Liisa-Rávná Finbog in a conversation with Maria Karlsen on duodji

This conversation, recorded a couple of years ago on YouTube  between the Sámi scholar and duojár Liisa-Rávná Finbog and art student and duojár Maria Karlsen, both in Norway, is one of the most insightful dialogs I’ve ever heard about the importance and process of making duodji. In English with Sámi subtitles. 

Liisa-Rávná Finbog (L) and  Maria Karlsen (R), 2021

Midwest Talks about From Lapland to Sápmi

 

 

In just a few days I set off for Minnesota by train from Seattle, a two- day journey. In addition to visiting friends and admiring the fall colors, I'll be giving three talks based on my book, From Lapland to Sápmi, in Duluth, Minneapolis, and Northfield. I'm more than thrilled to be visiting places with such strong connections with the Nordic countries and with Sámi Americans. 

If you live anywhere near these cities, please join me! I'd love to meet you and share a slideshow on " Sámi Collections and Sámi Museums in the Nordic Countries." 

9/28 (Thurs):   University of  Minnesota, Duluth, Library 4^th Floor Rotunda: 6 pm. Co-sponsored by the Sami Cultural Center of NorthAmerica

10/4 (Wed): St Olaf College, Tomsen Hall 280, Northfield: 4 pm

10/5 (Thurs): American Swedish Institute, Minneapolis: 6 pm

For a taste of what I'll be talking about, here's a short radio interview that just aired at "MN Reads" on The North 103.3, out of Duluth, MN 

 

 

German Museum Will Repatriate Ancient Drum to South Sámi museum, Saemien Sijte

Three hundred years ago, in 1723, the Norwegian missionary Thomas von Westen took a sacred Sámi drum belonging to Bendix Andersen and Jon Torchelsen. Von Westen and this drum, along with all the other drums he collected by coercion and force from Sámi communities around and north of Trondheim, is the subject of one of the chapters in my recent book, From Lapland to Sápmi. Unlike many of von Westen’s consficated drums, which burned in the great Copenhagen fire of 1728, this drum, the Freavnantjahke gievrie, or Drum from Frøyning Mountain, went from the Royal Kunstkammer to a castle in Germany, and from there eventually to the Meiningen Museum. The Iron Curtain kept its whereabouts mysterious until the 1990s, when staff members at the National Museum of Denmark decided to try to track it down. It was exhibited on loan in Trondheim in 2017.

In 2021, Saemien Sijte, the South Sámi museum and cultural center in Snåsa, two hours north of Trondheim, opened negotiations with the Meiningen Museum for the permanent repatriation of the drum. On June 21, 2023 Meiningen Museum decided at its board meeting to return the Freaynantjahke gievrie to Saemien Sijte. It’s the first German museum to return a drum but may not be the last. Discussions between the Sámi Parliament and other museums in Berlin and Dresden, among other cities, have opened as to the possibility of more repatriations.Birgitta Fossum, museum director at Saemien Sijte, wrote in a press release:

 "Drums have been and are important in Sami society. They were sacred and important guides in life, and they were often seen by missionaries as tools of the devil. Thomas von Westen wanted to collect drums and use the knowledge he gained to Christianize the Sami by demonizing the religion. Most of the drums preserved today were collected by missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries and later by museums. This is a painful history, and the fact that we are now finally getting the drums back is a step towards coming to terms with history. This is our cultural heritage that we can now finally manage ourselves."

The Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees of the Meiningen-Eisenach Cultural Foundation, State Secretary for Culture Tina Beer, says,

 "I am very happy about the outcome of the talks and thank all those involved as well as the Norwegian partners for their pragmatic and constructive approach. A ritual object that is important for the cultural identity of the long-persecuted Sámi people is now returning exactly 300 years after it was confiscated. It is good and important that even long-ago processes of transferring cultural property are brought to meaningful solutions. This return is an act of respect and recognition towards the northern Norwegian communities and their cultural identity. We are committed to acknowledging past injustices and ushering in a new era of intercultural dialogue and cooperation."

Three New Books From Sápmi

 

Today I want to highlight several books about Sápmi published in the last couple of years: a novel, an autobiographical graphic novel, and a book of writing published in connection with the 2022 Sámi Pavilion at the Biennale in Venice.

 

The End of Drum-Time by American author, Hanna Pylväinen, is a historical novel set in Sweden in the mid-1800s, at a time when the new pietistic Lutheran movement called Laestadianism was taking root in northern Scandinavia, particularly among the Sámi and Kven people. Named after the Swedish-Sámi pastor Lars Levi Laestadius—dubbed “Mad Lasse” in the novel—the novel follows the paths of several characters: two of the pastor’s daughters, and several reindeer herding families. One of the great pleasures of the novel is Pylväinen’s deep knowledge of the weather and terrain of the Torne Valley and the small church village where most of the action takes place. Pylväinen has apparently visited Northern Sweden and Norway often and embedded herself with a reindeer-herding family. Her research shows in detailed descriptions of the herds and tent life.

