Sámi literature

What do we know about it?

BY IRENE PIIPPOLA

The Sámi people have produced many writers and poets. Kirsti Paltto and Nils-Aslak Valkeapää are the best-known ones in Finland, but despite this, little of their enormous output has been translated into Finnish. Sámi music, film and art is a huge success around the world. One begins to wish some such success for Sámi literature too.

Out of a total of around a hundred works, about ten or so have been translated into Finnish; some of these have been published by the authors themselves and are difficult to obtain. Skabmatolak/Tulia kaamoksessa (Beacons in the arctic night), an anthology of Sámi literature published by Otava in 1974, is still the only broad overview available in Finnish. But much has happened since that time, for instance all of Nils-Aslak Valkeapää's extensive output has been written since that anthology was published. The novel and children's literature have only really developed as distinct genres over the past few decades.

Sámi writers get their books published mainly by Norwegian Sámi publishers. Translations are also made primarily into Norwegian. This means that the writers remain unknown in their own country, since marketing and distribution of Sámi literature in Finland is badly run. There are several Sámi languages and the readership in each language is small. Today, books are published in six Sámi languages; in Finland, books are published in three of them (Skolt Sámi, Inari Sámi and North Sámi).

Approximately half of all Sámi people speak a Sámi language. This does not necessarily mean that they can read their native language, however. The Sámi have not been taught at school how to read and write in their own language; in fact, the school system effectively destroyed people's knowledge of their native tongue. Many Sámi writers have only learnt to write in their mother tongue as adults, and maintaining and improving such a skill is much more demanding than if they had learnt it as children.

Sámi writers in Finland -- who are they?

Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, Eino Guttorm, Kirsti Paltto, Rauni Magga-Lukkari, Rauna Paadar-Leivo, Jovnna-Ánde Vest, Kerttu Vuolab, Inger-Mari Aikio-Arianaick, Kati-Claudia Fofonoff who is a Skolt Sámi, and Aune Kuuva, Matti Morottaja, Petteri Morottaja, Iisakki and Ilmari Mattus who are Inari Sámi. These are contemporary Sámi writers, most of whom have enjoyed a long career as writers, producing many works of literature. Despite this, very few works have been translated into Finnish. Even Hans-Aslak Guttorm (1907-1992), a writer and teacher from the Tana valley in Lapland who was in the vanguard of Finnish Sámi writing, is an unknown name to most Finnish readers.

The most famous Sámi person in the world may well be Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, writer, pictorial artist and musician/ yoik singer (1943-2001). Two of his works have been translated into Finnish: Kevään yöt niin valoisat ( Spring nights, so light , 1980) and Aurinko, isäni ( The Sun, my father , 1992). During his life, Nils-Aslak Valkeapää published eight collections of poetry. The trilogy Ruoktu váimmus ( The vastness within me , 1987) has been translated into Swedish and Norwegian. Two of his other collections of poetry have also been translated into Norwegian. The whole of Valkeapää's work is a yoik about the life of a Sámi, no, more than that: the life of a man at one with nature.

The most versatile Sámi writer when it comes to working in different genres is Kirsti Paltto. She has published sixteen books, including novels, collections of short stories, poems, books for children and young people, radio plays and stage plays. Two of her novels have been published in Finnish: Voijaa minun poroni ( My reindeer , 1986) and Juokse nyt Naalin poika ( Run now Nalens boy, 1993), both translated by Eino Kuokkanen. It is particularly regrettable that none of Paltto's short stories have been translated into Finnish. In her short stories, she describes the life of a young Sámi girl and the often difficult decisions that adult women have to make in the cross-current between love and social conventions with great sensitivity. Kirsti Paltto also highlights the social inequalities arising from family ties and financial situation. Paltto's realistic prose is about Sámi culture, its taboos and social norms causing anxiety for the individual, but also about the strength derived from having a culture of one's own.

