The GEA Times Commentary - Dirk Gindt

““The origins of contemporary Sámi performing arts need to be seen as part of a political activism that realized the potential of arts and culture to make decolonial statements and protest the settler-colonial politics of the four nation-states that continue to divide Sápmi.””

A tribute to Harriet Nordlund and the cultural labour performed by Sámi women

By Dirk Gindt, Professor of Theatre Studies in the Department of Culture and Aesthetics and Head of Research in Theatre Studies, Stockholm University

Dirk Gindt (Henrik Bengtsson, Memoria Photo)

Sámi arts and culture has been experiencing a high interest among majoritarian Swedish society in the last decade. The general release of Amanda Kernell’s movie Sameblod (Sámi Blood) in 2017 proved to be a genuine watershed. The story of a young Sámi woman who, in the early twentieth century, decides to escape from the limitations provided by the residential Nomad school and the racial biological observations to which she is subjected there, struck a nerve with both audiences and critics. Sámi Blood seemingly led to a collective awakening from a collective amnesia that had consistently erased and denied the fact that Sweden to this day remains a settler colonial nation that keeps exploiting the Sámi people’s territories, waters and forests.

The work of Sámi artists was further acknowledged and rewarded by majoritarian society when three authors won the August Prize, which is Sweden’s most prestigious award for contemporary literature. In 2016, Ann-Helén Laestadius won the award for her book Tio över ett (Ten Minutes Past One) about the terrifying effects the nightly underground explosions in Europe’s largest iron-ore mine, located in Kiruna/Giron, have on a teenage girl who is afraid that the entire town will crumble and devour her family and friends. In 2018, Linnea Axelsson won the award for an epic poem called Ædnan (Northern Sámi for land, soil or earth) that charted the forced displacements to which Sámi reindeer herders were subjected in the early twentieth century as a result of the closure of the border between Norway and Finland. Forced displacements were also the main topic for Elin Anna Labba’s collection of interviews with survivors or descendants of survivors. Her book Herrarna satte oss hit (The Masters Placed Us Here) won the August Prize in 2020. Finally, in 2021, Mats Jonsson was nominated for his graphic novel När vi var samer (When We Were Sámi) that castigates the effects of colonial politics on the Forest Sámi.

Several things are noteworthy about these positive developments. First, it would be erroneous to assume that this is a form of ‘cultural renaissance’. A lot of work, as an artist who wishes to remain anonymous explained to me, has been going on behind the scenes at a grassroots level. Just because majoritarian society has remained ignorant of Sámi culture for a long time does not mean it did not exist. Second, even the most cursory glance of this list of artists reveals that the majority of this cultural labour is performed by women. Here, I look at this development from an historical perspective and honour one of the pioneering women in contemporary Sámi culture, the late actor and director Harriet Nordlund (1954-2023).

In 1971 Nordlund became the co-founder of one of the world’s oldest professional Indigenous theatre ensembles in the Arctic region, when she and her cousin, duodji and visual artist Maj-Doris Rimpi, gathered a few friends from the Sámi folk school in Jokkmook/Jåhkåmåhkke to launch Dálvadis, which translates to Winter Settlement in Lule Sámi. For two decades, Dálvadis helped shape Sámi performing arts through a combination of decolonial politics and a stage language that was deeply rooted in Sámi culture. The ensemble also constituted the seed for Giron Sámi Teáhter, located in Kiruna/Giron, which today is a professional touring company and currently striving to become a fully state-financed National Sámi Theatre in the Swedish part of Sápmi.

With their first production, provocatively titled Vi ska leva vidare (We shall live on), Nordlund and Rimpi protested the industrial exploitation of lakes and rivers in Sápmi. Swedish dialogues performed in an agit-prop mode were intertwined with songs performed in Sámi. In their attempt to stage the conflict at stake, the actors portrayed not only members of the protesting Sámi communities, but also embodied some Swedish representatives of the power company Vattenfall. Vi ska leva vidare was not performed in a traditional theatre, but open-air in the market square in Jokkmokk/Jåhkåmåhkke, thus trying to appeal to and engage the entire community.

The foundation of Dálvadis forms part of the emancipatory movements of the 1960s and 1970s (often summarized by the acronym ČSV – Čájet Sámi Vuoiŋŋa!, or Show Sámi Spirit!), when Sámi writers, yoik, visual and duodji artists explored their art as a platform to protest against settler-colonialism. According to cultural historian Veli-Pekka Lehtola, this movement affected the arts and culture including television and radio programs, duodji (Sámi arts and crafts) and yoik, with the aim to take control of Sámi self-representation and foster positive self-identification. Feminist literature scholar Vuokko Hirvonen, who was the first person to defend a PhD thesis in the Northern Sámi language in 1998, highlights the manifold contributions made by women. Although some Sámi women had been writing political manifestos in the early twentieth century, it was not until the 1970s that funding and publishing conditions improved in such a way that allowed more women to write about their lives and experiences, including the consequences of colonialism. In her PhD dissertation Sámeeatnama jienat – Voices from Sápmi: Sámi Women’s Path to Authorship, Hirvonen claims: ‘As far as Sámi society in general is concerned, we can say that it was the birth of literature and other forms of art that made Sámi women visible: they have made the voice of Sámi women more audible than anything else has’ (p. 18). In other words, the origins of contemporary Sámi performing arts need to be seen as part of a political activism that realized the potential of arts and culture to make decolonial statements and protest the settler-colonial politics of the four nation-states that continue to divide Sápmi.

