Sami Culture in a New Era: The Norwegian Sami Experience, and: In the Shadow of the Midnight Sun: Contemporary Sami Prose and Poetry, and: The Sun, My Father (review)

Sami Culture in a New Era: The Norwegian Sami Experience. Edited by Harald Gaski. (Karasjok, Norway: Davvi Girji O.S., 1998; distributed in North America by University of Washington Press. 223 pp., graphs, notes, references, notes on contributors. $20.00 paper.)

In the Shadow of the Midnight Sun: Contemporary Sami Prose and Poetry. Edited by Harald Gaski. (Karasjok, Norway: Davvi Girji O.S., 1997; distributed in North America by University of Washington Press.)

The Sun, My Father. By Nils-Aslak Valkeapää. (Guovdageaidnu, Norway: DAT O.S., 1997; distributed in North America by University of Washington Press. Original Sami version published 1988.)

The Sami are the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia. Known more commonly as Lapps, they inhabit an area (Lapland, or Sápmi in their own tongue) that straddles the northernmost regions of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, as well as the Kola Peninsula of Russia. It is estimated that there are some fifty-thousand Sami. Of the four countries in which they live, Norway has the largest Sami population. The Sami language, which belongs to the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic family of languages, has four dialects: Eastern, Lule, Southern, and Northern, which has the most speakers and is most often used in official contexts. Traditionally, the Sami have lived by reindeer herding, fishing, hunting, and subsistence agriculture. Colonization and the resultant exploitation of their land and natural resources have threatened their way of life. Since the end of World War II, the fashioning and solidifying of a Sami identity in relation to the majority cultures in which they live has been a major animating force for them.

From a Sami publishing house in Norway come two books on the Sami for the nonspecialist. One is a compilation of articles, each by an expert in his or her field, on various aspects of contemporary Sami culture; the other, an anthology of contemporary Sami prose and poetry, highlights one aspect of that culture. Another Sami publisher presents the poetic work of one of the foremost Sami artists active today, Nils-Aslak Valkeapää. In a sense the books thus complement and illustrate one another.

For practical reasons, editor Harald Gaski—himself a Sami, a prolific commentator on Sami issues, and associate professor of Sami literature at the University of Tromsö in Norway—has limited the collection in Sami Culture in a New Era to Norway, the country with the largest Sami population. Harald Eidheim, the only non-Sami contributor included and an insightful and sympathetic scholar of the Sami experience, provides a valuable study of the development of Sami self-understanding, chronicling the events that gave rise to the Sami movement in the 1950s and more recent watersheds in the Sami understanding of themselves in relation to the majority culture. The parameters of Sami self-identification among the youth differ from those of their parents’ generation, a fact highlighted in Vigdis Stordahl’s intriguing study of Sami generations. John Solbakk’s article on mass media surveys how these media help shape Sami identity and bring Sami concerns before the majority sector; surprisingly, however, he does not include the numerous Sami Web sites in his discussion.

Traditional knowledge among the Sami—specifically, that derived from the experience of working to secure subsistence from nature—and the language that conveys it tend to be usage-oriented. The Sami language thus has a rich vocabulary for things on which life and livelihood depend—for example, fishing, reindeer, ice, and snow. This knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation in that the children participate in daily tasks along with their elders, thereby learning skills as well as the language necessary to explain them. Nils Jernsletten’s dazzlingly detailed vocabulary lists and his diagram of terms related to...