From Lapland to Sapmi: Collecting and Returning Sami Craft and Culture

A cultural history of Sapmi and the Nordic countries as told through objects and artifacts

Material objects-things made, used, and treasured-tell the story of a people and place. So it is for the Indigenous Sami living in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, whose story unfolds across borders and centuries, in museums and private collections. The objects created by the Sami for daily and ceremonial use were purchased and taken by Scandinavians and foreign travelers in Lapland from the seventeenth century to the present, and the collections described in From Lapland to Sapmi map a complex history that is gradually shifting to a renaissance of Sami culture and craft, along with the return of many historical objects to Sapmi, the Sami homeland.

The Sami objects first collected in Lapland by non-Indigenous people were drums and other sacred artifacts, but later came to include handmade knives, decorated spoons, clothing, and other domestic items owned by Sami reindeer herders and fishers, as well as artisanal crafts created for sale. Barbara Sjoholm describes how these objects made their way via clergy, merchants, and early scientists into curiosity cabinets and eventually to museums in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, and abroad. Musicians, writers, and tourists also collected Sami culture for research and enjoyment. Displays of Sami material culture in Scandinavia and England, Germany, and other countries in museums, exhibition halls, and even zoos often became part of racist and colonial discourse as examples of primitive culture, and soon figured in the debates of ethnographers and curators over representations of national folk traditions and "exotic" peoples. Sjoholm follows these objects and collections from the Age of Enlightenment through the twentieth century, when artisanship took on new forms in commerce and museology and the Sami began to organize politically and culturally. Today, several collections of Sami objects are in the process of repatriation, while a new generation of artists, activists, and artisans finds inspiration in traditional heritage and languages.

Deftly written and amply illustrated, with contextual notes on language and Nordic history, From Lapland to Sapmi brings to light the history of collecting, displaying, and returning Sami material culture, as well as the story of Sami creativity and individual and collective agency.
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