Dálvadis became a professional entity at an impressive speed. Rimpi was already a professional artist and would increasingly take over the role of producer. Nordlund received her acting education at the National Theatre School (today known as the University of the Arts) in Stockholm between 1973 and 1976. Before that, she had already played the title character in Anne Frank’s Diary in a production at the regional Norrbotten Theatre. In a program on Sveriges Radio, first broadcast on 28 July 1992, Nordlund explained how many projects took shape in long-night conversation with Rimpi. Improvisations during rehearsals eventually turned into scripted scenes and a key source of inspiration was constituted by Sámi mythology. A good example of this is the production De tre akkorna (The three áhkát) that was staged in 1978 and foregrounded the central role of female divinities in Sámi spirituality who each occupy a central place in the goahti: Sáráhkká lives by the fireplace and assists women in giving birth; Juoksáhkká lives by the holy place where the sacred drum was stored and decides the sex of a new-born baby; and Uksáhkká lives by the doorway and protects the small child learning to walk.

Reviving knowledge of the three central deities represents another critical dimension to understanding the origins of Sámi performance and its exploration of pre-Christian cosmology. The fact that the three áhkát are so central in one of Dálvadis’ earliest productions, I suggest, points to an increasingly intersectional politics that cleverly and consistently incorporated women’s voices and experiences into its decolonial performance practice and opposition to the state’s paternalistic politics. Dálvadis gave women a prominent presence – both onstage and offstage – in the emancipatory movement. Looking at the cast listed in the playbills for these early productions, it is striking how many women were involved in Dálvadis, which invites for a critical reflection on the role of women in Sámi performance and a celebration of the labour performed by female Sámi cultural performers.

In a personal interview (14 October 2021), Rimpi recalled the origins and determination of Dálvadis:

“It was because of Harriet’s interest, she is my cousin, and she wanted to apply to the theatre school. And then she had started at the Norrbottensteatern, and had also started writing, and then she played Anne Frank and got very good reviews in the mass media up here [in Sápmi]. And then the Sámi came into it, and we realized that this is the way we can rebel, by taking up anything in theatre. And then we continued, and once you’ve started like this, it takes a lot before you give up, you just keep fighting. We ended up in some strange situations too.”

That last comment is certainly an understatement, because at one point, Dálvadis became victims of a racist hate crime when their bus was burned down in Gothenburg while the ensemble was on tour. When the ensemble returned to Jokkmokk/Jåhkåmåhkke, they were so broke that they could not even afford renting a rehearsal space. Undefeated, Nordlund suggested to Rimpi: ‘Let’s go and shovel up the snow on Lake Talvatis/Dálvvadisjávrasj. That doesn’t cost anything’ (quoted in Sveriges Radio 28 July 1992). The initiative resulted in Dálvadis’ most ambitious production yet. Dálveniego/Vinterdrömmar (Winter Dreams) opened during the annual Jokkmokk/Jåhkåmåhkke Winter Market in February 1982, when temperatures were as low as -30° Celsius, and was revived the following season. Based on a script by Nordlund and Rimpi, and directed by the former, it was less of a traditional play and more of a cultural performance that involved almost 100 participants. The frozen lake that is adjacent to Jokkmokk/Jåhkåmåhkke had been turned into a performance space, where a mountain landscape of snow and ice had been created.

In a report that meticulously documented the various productions Dálvadis had staged between 1971 and 1990, Nordlund explained the ambition with Dálveniego:

“To find a form that suited us and that came from our way of living, working and playing. We wanted to shake up our own Sámi ranks with the question ‘where am I going?’ We also wanted to highlight our storytelling tradition and show how alive it still is. In addition, we wanted to do a project with children, young people, adults and the elderly, just as it is in life.” (p. 15)

Nordlund was unafraid of incorporating her rich knowledge of Sámi, western and global theatre traditions into her work, be it Strindbergian dream play aesthetics as in Dálveniego or, later, fused Spanish flamenco and Sámi yoik into a one-woman production of Federico García Lorca’s House of Bernarda Alba. In the process, she created genuinely intercultural productions that always kept Sámi traditions, beliefs and expressions centre-stage.

In 1990, she wrote one of the earliest reports on the state of Sámi performing arts, in which she not only meticulously documented each production staged by Dálvadis, but also passionately argued for the Swedish state to show its commitment to Indigenous culture and acknowledge that Sámi culture was not a minority issue, but a question of national interest. In the same document, Nordlund highlighted the importance of religious rituals, yoik, story-telling and the shaman’s drum – which had all been suppressed for centuries by both the state and the church – for Sámi performance.

Between 2002 and 2006, Nordlund was the artistic director of Beaivváš Sámi Našunálateáhter, the National Sámi Theatre in the Norwegian part of Sápmi. One of her last projects was Trumbäraren (The Drummer), a monologue based on a Sámi creation myth that she wrote and directed in 2017 at Uppsala City Theatre. When Såhkie, the Umeå/Ubmeje Sámi Organization, honoured her with a lifetime achievement award in 2016, Nordlund repeated her belief in Dálvadis’ achievements: ‘We had a political message. Against colonialism. I will fight against colonialism until I die’ (quoted in Västerbottens-Kuriren, 7 March 2016).

The Sámi people have a saying that the people the gods love particularly, they call back to them early. Nordlund might have left this world, but her belief in the power of culture remains and continues to be an inspiration and her work stands as a testimony to the key role played by female artists in the growth and development of Sámi performing arts.

About the author:

Dirk Gindt holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from Stockholm University and is Professor of Theatre Studies in the Department of Culture and Aesthetics and serves as Head of Research in Theatre Studies. He is currently conducting a four-year project, entitled "Circumpolar Performance Cultures", about the intersectional and decolonial labour performed by Giron Sámi Teáhter in Kiruna/Giron (Sweden).