Rauni Magga Lukkari, resident in Norway, is one of the most often translated Finnish Sámi authors. However, only one of her works is available in Finnish, the collection of poetry Calbmemihttu ( Measured by eye , 1995) which was part of an exhibition of Sámi costumes at the Lapland provincial museum. There are also some translations of individual poems which have been published in magazines. Lukkari has published seven collections of poetry. She lives in Tromsö, is active in her community and also acts as translator and publisher. She has founded a publishing company called Gollegiella and in interviews she has said that her particular focus is books on tape. In her own work, Lukkari has dealt with generation issues: the mother-daughter relationship and the position of women in Sámi society.

There are many poets among the Sámi writers, especially women poets. Inger-Mari Aikio-Arianaick, IMA, is younger than Valkeapää and Lukkari but hardly a beginner anymore. She published four collections of poetry between 1989 and 2001. Her poems have only been translated into English. IMA's poems are about the feelings of a young girl and a woman, about experiences in travelling the world and recently also about motherhood. Her detailed, often humorous poems about herself and others come close to the reader. They make us see ourselves and often also our hidden prejudices. In her latest work, Máilmmis dása ( From the world and here, 2001), Aikio deals not only with motherhood but also with prejudices we all have for what is different.

Kerttu Vuolab, whose writing has clear roots in the Sámi story-telling tradition, has written an autobiographical novel for young people about the experiences of a young girl called Maret who is going to boarding school in another culture. Rauna Paadar-Leivo who has published a number of illustrated children's books together with Aletta Ranttila has also written about a young woman growing up. Vieras talvi ( The strange winter, 1987), published by Kustannus-Puntsi, is about the evacuation of Sámi people to Ostrobothnia during the war, and a young girl's year of school in this different world. The book was translated by Kaija Anttonen, who together with Eino Kuokkanen is the only professional translator from Sámi to Finnish in Finland.

Jovnna-Ande Vest lives in Paris and writes novels which make innovative use of tradition both in terms of form and language. One of his novels, Poropolku sammaloituu ( Mossgrown reindeer track, 1990) has been translated into Finnish by Eino Kuokkanen. Vest describes the enormous change in Sámi lifestyles in the Tana valley after the Second World War. The novel consists of a fragmented stream of memories of a father seen through the eyes of his son. The language is naively simple and uncontrived. Vest has continued to describe people in the river valley and their lives in his series of novels called Árbbolacat (The heirs) .

Eino Guttorm, also a native of the Tana valley, has published seven books, one of them in Finnish, Tunturimorsian ( The bride from the fells , 1989). With sensitivity and insight, it tells the story of a young man's sexual awakening. Guttorm describes the strict social control of a village defined by conservative Laestadian religious beliefs, where everyone's actions are closely observed and people's lives are regulated by a wealth of prohibitions and warnings. The writer deals with taboos in a direct manner, and like all the best storytellers he also possesses the knack for structuring a plot using humorous stylistic devices.

Children's literature is what is mostly available in Skolt Sámi, while there are also memoirs published in Inari Sámi. Poet Kati-Claudia Fofonoff's latest collection of poetry in Skolt Sámi, published in 2000, has been translated into North Sámi and Norwegian. Petteri Morottaja from Inari has published two novels, of which the latest Riävskanieida ( The snow grouse girl, 2000) is a detective story for young people.

Short stories and poetic means of expression are natural elements in Sámi storytelling. The yoik singing, which was kept secret and even banned at one stage has not just been preserved but revived and become very successful abroad. Stories that have been a part of oral tradition for centuries take on a new lease of life in written fiction. Sámi literature continues to seek new means of expression. It refuses to simply take things as read.

Grant systems for Sámi literature in the Nordic countries

The arrangements for financial support for Sámi literature and translations in each Nordic country are directly proportionate to how well known the literature is. The concept of Sámi literature is unknown in Finland and Sweden. Consequently these countries do not have any specific financial support system for Sámi literature. Writers and translators apply for grants from various sources, and there is no particular system of grants for the publishing of fiction. The situation in Norway is completely different.

