Sunday, March 3, 2024

Sápmi in German Museums, New Beginnings

 

In my recent book, From Lapland to Sápmi, I touched on Sámi objects that ended up in German museums, largely in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some were collected by tourists and amateur ethnographers; others were bought in bulk by men who purchased them on behalf of ethnographic museums. In the closing chapters of the book, I mentioned that most German institutions, like the vast Museum Europäischer Kulturen (MEK) in Berlin, did not have a good grasp on the provenance and history of their hundreds of Sámi objects and displayed very few.

Objects from the Sámi Collection at MEK

 I described the situation as it was in 2022, when I finished the manuscript. How much has changed in just two years! In fact, things have been in movement for several years now, but they have become much more visible since late 2021, when the Norwegian Parliament allocated a significant sum to a five-year project supervised by Cathrine Baglo that would “provide an overview of Sami collections in German museums, link collection history and object-specific knowledge, and lead to increased expertise in both German cultural heritage institutions and Sami museums.” [Nov, 2021, Norwegian Museums Association newsletter].  

 The MEK in Berlin has one of the largest collections of Sámi material in Europe (1000 objects and around 700 photographs). Aside from a few objects from the 1600s, most of the collection was gathered from 1880 and 1929 on behalf of the Museum für Völkerkunde (today the Ethnologisches Museum), not as part of European culture, but as examples of exotic international culture. The MEK now claims this material as part of its recently designated (and now searchable online) “Sámi Collection” and has shown itself eager to work with Sámi museums in the Nordic countries, specifically Ajtte in Jokkmokk, Sweden, and Siida, in Inari, Finland. The two-year project, which began in 2023, is called "The Sámi Collection at the Museum of European Cultures. A multi-perspective approach to provenance research.”

In an interview on MEK’s blog [in German, translated here from DeepL], Eeva-Kristiina Nylander, who works with both Siida in Inari and MEK, explained that “My task is to look through the entire collection and identify specific pieces that we want to take a closer look at in terms of their provenance. After that, my main task will be to coordinate the collaboration between the museum and local artisans and artists who want to study the collection and bring their knowledge and additional contexts to the project.

 “At the moment I'm doing a lot of archive research to prepare. Later on, we want to invite people to the MEK who have a special relationship with objects like these and give them the opportunity to look at the collection and choose the objects they specifically want to research. We want to do five different case studies, which can range from essays to art projects to reconstructions of objects. We want to give participants the opportunity to engage with the collection in any way they choose, to be inspired and to learn more about materials, forms and the practices associated with the objects.”

 Elsewhere in Germany, the Hamburg Art Museum held an exhibition last year, “Speaking Back: Decolonizing Nordic Narratives” with the intention that “Sámi and non-Sámi artists will critically review the Nordic colonial heritage and its linkages to German museums and colonial history in general. Even more, the exhibition gives space for a critical and responsible debate on decolonial agency and strategies of resistance.”

 Marja Helander, photo

This exhibition was followed, beginning last September and continuing through March, 2024 by a second exhibition, “The Land Has a Mind to Speak,” at Museum am Rothenbaum – Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK). The museum holds a large collections of Sámi artefacts in Germany and was formerly the Ethnographic Museum in Hamburg. It features the artworks of Sissel M. Bergh, Annika Dahlsten & Markku Laakso, Marja Helander, Erica Huuva, Solveig Labba, Britta Marakatt-Labba, Outi Pieski, Katarina Pirak Sikku and Anniina Turunen, in dialogue with historical objects in the museum.

 

I knew—and hoped—when I wrote my book, From Lapland to Sápmi, that the material about repatriation, from Nordic and European museums, might well become outdated even before the book was published or soon after. The momentum is building, I’m happy to see, in Germany in particular, in the financed projects described above, and in exhibitions and workshops where Sámi duojárs (artisans) connect with museum objects in foreign museums. The objects may or may not be returned to Sápmi anytime soon, but connections are being made and all things are possible.

Saturday, December 9, 2023

Anna-Stina Svakko and the Arctic Indigenous Design Project (AIDA)


Anna-Stina Svakko, Sámi Duojár
Anna-Stina Svakko's work has always impressed me for its beauty and preciseness. Born near Kiruna, she has been studying and making duodji and art since the 1980s and is considered one of the foremost artisans or duojárs of "soft handicraft" today. She primarily works with fabric, wool, leather, fishskin, fur, and sometimes Plexiglas to create traditional and  contemporary clothing.
 
Her creativity also manifests itself in poetry and art. Her studio website, Astu Design, showcases her range and also includes a shop where you can browse through work for sale. 
 
Svakko has participated in multiple exhibits and is also a teacher and lecturer on the subject of duodji. In the past few years she became one of the many important duojárs in the Nordic countries to participate in the Arctic Indigenous Design Project (AIDA), a cross-border collaboration in Sápmi between the Sámi Archives of the National Archives of Finland, the Ájtte Swedish Mountain and Sami Museum in Sweden, and Sámi allaskuvla in Kautokeino, Norway. 
 
