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Article Excerpt
"JIETNA JA GIELA": VOICE AND LANGUAGE IN THE SAMI TRADITION
Go sapmelas boahta moskkus gammarii, de son ii ipmir ii baljo maidege, go ii biegga beasa bossut njuni vuosta. Su jurdagat eai golgga, go leat seainnit ja moskkus oaivvi nalde. Ja ii leatge buorre sutnje orrut suhkkes vuvddiid siste, gos lea liegga ilbmi. Muhto go sapmelao lea alla variid nalde, de sus lea oba cielggas jierbmi. Ja jos doppe livccui coakkanbaiki soames alla vari nalde, de veajalii sapmelas cilget oba bures su iezas assiid. (Turi 1987:11) When a Lapp gets into a room, his brains go round ... they're no good unless the wind's blowing in his nose. He can't think quickly between four walls. Nor is it good for him to be among the thick forest when it is warm. But when a Lapp is out on the high fells, then his brain is quite clear, and if there was a meeting-place on some fell or other, then a Lapp could state his case quite well. (Turi 1966:19)
IN 1910, JOHAN Tutu (1854-1936) published Muittalus samiid birra, the book in which he tries to tell all about Sami life. In his introduction, quoted above, he makes a plea to move the prevailing discourse about the Sami out of airless rooms and up onto the high fells, where a Sami could hear his own thoughts and voice. To him, clarity of thought was grounded in place, on the high fells, where reindeer herding provided the ideal "poetics of dwelling" (Ingold 26) necessary to understand a Sami way of life.
However, ironically, Turi found himself making his case in writing, a completely unfamiliar discourse for the self-taught reindeer herder at the turn of the last century. To discuss the Sami, Turi chose a discourse that effectively forced him to negotiate between the dominant Western textual paradigm and the Sami oral tradition. The result is a remarkably polyphonic voice: reinforced by the actual dialogue he maintained with his mentor and editor, it effectively moves between two traditions.
In this article, I will argue that there is a dialogic relationship between the literary voice and cultural identity, which can be found in literature from native traditions and particularly in three texts by Sami authors who address the problems of Sami culture and politics with significant authority and purpose. The authors and their works I have chosen for their focus on Sami life and culture are:
(1) Johan Turi's Muittalus samiid birra (1910; Turi's Book of Lappland, 1966)
(2) Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa's Terveisia Lapista (1971; Greetings from Lappland, 1983)
(3) Kirsti Paltto's Saamelaiset (1973)
These books, especially Turi's and Valkeapaa's, have contributed significantly to the literature of Lapp life, as Turi would have it in the title of his book jointly titled in Sami and Danish (Muittalus samiid birra [A Tale about the Sami]; En bog om lappernes live [A Book about Lapp life]). Like Turi, both Valkeapaa and Paltto explicitly consider their task to shed light on the Sami way of life. Valkeapaa makes frequent references to Turi in his own work. Not incidentally, perhaps, Boares Nauti, Johan Thuri is Valkeapaa's biography of Turi. Paltto starts her analysis and description of the Sami with a quotation from Valkeapaa thus rounding out an interesting, self-referential cycle.
By looking at each author's introductory statements and observations about the origins of the Sami, we should be able to understand more readily how literary voice echoes cultural identity and its relationship with the dominant cultures. My contention is that among these three works, which are comparable in content and approach, there are significant variations in literary voice. Nevertheless, all three sustain a voice that is remarkably polyphonic negotiating adroitly between the dominant Western paradigm and the Sami oral tradition. That "dialogic imagination" (Bakhtin) seems to be an important feature of Sami writing and becomes particularly audible in an analysis of each writer's voice.
