Sami Scenes
My latest story in Australian House and Garden, December issue, just out. See below. They have published it as a Christmas story. I was most interested in the Sami people's own traditions.
Check out the photos in the magazine when next you're in a newsagent....for some reason I can't copy them.....but they are beautiful. I'll add some of mine here.
High above the Arctic Circle, the Sami people preserve a unique ancient culture and lifestyle as they follow their reindeer herds across a mesmerising landscape, writes Diana Plater.
The temperature is a freezing -5C but I’m warm in my boots, woolly hat, thermal overalls and huge leather gloves. I am watching as our guides lasso four reindeer, one for each of our group, and the animals take their places, ready to pull our sleds through the snow. We’re soon flying over frozen creeks, past lakes and forest. For anyone from Australia, this is a Christmas fantasy come true, and it’s possible to imagine Santa’s workshop is coming up just around the corner. We’re a few kilometres from the town of Kiruna, north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden’s Lapland, bound for a lake near the village of Jukkasjärvi. For about 150,000 indigenous Sami people, this stretch is a small part of the huge area that makes up their ancestral homeland, known to them as Sápmi. It covers the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland as well as the Kola Peninsula of Russia. Our guide, Nils Torbjörn Nutti, explains it’s been Sami territory “since the ice started to melt about 15,000 years ago… when they followed the reindeer up from what is now northern Europe”. Unlike Rudolph and friends, these reindeer don’t fly, but they can withstand temperatures even lower than minus 40oC. They’re the lifeblood of the Sami people, providing them with transport, food, milk, warmth and clothing. The Sami way of life is intimately intertwined with these animals. “We’re still working with the reindeer, but also with a lot of help from technical things,” says Nils, referring to the use of snowmobiles to round up the herds as they follow a time-honoured seasonal path along the Norwegian coast, through northern Scandinavia and Russia and down to the Baltic Sea. Later, in Jukkasjärvi, we are invited to climb inside a Sami tent, a lavvu, where a fire of bark and birch is burning. Here we eat a typical herder’s lunch of smoked reindeer meat with flat bread, and drink coffee from wooden cups. Bar the caffeine, this is the way many Sami lived for millennia. In more recent times, there were dark years when the Sami’s languages and traditions were officially suppressed, and many of them were moved into modern housing. Yet their unique culture and spirit has survived. These days, an elected Sami Parliament sits in Kiruna, working for increased self-determination and the protection of Sami languages and land. Kiruna, the northernmost town in Sweden, is being gradually relocated because of damage from a huge
underground iron ore mine, so there’s a palpable sense of change in the air. I meet up with Laila Spik, a Sami cultural guide and the author of several cookbooks and guides to native plants. In this region, the latter include båsskå ( Angelica archangelica ) , better known to us as garden angelica or wild celery. Its stem is eaten, the leaves are dried for tea and the roots can be used for medicinal purposes. As the eldest daughter of the family, Laila was taught about Sami ways by her reindeer-herder father, to ensure their cultural identity wouldn’t be lost to future generations. Core tenets include shamanism, which is a belief in animism and spirits, Laila tells me. Goddesses also feature prominently, including the fire goddess, who must always be fed first each morning. “She was the goddess who helped the child be born and who protected the people, and we should never forget her,” says Laila. The Sami are also exponents of one of Europe’s oldest song traditions, known as yoik, said to go back several thousand years. Relying on melodic and haunting vocal sounds instead of instruments, it’s a form of musical expression that’s winning fans and popularity beyond the Sami people, especially since a yoik performer won a talent show on Swedish TV. It’s the landscape that has me mesmerised. The day before my reindeer sled adventure, I’d spent some time at the ski resort area at Bjorkliden, which is about a 90-minute drive north of Kiruna. Our guide, Amanda Malis, took me on the back of a snowmobile up to Låktatjåkko, Sweden’s highest mountain lodge, which offers a spectacular view of Lake Tornetrask and Abisko National Park in the distance. We warmed up next to a roaring fire and ate waffles smothered in cloudberry jam. That afternoon, I took a train from Bjorkliden, whooshing past historical railway stations and scenes of people ice-fishing from camp chairs, before pulling into Kiruna. I feel I can’t leave Sápmi without trying another local activity: dog-sledding. One evening I squeeze into a sled behind a mother and her two daughters. As we take off, the huskies stop barking, intent on running, and silence descends as we scoot across the snow. Whizzing through the forest of white-capped birch trees, spirits are high and we stop at a collection of lavvu , to find a piano perched in the snow. When our guide invites us to sit down and play a tune, the first song I think of is, naturally, Jingle Bells. #
H&G TRAVEL
204 Australian House & Garden