The writing is rich, though the sentences are often long, and parts of the story move a little slowly. The novel has been billed as a love story, but the awkward erotic relationship between Willa, Lars Levi’s odd daughter, and Ivvár, a troubled young herder whose father has converted to the new faith, was not the most compelling aspect of the story for me. I savored instead the scenery and historical aspects of the book. Pylväinen herself grew up in a Laestadian sect in the United States, and she captures the strangeness of a world steeped in sin and redemption, but also in the wide-open spaces and community life of the Sámi siidas before industrialization and assimilation.

 

I picked up the autobiographical graphic novel, Da vi var samer (When We Were Sámi) by Mats Jonsson in Oslo this past February. It was translated in 2023 from Swedish into Norwegian. Sadly, it’s not too likely to find its way into English, though one of Jonsson’s autobiographical graphic novels, Hey Princess, was translated ten years ago. That book was described as taking its place “in the proud tradition of self-deprecating, confessional, sex-obsessed and guilt-ridden autobiographical comics, but stakes out a unique identity by virtue of its Nordic setting and biting social criticism.”

https://swedishbookreview.org

 “When We Were Sámi” is also full of self-deprecating humor, satire, and insight, but its subject matter is more somber and searching. Jonsson tells the story of learning after his grandfather’s death that the family comes from Måla, Sweden, and that until early in the twentieth century they considered themselves Forest Sámi. The discovery of papers and photographs in a hidden chest leads Jonsson on a quest to find out more about his family’s history. In doing so, he also goes back in time to illustrate Swedish history and the deliberate erasure of the Forest Sámi’s existence. Unlike the reindeer-herding Sámi who were allowed to keep their reindeer, while subject to ever-greater state control, the Forest Sámi were continually pushed out of their territories to make room for settlers, loggers, and farmers from Finland and Southern Sweden. Eventually Jonsson’s family gave up, assimilated, and did not talk about their past.

This is a part of Swedish history that even Swedes don’t know, much less those of us from other countries, and it’s presented in a vigorous black and white images and lively monologs and dialogs with family and friends. “When We Were Sámi” is the first graphic novel to have been nominated for the prestigious August Prize in 2021 and one of a only a few works on the Sámi to be nominated throughout the prize’s long history. I found it engrossing and sometimes unbearably sad, as well as straight-talking and funny. 

 

Čatnosat: The Sámi Pavilion, Indigenous Art, Knowledge, and Sovereignty, edited by Liisa-Rávná Finbog, Katya Garcia-Anton, and Beaska Niillas was published in 2022 in conjunction with the Sámi Pavilion’s chosen artists that year at the Venice Biennale. Pauliina Feodoroff, Máret Ánne Sara and Anders Sunna. The book’s format is intriguing: spiral-bound and non-linear in the sense that each of the three sections can be opened around the spiral as wished, giving a feeling of a circle. Something that’s true of other Sámi art forms, like the joik.

 The contributions by the artists themselves, the editors, and a few other respected Sámi authors and poets such as Sigbjørn Skåden, Timimie Gassko Märak, and Ánde Somby, are in English and/or Sámi. I see the intent of the book project, but somehow didn’t find it always reader friendly. Perhaps because in the course of presenting my own work I continually encounter readers who are encountering Sápmi—its inhabitants, its creativity, its history, its political relevance—for the first time. I could have wished for these editors to have supplied a little more introductory material for those new to Sápmi. What I did very much enjoy about the book were the photos of the artworks displayed at the Biennale, and the words and background photographs supplied by the artists of friends and family. The different personalities and intentions and sheer talent of the three artists were explored in personal ways that were easy to connect with.

 

 

 

 

I sat down the other evening to read a slender book of enjoyably spooky stories from Northern Norway/Sápmi. Written, often in the first-person, by Sámi author, Edel Marit Gaino, these are not retold tales, though they often draw on Sámi folklore of monsters and ghosts. While supernatural in spirit they reflect modern life in Sápmi as well as respect for older traditions. The Canadian illustrator, Toma Feizo Gas, has created a black-and-white world of smeared faces, deep waters and flapping wings that perfectly capture the way the stories slide between reality and another realm of mystery and horror.

 

Edel Marit Gaino grew up in the small Saami village of Láhpoluoppal on the Finnmark Plateau in Northern Norway. Her voice is admirably captured in an English translation by Olivia Lasky, an American translator living in Norway, and Lea Simma, who works for the Writers Center in Jokkmokk, Sweden.

Available now from the Canadian press Inhabit Education Books or bookshop.org, Amazon, and other sources. Inhabit Media Inc. is the first Inuit-owned, independent publishing company in the Canadian Arctic.

Read a review in Quill and Quire here.

Hege Nilsen, Sámi duojár from Kåfjord, Norway

 

 

Vesterheim Musuem in Decorah, Iowa, recently posted this online presentation by Hege Nilsen, an engaging and eloquent Sámi duojár from Kåfjord, Norway. Hege Nilsen is a paramedic in Tromsø and a skilled craftswoman. Her descriptions and photos of how she skins, tans, and softens reindeer hide takes place against a background of chilly mountains and fjords in Western Finnmark.

But even more memorable are Nilsen's remarks about the years of language loss and Norwegianization in that part of Norway. Duodji is one important way of re-engaging with Sámi history and making community. I really enjoyed watching this!