Sami Culture

 We arrived this morning in Alta, Norway. The scenery was very familiar to an Oregonian: mountains with lots of conifers (the direction opposite this picture had more trees and very little snow). And yet also very Norwegian: steep mountains, snow (but not glaciers) in many places on the mountains, all flat spaces used for farms or buildings. Once again, we were spoiled with gorgeous weather: sunny and mid-50s F / mid teens C. 

The port isn’t deep enough for the ship so we tendered. There was a pretty white jellyfish in the water where we got off the small boat. And lots of birds, though I didn’t pay (enough) attention to which ones we saw. 

Today’s excursion was to Sami Siida, a family-run business that introduces visitors to Sami culture. The Sami are an indigenous people who reside in northern Norway, Finland, Sweden and Russia (of note, the region used to be referred to as Lapland but that is not the term that the Sami prefer). They speak several different but related languages (the Russian Sami is considerably different from the others).  

We arrived and were invited into a lavvu which is a tent that resembles a tepee. The guide, who we later learned was 18 years old, was dressed in traditional Sami clothes which he described: reindeer-skin shoes (different versions for summer and winter), a blue shirt with red decorations that differ based on one’s city, a belt, buttons that are either round for unmarried people or square for married people (his would be square!), and reindeer-skin pants. He is wearing the traditional dress from his village, the examples with less ornate collars and belts come from a nearby village. 

We later met the young man’s mother and grandfather. The pride they all have in their culture was evident, and they also participate in other aspects of Norwegian life. The 18-year old works as a welder as well as his role with the family business and reindeer herding….and he loves stunt snowmobiling. At one point he reached into his shirt to pull out an iPhone to show us a photo of a sea eagle. 

We learned that each reindeer’s antlers are like a fingerprint — they are unique to the reindeer but grow back in the same pattern each year — males lose their antlers in September/October and females lose theirs after their babies are born in the spring (so yes, any reindeer that might be flying in December and have antlers must be female).  

During summer the reindeer are on an island. Then they receive military boat transport back to the mainland and they take a couple of weeks to return to their winter area. It takes a couple of months to migrate back to the summer area (or to the boat for the return to the island). During summer the reindeer are on their own but during winter someone is with them at all times. The “someone” rotates weekly between the 18-year old, his father, and his grandfather. They circle the herd a few times each day via snowmobile to keep the herd together and make sure no one else’s reindeer get mixed in with theirs. The family’s herd of about 1200 reindeer makes it on the smaller side of a medium-sized herd. They don’t brand the animals the way cattle ranchers do, but they make unique cuts in the ears to identify the owner — the left ear is the “family” identifier, the right ear is the “personal” identifier. His personal identifier is the same as his father’s but with one more cut. And yes, they circle the herd even when it’s -40 to -50C which is not uncommon during winter. 

Reindeer herding is a lifestyle, so the Sami people continue to do it as long as they are physically and otherwise capable of doing it. In contrast, the young man anticipates that he will (eventually) retire from his welding job. 

Yes, we got to feed the reindeer moss and lichens that the family collects in the nearby forest…and yes, there’s a picture of me somewhere but it’s not on my camera so I can’t share it. 

The family answered lots of questions about lifestyle. I’m not sure how it came up, but we learned that weddings are huge celebrations with hundreds of attendees and typically last about 2 days though sometimes they are 1 or 3 days long. The mother said that for her wedding 20 years ago they invited 3000 people of whom about 1500 came. The whole family prepares and serves the traditional Sami dish of reindeer, potatoes and carrots (traditionally the latter ingredients would have been acquired via trading reindeer meat and skins with farmers). The bride and groom dress in their traditional Sami attire, with lots of jewelry and a tiara-like head adornment. 

The Sami had a type of singing called yoik (yoh-ik) which sounds a bit like yodeling. Uploading my videos of it would take more time than I’m wiling to commit but I will try to extract a short piece to share. 

The Sami language apparently has 300 words for snow and no words for war. Definitely the right priorities! At the end of the visit I asked the 18-year old how to say thank you and he said it’s Giitu! which I recognized as being pronounced almost the same as the Finnish word kiitos (“key-toss”) which also means thank you. 

Needless to say, my inner anthropologist was delighted with our visit with the Sami family. It felt like they shared their culture and experience, and graciously answered our naive but well-intentioned questions, and somehow it managed not to be exploitative. 

After feeding the reindeer I noticed this beautiful red admiral butterfly: 

The next activity was (you guessed it) caching. We found a few caches in the central part of Alta, then four of us walked a kilometer each way to find a cache near the community’s harbor for small boats. 

En route we spotted a tiny one-passenger vehicle. For scale, it came up to about the shoulder of an average-height woman. 

All in all a fine day. And a great last day in Norway which is one of my favorite countries to visit. Now for a couple of sea days, one of which will include sailing near the island of Jan Mayen, then off to Iceland which will be my first new country of the trip.