsala, Sweden, and at the Nordiska Museum in Stockholm, which holds Demant Hatt's field journals. These typed journals have a wealth of information on her sources as well as the originals of the folktales.
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| Margreta Bengtsson (left) with her family, 1916 photo: EDH |
In April and May I'll be doing events in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. In some places (Duluth, Minneapolis, Seattle so far), I'll be joined by one or two members of local Sami-American communities who will also read aloud stories from the collection. I hope some of you can join us!
April 14,
2019
1 PM
Daughters of
Norway, Scout Cabin,
Discovery Road, Port Townsend
May 01, 2019
6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
A Room of
One's Own, 315 W Gorham St., Madison, WI 53703
May 06, 2019
6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
Scout & Morgan Books
Isanti County Historical Society,
33525 Flanders St. NE, Cambridge, MN 55008
May 07, 2019
7:00 PM to
9:00 PM
Spirit of
the North Theatre at Fitgers Bookstore, Duluth, MN
Co-sponsored
by the Sami Cultural Center of North America
With Laurel Sanders
May 08, 2019
6:00 PM to 08:00 PM
American Swedish Institute, Larson Hall, 2600 Park Ave.,
Minneapolis, MN 55407
With Tanley
Lego
May 12, 2019
2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Nordic
Museum, 2655 NW Market St., Seattle, WA 98107
Co-sponsored
by Pacific Sámi Searvi
With Julie Whitehorn and Mary
Brandt
June 01,
2019
4:00 PM-5:30
PM
Village
Books, 1200 11th Street, Bellingham, WA 98225
June 16,
2019
1:30 PM to
3:30 PM
Scandinavian
Cultural Center, PLU, Tacoma
Co-sponsored
by Pacific Sámi Searvi
An unexpected call from a distant relative reveals that Helene’s grandfather, Nicolai Nilsen, was the son of a coastal (sjø)
Sami fisherman—something no one in her family ever talked about.
Uncertain how to weave this new knowledge into who she believes she is,
Helene continues to write her novel, in which her heroine Ellinor
travels to Finnmark in the far north to study the dying languages of the
Sami families there. What Ellinor finds among the Sami people she meets
is a culture little known in her own world; she discovers history
richer and more alluring than rumor and a connection charged with
mystery and promise.