AIDA "aims to establish archives for Sámi duojár and artists and to ensure the preservation and continuity of Sámi design-thinking for future generations."
 
In the digital lead-up to the Arctic Arts Summit that took place in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory in 2022, three women involved in AIDA and duodji participated in a filmed conversation about the AIDA archives. They include Gunvor Guttorm (professor in duodji at Sámi allaskuvla), Inker-Anni Linkola-Aikio (senior research officer at the Sámi Archives) and Anna Westman Kuhmunen (curator at Ájtte museum).  
 
           

Thursday, November 9, 2023

The Palace of the Snow Queen: Winter Travels in Lapland and Sápmi, now in its second edition

 

Join me for a reading in Seattle from The Palace of the Snow Queen at Third Place Books in Ravenna. November 15, 7 pm. RSVPs requested. Would love to see you there!

 

Just a week ago, The Palace of the Snow Queen: Winter Travels in Lapland and Sápmi was released in a new edition by the University of Minnesota Press. I had a chance to promote the book before its official pub date when I was in the Midwest in October, doing talks about my other recent book, From Lapland to Sápmi. But only now, as I'm about to do a reading next week for Snow Queen,  has it fully sunk in that this travel memoir, which has meant so much to me, is now out in the world and available again.

The book was originally published by Counterpoint in 2007 and very well published, I might add. But time passes and books disappear from the shelves of bookstores, replaced by newer titles. A couple of years ago Counterpoint graciously returned the rights to me, and the University of Minnesota Press, which has published other books of mine on Sápmi and Scandinavia, bought the rights and set the wheels in motion for a fresh new edition. I was pleased when they scheduled the book for the same year that From Lapland to Sápmi was to be published. In many ways the two titles are bookends for my interests in the high North of Scandinavia.

Snow Queen tells the story of three winters spent mostly above the Arctic Circle in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The first trip, from November 2001 through most of February, 2022 was the most extensive. I traveled by train, bus, plane, and coastal steamer from Stockholm to Kiruna in Sweden to Honningsvåg near the North Cape, back down to Alta and Tromsø, over to Kautokeino and Karasjok on the Finnmark Plateau, and then to Inari, Finland. After going south to Rovaniemi and Kiruna again, I headed to Helsinki, and then back up to Inari. My second trip in 2004 took me from late January through early March back to the Kiruna area and Jokkmokk, and my third trip, in April, 2005 (it was still winter up there!) brought me back to Kiruna. One of the most fascinating things was to track the construction of the Icehotel from piles of snow around tunnel-forms through its melting under the April sunshine back into the Torne River. 

Building an Ice Wall, 2004

I loved just about every minute of it (the dogsledding trip not so much), and I learned a massive amount from reading and talking to people: journalists, tour guides, writers, artists, reindeer herders, and lots of Sámi and Nordic folks. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life and led me to write a number of travel articles and essays, culminating in the travel memoir of 2007. It also led to many more trips to Scandinavia over the next twenty years, some of them back to the high North, others to Copenhagen and Stockholm, where I buried myself in archives much of the time in order to write about the artist and ethnographer, Emilie Demant Hatt. It also led me to a consuming and continued interest in Sápmi, both as a translator and as a journalist-nonfiction narrative writer.

When asked if I’d like to write a new Afterword to the new edition, I answered, “Definitely.” There was much to say about the ways in which the cultural, environmental, and political landscape of Sápmi had changed in the past years. One of the issues I’d discussed in 2007 was the travel trope of “Untouched Lapland,” the phrase travel sites and brochures continually use to lure tourists to what was once the less desirable season of winter in the North. It became apparent fairly early on to me that Sápmi had been inhabited for millennia, and that it was still inhabited by the Sámi, in spite of colonization and natural resource extraction. In my Afterword I brought up the fact that the phrase was still being used. I write there about the grim news that even more of Sápmi’s landscape is under threat from mining companies and giant windfarms on reindeer herding territory. I also write, however, about the waves of activism by the Sámi and their allies, that are resisting these companies and state-owned concerns.

I’ve continued to follow environmental issues in Scandinavia through sites such as Amnesty Sápmi, the High North News, and the Barents Observers, as well as the posts of activists on Twitter/X, and I occasionally post something about them here on the blog. 

Reindeer Round-up near Gallivare, Sweden, 2004

 

Meanwhile I still cherish the extraordinary opportunities I had back in the day to see the Icehotel being constructed in Jukkasjärvi, to attend the reindeer races in Kiruna, to attend the Sámi and Indigenous film festival in Inari, Finland, and to stroll around the Jokkmokk Winter Market. My appetite for winter and snow has never abated (though it was challenged this past January and February when I struggled with fierce Arctic storms coming off the Atlantic up in Tromsø). For me winter dark and snow is always magical, even when I’m just looking at a snowfall through a winter or through the enchanted lens of memory.

 

 

Sunday, October 22, 2023

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


Thursday, September 21, 2023

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 4th 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