Turi's mentor and editor, Emilie Demant, describes his writing process in her introduction to his book emphasizing the obstacles the self-taught writer had to overcome in order to express himself:
Turi vilde skrive det han t[??]nkte; han vilde fort[??]lle om fj[??]ldfolkets liv; men det tog ingen rigit v[??]kst. Arbejdet var uvant og hindringerne mange; skrive kunde han nok, ogsaa l[??]se sit eget sprog; begge dele har han l[??]rt sig selv som voksen--Turi har aldrig faaet nogen som helst skoleundervisning--; men der var andre hindringer. Forst skrev han paa finsk--hans eget sprog var han vant til at betragte som alt for ringe til, at en bog skrevetpaa det kunde have nogen som helst fremgang,--og nok kan han tale finsk, men alligevel flyder tankerne lettest paa modersmaalet. Saa var der ogsaa det, at baade Finner og Lapper haanede ham, fordi han vilde arbejde med noget saa orkelost som at skrive; de fordomte det soin brodlost tidsspilde, og Turi t[??]nkte af og til, at de maaske havde ret, skont han ikke har familie, som han skylder regnskab for sin tid. (1910:VI-VII) ("Turi wished to write down what he thought; he wished to tell of the nomad's life, but if was not easy. The work was strange to him, and the obstacles were many. He can write and read his own language ... both reading and writing he has learnt since he grew up. Turi has never had any schooling. Also there were other hindrances. At first he wrote in Finnish--he was used to looking upon his own language as all too poor for a book written in if to have any possibilities--and he can talk Finnish quite well, yet his thoughts flow more easily in his mother tongue. Then too, both Finns and Lapps mocked at him for working at anything so useless as writing--they looked upon it as a waste of time--as a thing that could produce no daily bread; and Turi had often thought that they were probably right; luckily he had no family to whom he was responsible for the way he spent his time." [Turi 1966:II-2])
For Turi, it would have been much easier to meet his readers among the reindeer herders rather than having to commit "everything about Lapp life and circumstances" to writing in a book. Turi found himself making his case for the Sami not out on the high fells, but in the small quarters of a surveyor's cabin in northern Sweden. For him, as for many Sami in the twentieth century, writing in the Sami language did not carry a high cultural value, nor did he have the benefit of formal training in writing.
Nonetheless, Johan Turi negotiates this unfamiliar territory with remarkable authority retaining an authentic voice throughout his work. Turi was deeply engaged in a work of dialogic imagination in which his voice is sustained remarkably clearly through myriad translations. A comparable situation is visible in the later work of Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa and Kirsti Paltto. All three writers deliberately engage the Sami oral tradition through emulation or omission.
THE SAMI ORAL TRADITION
In his delightful recounting of spending a year in Lapland as the guest of the reindeer herders, Hugh Beach tells how important storytelling still is among the Sami. The problem is not a shortage of storytellers, says Beach, but a dearth of listeners.
In Lapland, storytelling is still a living art. Many people are noted for their great ability to tell stories, but as with most other active art forms, it has declined to a sort whisper. The decline of storytelling in Lapland, however, is not due to a lack of storytellers, but rather to a lack of listeners, a lack of situations and mood. Story atmosphere dies before storytellers disappear (124).
The transmission of Sami knowledge and tradition has relied heavily on storytelling although the nature of the storyteller's voice has shifted more and more to the public domain negotiating with varying skill the borderlands between the oral and the written traditions (see Kuokkanen II-2; see also Jernsletten 86-9). The boundaries between traditional, experiential knowledge--diehtu--and--dieda--scientific knowledge are blurred, even as Sami enter the twenty-first century. "But when a Lapp is out on the high fells, then his brain is quite clear, and if there was a meeting-place on some fell or other, then a Lapp could state his case quite well" (Turi 1966:19).
For instance, Vuokko Hirvonen made the national news in February of 1999 when she defended her dissertation about Sami women writers in the Sami language at the University of Oulu, Finland. Her dissertation, Sameeatnama jienat: Sapmelas nissona balggis girjecallin [The Voices of Sapmi: Sami Women's Road to Becoming Writers], which has been published in both Sami and Finnish, details the work of Sami women writers, particularly allying their literary production with the craft and the joik traditions.
At Hirvonen's doctoral ceremony, her opponent reviewed her work--not in academic prose--but in a half-hour long joik, thereby celebrating her achievement. Earlier this decade, Finland passed a language law acknowledging Sami as a valid minority language, and Hirvonen's dissertation was the first in Finland to be published in the little-known language of the Sami people--a cultural victory for the academic, cultural, and political future of Sami writing.
However, the process to defending her dissertation in her mother's language was not a straightforward one for Hirvonen. Although her mother is Sami, and Hirvonen was born and grew up in Ohcejohka--the northern most municipality in Finland that boasts a Sami majority--her father was a Finn, and the family used the Finnish language at home. Hirvonen was trained in Finnish in Finnish schools and universities, and it was not until her appointment to the Sami Instituhtta/Nordic Sami Institute in Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino, Norway that Hirvonen began to study her native language seriously. Her academic career has led her to feminist and native readings of the literature of her Sami heritage. Sameeatnama jienat gives voice to an emerging body of...
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