Firekeepers

Sápmi is the term of the imagined nation of the Saami people, covering a territory that goes across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Northern Russia. The joik is the specific form of Saami chanting. It coveys lyrics, melody and throat singing techniques, with a high level of abstraction in rendering the relation to people, natural sites, places, animals and events, that we attempted to understand contextually and historically. The cultural complexity emerging in this multivocal and multisited project shows the embodiment of verbal recollections, gestures, conversations, lyrics, chants, improvisations, outbursts and secretive features of the Saami chanting endeavor. Among the socio-political issues that the film addressed is the poignant reality of fading away languages: Southern Saami is today spoken by less than 500 speakers in Norway.

From Homeland to Homelands and Back Again

Today Saami people mostly reside in arctic regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Their prehistoric trajectories, predating “borders,” are as nonlinear as the antecedent trajectories that implicate more and more, eventually all, of us humans. Saami and other Fourth World peoples share concerns about the survival of their cultures, their languages, themselves. Their “homeland” consists in the rights they claim in their now enveloping nation-states. In contrast, refugees' historic trajectories have entailed the transgression of borders—centripetally and centrifugally, by gradual or urgent leaks and absorptions—sometimes landing them in the same, already contested, spaces. In this essay, traditionally nomadic Saami encounter the most contemporary of global migrants and refugees.

O etymologii etnonimiki Saamów/Lapończyków w świetle europejskiej historiografii

The article comprises a linguistic and etymological analysis of the ethnonyms referring to the Saami / Lapps (represented by the Finnish exonym Lappi and endonym Saami). The ethnonyms have been presented in the light of ancient, medieval and renaissance historiography. The author discusses the dominant Western European and Russian hypotheses about the etymology of various names used to describe the Saami people both in the past and presently and shows their geographical coverage. The analysed material proves that at the pre-scientific stage certain semantic and word-formation motivations were ascribed to various ethnonyms, which had been determined by the specific vision of the world of the tribal communities. The search for verba primigenia does not lead to any clear conclusions. Itineraria, chronicles, maps and sagas served as sources for the study. The factual material (reproduced for centuries) contains ethnographic information about the peoples of Scandinavia.

Nation-building, not “Resistance Radio”

Saami media are an important, if not invaluable, part of Saami society recognized as both a right and a service to the Saami people. In fact, the role of media and media outlets has often been referenced as a manifestation of self determination. However, whereas other Indigenous and ethnic minority media often seek clear financial independence from the state, my research shows that the Saami have a more nuanced and complicated approach. Based primarily on 25 in-depth interviews with Saami journalists, journalism educators and others who have been involved with communication I shed light on the evolving, robust and at times contested understandings of self determination as articulated, justified and practiced by Saami media makers. I argue that by not conflating self-determination with financial independence, Saami media practitioners are engaged in an evolving understanding and practice of media and self determination

Variations of ethnic boundary significance in north Norway

ABSTRACTIn coastal north Norway the Saami people have lived in a close relationship with Norwegians or Norse people for a thousand years or more. This relationship has been articulated in various ways over the centuries, and this article argues that in parts of the region it took a rather intimate form based on the shared exploitation of the dominant marine and terrestrial niches, a common class position as tenant farmers, a varying practice of inter-ethnic marital relations and the effects of a bilateral kinship system. Various forms of inter-ethnic contact and exchange may thus have served to reduce the relevance of ethnic difference in daily life, as suggested by Barth's argument about the integrative effect of transactions, but contrary to his argument about the transactional reinforcement of ethnic boundaries. Contrary to the intention, governmental assimilatory efforts served to reproduce the boundary as the basis for a ranked society and left coastal Saami individuals in some confusion as to how to define themselves, often opting for a mixed category of Norwegian and Saami, labelled ‘Northerner’. Ethno-political emancipation in recent years has tended to put pressure on this identity construction and promoted a dichotomised identity as either Saami or Norwegian.