In Norway, the Sámediggi (Sámi parliament in Norway) distributes government support directly to publishers. In 2003, support payments totalled NOK 1.6 million and the publishers give annual literary awards. The Nordic association for Sámi writers, Sámi Girjecalliid Searvi (SGS), is an official party to the giving out of writers' grants in Norway. Since 1977, such grants have also been given to Sámi writers resident in Sweden, Finland and Russia, but the majority of the grants are given to Sámi who are Norwegian citizens. The writers' association also enables Norwegian Sámi writers to get access to library and copyright payments. The Sámi writers' association has no representation at all on the bodies giving grants and generally promoting literature in the other Nordic countries.

The Sámediggi of Finland, or Finnish Sámi parliament, receives an annual culture grant of EUR 170,000 from the Finnish government. The grant has not been raised since 1996. The cultural division of the Sámediggi distributes the money, and receives a great variety of applications. There is no particular sum earmarked for literature. In Sweden, where the position of Sámi literature seems as neglected as in Finland, there is a special section in the grants programme of the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs allowing for support for the literature of a national minority, but Sámi literature has no special position.

Sámi literature is financially supported by the Sámi Council, which is an inter-Nordic organization, and the Nordic Council of Ministers. The grants given by these organizations consist above all of special project grants or work grants for a maximum of six months. The Nordbok committee of the Nordic Council of Ministers gives grants translations between the nordic languages, for literary cooperation projects and to translators translating into Nordic languages, particularly minority languages, but the same person is only eligible to receive a grant twice. The grants given by the Sámi Council are shared between Sámi in four countries: Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia.

Translations and publishing

There are few translators and publishers of Sámi literature in Finland. However, the faltering publishing business is not suffering from a shortage of operators but from a shortage of financial support and inadequate distribution systems. This is most difficult for writers, whose completed works and translations may wait years to be published.

At present, Kustannus-Puntsi in Inari is the only Sámi publishing company in Finland. Puntsi focuses on publishing Sámi literature and literature from Lapland in Finnish. Operations rely on various cooperation projects and the output of the shareholders themselves, and when it comes to translations the company has so far published only one novel.

The translation of literature from minority languages -- possibly even the publication of a translation simultaneously with the original -- is not so much a question of financial resources as of political will. Publication of Sámi fiction, including children's literature, comes to only a few titles annually. Translations are that much more important. You could even say that the Sámi minority, only a few thousand people, would not even exist as far as the surrounding world is concerned if it were not for translated literature.

The publication of minority literature is always an act of cultural dedication that cannot be expected to pay off in commercial terms. Writer Kirsti Paltto gives an example of the long waiting times for publication; her collection of short stories Guovtteoaivvat nisu ( The two-headed women , 1989) waited four years before being published in Sámi. The collection has been translated into Finnish by Eino Kuokkanen, but a publisher has proved hard to find so far.

Translator Kaija Anttonen has been translating Sámi literature into English in recent years, and writer Eino Guttorm says that he writes in Sámi or Finnish depending on the publishers. It is something of a mystery that the Sámi language should be in such a weak position in Finland of all places -- after all, it is a language which is related to Finnish, and it was only recently, less than two hundred years ago, that the Finns themselves experienced the struggle against domination by another language, namely Swedish. Is the memory of a nation so short, or are we simply looking the other way?

Irene Piippola is head librarian of the Sámi library in Finland, located at the Regional Library of Lapland in Rovaniemi.

Translated by The English Centre/Monica sonck and Nicholas Mayow

More information on the subject:

Girjin. Näkökulmia saamelaiskirjallisuuteen (Views on Sami literature). Ed. Irene Piippola (Kustannus-Puntsi/Regional Library of Lapland, 2000). Also available in Sámi and English. Contains articles and a bibliography of Sámi literature and translations in 1979-1999.

Vuokko Hirvonen: Saamenmaan ääniä. Saamelaisen naisen tie kirjailijaksi . SKS 1999 (Finnish only).

Tästä alkaa tie. An anthology of writers from the Barents regionen. Barents publisher 1999 (Finnish only).

Internet sites about writers from Finnish Lapland and Finnish Sámi writers, compiled by the Regional Library of Lapland: http://www.rovaniemi.fi/lapinkirjailijat and www.lapponica.net