Brill has published the volume Practices and Mediations of Sámi Culture: Indigeneity, Ethno-history and Art, edited by Jan Borm, the director of the Maulaurie Institute, as the third title in the Arctic Humanities series.
The book is dedicated to Sámi culture and to their homeland, Sápmi, offering a transdisciplinary reading of textual and visual representations of the Sámi in the past and present.
The volume addresses Sámi culture both “from within” and “from without,” bringing together historical, artistic, anthropological, literary, and religious perspectives. In doing so, it contributes to the field of Arctic Humanities by combining disciplines such as art history, anthropology, history, cultural studies, comparative religion, film, education, and creative writing.
Among its particularly notable features, the volume includes an unpublished essay by the Scottish poet John Burnside, as well as contributions by scholars including Joanna Kodzik, Konsta Kaikkonen, Risto Pulkkinen, Francis Joy, Tuija Hautala-Hirvioja, Pigga Keskitalo, Inker-Anni Linkola-Aikio, Liisa E. Holmberg, and Katja Hyry.
The volume is divided into three parts: Figures, Images, and Transmission.
The first part, Figures, brings together contributions on historical figures and texts connected to knowledge about the Sámi: the handwritten travel diaries of Moravian missionaries in Lapland in the 18th century, the connections between scholars in mid-19th-century Fennoscandia, and the presence of Lars Levi Læstadius in French and German writings of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The second part, Images, focuses on images and representations of Sámi culture: three traditional Sámi noaidi drums, the role of nature and landscape in Sámi shamanistic art, and the image of Sámi culture in Finnish fine art.
The third part, Transmission, concerns cultural, educational, and linguistic transmission: missionaries, folk education and contemporary practices, the Sámi language in secondary education, the growing interest in Arctic Indigenous films, and John Burnside’s text “Nomad Mind and the Language of the Heart.”
The volume closes with an epilogue: “Katja Hyry’s Tribute to her Father, Juha Pentikäinen,” followed by the indexes.
The publication makes an important contribution to reflections on Indigenous methodologies and decolonial perspectives in Arctic studies, highlighting the need for more holistic, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches to understanding Sámi cultures, practices, and forms of mediation.
The publication can be purchased on the Brill website for EUR 110.
Source: Brill
