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A Reindeer Herd On The Move

By Harald Gaski

Multifaceted artist Nils-Aslak Valkeapää (1943-2001) is no doubt the most renowned contemporary Sami artist. He made his debut as an author in 1971. As a poet, as well as a painter and musician, Valkeapää reaches for the special quality in that which is Sami. He approaches his projects from several angles--the words in the lyrics are the yoik in the words, and from them grow forth associations and images that are transformed into his paintings, often with a mythical and mythological meaning. Nils-Aslak Valkeapää wants the Sami to learn from the past, from what has been passed down to us, from the messages in myths and the wisdom in tradition. We should be open to impulses from the outside, but we should never forsake our own background. Against all odds, the Sami have survived in the North for many thousands of years, so it stands to reason that some of the things that our forefathers and foremothers experienced and learned are useful in today’s world. In any case, this is true if we Sami want to continue to be indigenous people within a cultural historical context where the past’s experience and learning will influence modern Sami way of thought.

Nils-Aslak Valkeapää won the Nordic Council’s Literature Award in 1991 with his book Beaivi, Áhčažan [The Sun, My Father], whose title alludes to the myth about the Sami as the children of the Sun. The book is an amalgamation of old photographs and newly-written lyrical poetry that ties together the past and present, the documentary and the fictional, in a form that is innovative and creative and with a content that unites visual images, words, and music. It provides at once an expression of Sami cultural history and the richness of language. Its words’ double and multiple meanings inspire the reader to reflect. The photographs illustrate various aspects of the Sami people’s lives and history and comprise an enormous body of documentary material, which the author spent six years collecting in Scandinavia, Europe, and the United States.

In a purely artistic sense, Valkeapää continues in The Sun, My Father his idea from Ruoktu váimmus (1985) [Trekways of the Wind, 1994], but he goes a step further by testing new forms for combining words and images, visual impressions and associations, expressions and content.

The section of Trekways of the Wind that has, perhaps, reached further out into the world than any other Sami literature––with the exception of Olaus Sirma’s love poem from the 17th century––is the “My Home Is in my Heart” sequence. In this section we find the classic conflict between the Western ownership-and-exploitation attitude toward nature and a relationship that is based more on a sense of kinship and equality with our immediate surroundings, as expressed in indigenous peoples’ respect for nature. In some respects, this poem can be seen as a modern parallel to the old antiphony “The Thief and the Shaman” from the beginning of the 19th century.

In Valkeapää's view, the time has come to renew the Sami traditions through innovation in traditional artistic forms and genres. One example of his many-levelled linguistic play is poem No. 272 in The Sun, My Father. The poem spans seven and a half pages, where the words spread out more and more on the pages till they finally are scattered all over pages 5 and 6. On pages 6, 7 and 8 are found some dotted lines that, at the end, form one dotted line. The poem is a typographical play as well as a linguistic challenge to every Sami with a high proficiency in the specific terminology regarding reindeer names, because the poem in fact represents a reindeer herd on the move. The herdsman is leading the flock in the opposite direction of our reading of the book, that is, we meet the herd on our wandering on the tundras (read: the pages of the book). We pass the herd, which has spread all over pages 5 and 6, because the reindeer are resting and grazing on those pages. When we further continue on our trip, we meet with the tracks and the footprints of the passing reindeer. The text in italics consists of onomatopoetic sounds from the moving herd, as well as of descriptive poetic echoing sounds of the natural surroundings. The plain text represents different reindeer, according to their age, their appearance, whether they are male or female, whether they are spotted or have any other kind of special marks and so on. The Sami language has an enormous vocabulary for describing reindeer, just as it has approximately 150 different terms to precisely identify different kinds of snow. Also in terms of topography, kinship relations and metaphorical circumlocutions for predators like the bear and the wolf in connection with taboos and beliefs, the Sami language has a wealth of terms and names. This fact is of course a richness and a challenge for poetic use of the language, like that which Valkeapää has displayed in this particular poem.

As a matter of fact, a poem like No. 272 is impossible to translate into any other language. At least, I do not know about any other language with exactly the same kind of terminology for reindeer names. In any case the poem was left untranslated in the Scandinavian rendition of Valkeapää's book, because the Scandinavian languages lack the equivalent terms for reindeer. Thus the limitations of the Scandinavian languages are laid bare, they are unable to match or rival Sami in regard to explaining with exact preciseness the content and consequences of Sami experiences. Accordingly the Sami readers are reassured about the fitness and importance of their own language as the best and most useful tool to cover the needs of Sami communication. The larger claim to make would be to assume that the sort of sophistication shown regarding reindeer is potentially applicable to other phenomena as well, so one does not have to be particularly interested in reindeer to be impressed with the intellectual complexity of a language that can do what Sami can do in one word. This fact may help stimulate an exploration into Sami language in an attempt to use these succinct terms in other fields as well to examine the accuracy and exactness of scientific terms and language in general, not least in regard to arctic experiences.

For non-Sami readers the untranslated poem may at first sight represent an amusing and exotic example of the peculiarity of a totally different language, but it might also be thought-provoking because the poem remains unintelligible to someone who doesn't read or speak Sami, with the exception of the typography. There is, admittedly, a difference between having the poem in a Sami poetry book and reading it there, and finding the same poem untranslated in a Scandinavian or English version of the book. What originally would be interpreted as a humoristic, but still realistic and fully possible thing to do in the Sami book, suddenly appears as an ironic commentary upon the inability of the majority language to fully express Sami experience. The poem becomes politicized, esthetics turn into ideology. The example may well serve as a basis for further theorizing, not only about two different language codes, but more fundamentally as evidence for two different ways of viewing the world. If that is so, and there in fact exist a lot of fields where Sami and Scandinavian languages are distant from each other when it comes to describing the essence of the experience, the condition in itself is actually so interesting that it should absolutely inspire more thorough analysis into the matter. Theoretical approaches are at least always dependent on an abstract language, and if it is true that the linguistic explanation of the things we see is quite different between two separate cultures, then consequently this fact must have an influence on the theories we choose and the methods we create to view and interpret our surroundings.

Therefore a poem of reindeer may enable the Sami reader to ironize with the assimilationist: "Hi there, wait a minute! Didn't the you tell us that our language is an inferior one? So what do you call a four-year-old male reindeer with a white spot on its leg, and with the antlers pointing forward? In one word, please!"