Sami Research Articles

Sami anthropology today

Sami anthropology today

New ways into the Sami language

The Sami language is the carrier of our Sami heritage, and could itself act as a key that opens the door to our wider understanding of it. During the period 2012–14, Ájtte Museum in Jokkmokk, Sweden, worked on the language project Giela muitalusat / Giela giehto. The Sami Language – Three Generations Tell, with the aim of collecting the different generations’ thoughts and ideas about the Sami language. Sami cultural heritage is not only about traditions of the past; it is also contemporary and urban. Many young Sami alternate between joining in with traditional Sami activities and being part of modern society. Ájtte Museum has aimed to set the focus on young Sami people, through various projects, and to try to identify issues that are relevant to the younger generation. The general image of Sami culture and life as reflected in museums today must be extended, so that more people will recognise that they themselves are an integral part of it. In the project, using film and still photography, young people documented and presented their everyday life and thoughts on how the use of the Sami language and Sami culture could be developed in the local community today.

Samene – et folk uten forhistorie? En analyse av samiske museers utstillinger med vekt på hvordan samisk forhistorie presenteres i utstillingene.

This Ph.D. project is connected to the Patterns of Cultural Valuation research project, which seeks to investigate how different ethnic groups and minorities have been presented and represented in Norwegian museums of cultural history during the last 150 years. I wish to analyze exhibitions at Sami museums in Norway, Sweden and Finland, with a special emphasis on how Sami prehistory is presented in these exhibitions. The starting point of my project is the research done on Sami archaeology within the last 25 years. I wish to investigate how, and to which extent, this research is being presented in the exhibitions. Exhibitions at Sami museums have been criticized for representing Sami culture as static and timeless, and in this way reproducing old-fashioned ethnographic stereotypes and doing a kind of “self orientalization”. Is it possible to avoid this within the confines of traditional ethnographic and historical-chronological representation? Sami museums are an arena where several potential problematic aspects with the museum institution in general are highlighted. Questions like Whose past? Whose land? Who has the right to represent and to be represented? are being asked. Historically, the Sami people have been presented as the exotic “other” in the national museums in Norway, Sweden and Finland. What happens when the Sami make their own exhibitions and represent themselves? And how have the national museums adapted to this new museum reality? To be able to study this, I have also included national museums with exhibitions of Sami culture and history in the analysis.

En annen skogbrukshistorie. Kulturspor i trær – forvaltning og formidling av objekter og miljøer

Culturally modified trees are a new type of cultural heritage in Scandinavia, introduced by Swedish researchers in the 1990s. One characteristic type is bark-peeled pine trees, which have Sami origin, and are protected by law in Norway. Today such trees reflect a previous sustainable use of forest resources, which is very different from modern clear-cutting of ancient forests. As a result, they represent a different kind of forestry history, in contrast to the technological and masculine content that largely characterises the current dissemination of human relationships to forest growths. There are indications that bark-peeled trees were also considered sacred by the Sami people. This gives museums special challenges when it comes to communication, as in cases where bark-peeled trees are to be removed from their natural environment, and preserved indoors. Another issue is whether the story behind these trees should be exclusively mediated by Sami institutions.

Det problematiske mangfold

Recent years have brought a greater focus on the need for museums to reflect the multi-cultural society of which they are a part. In Sweden, Norway and the EU, this has resulted in the designation of special years to laud the idea of cultural diversity. This article describes how the Nord-Troms Museum in Norway has worked to present the cultural history of Norwegians, Kvens and the Sami people. The museum has focused its presentation work on buildings and artefacts that represent particular features of ethnicity. At the same time, the museum is attempting to challenge the usual perceptions and stereotypical thinking associated with what is considered characteristic or typical for such features. However, there are political and organisational implications associated with working within a cultural history context in which a majority population (the Norwegians), an indigenous people (the Sami) and a national minority (the Kvens) all have their place. The background for the Norwegian state’s understanding of what constitutes cultural diversity in practice does not necessarily coincide with the views held by the Sami Parliament of Norway, or the organisations representing the Kvens. These implications make museum work that focuses on such issues into quite a challenge.

Book Review: What Sami Sings with the Birds

Book Review: What Sami Sings with the Birds