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Names and context does not hurt; 

This picture was probably taken in 1896 around the Kanstadfjord in Norway, near Lødingen, Nordland. The adults on the left are Ingrid (born Sarri) and her husband Nils Andersen Inga. In front of the parents are Berit and Ole Nilsen. The lady on the right is Ellen, sister of Ingrid. In front of Ellen are the children Inger Anna and Tomas. 

I am honestly so fed up with this photo being the photo of us all over the Internet. Especially as most people post it without any type of description whatsoever. You’re looking at human beings, not a romantic painting, goddamnit. They are people, not coat-hangers.

Not to mention that the photo’s more than 100 years old and it shows us as being stuck in a never-changing past when the following photos are more relevant to us as a people than this photo is today;

Sofia Jannok, a North Saami musician from Sweden. Do please not the lack of reindeer and traditional dresses. The snow still speaks to some of the stereotypes we’re faced with, but still. 

Some of the Saami teenagers who partook in the Ume Saami graffiti work shop ‘Åjlastit’ [to party as a way of having fun] in Upmeje earlier this year. Are we really allowed to be this non-traditional? Gasp!

Some children - among them Carolina Kroik, Laila Parnedal and David Åhrén - who partook in the South Saami language camp Baakoste Baakose in Staare, Sweden. 

Giron Sámi Theatre. It’s amazing, but you don’t need to look like a stereotype in order to identify as a Saami. Shocking, I know.

The Saami band Mollet. 

selchieproductions:

The People Who Walk With Reindeer

© Jessica Benko

Photograph © Erika Larsen

Two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, near the jagged tips of Norway’s crown, the sun does not set for weeks on end during the summer months, and the midnight sun bounces off fields of midsummer snow. The solstice comes and goes, but the Saami reindeer herders are too busy to pay much attention. “We’re always in the middle of calf marking at this time,” Ingrid Gaup says, referring to the yearly ritual in which the herding families carve their ancient marks into the ears of the new calves. In the Saami’s homeland, spread across northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, the notion of time is untethered from the cycles of the sun and is yoked instead to something far more important: the movement of the reindeer.

Saami herders call their work boazovázzi, which translates as “reindeer walker,” and that’s exactly what herders once did, following the fast-paced animals on foot or wooden skis as they sought out the best grazing grounds over hundreds of miles of terrain. Times have changed. Herders are now assigned to specific parcels of the reindeer’s traditional grazing territories at designated times of the year. To make the lifestyle tenable, herders need expensive all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and snowmobiles to maintain hundreds of miles of fences between territories and move large herds in accordance with land-use regulations—even when they clash with the instincts of the reindeer. As Ingrid’s husband, Nils Peder Gaup, explains, “Reindeer think with the nose, not the eyes. They go with the wind.”

Like many Saami of his generation, Nils Peder went to a compulsory boarding school where his native tongue was forbidden as part of the country’s “Norwegianization” policies. Saami have been given more autonomy since then, but irretrievable damage was done to their language, now spoken by a minority. The Gaups are among the few Saami—a population estimated at around 70,000—who still herd reindeer.

Each June, after a long journey into the mountainous tundra of northern Norway, the Gaup family waits for the herd in tepee-like structures called lávut. They will spend sleepless nights marking the calves before moving the reindeer to their summer grazing grounds in the fjords.

At the first hint of the herd’s arrival, the dogs in the encampment leap to their feet, ears erect. The herd spills over a far ridge, swelling like a stream down the mountainside. Other herders crest the rise on their ATVs, driving hundreds of thundering reindeer into a makeshift stockade. Small children, stiff as starfish in their snowsuits, toddle blithely inside the corral, unfazed by the reindeer stampede around them.

“I teach reindeer work to all of my children,” says Nils Peder, as he guides his youngest son in marking a calf. His older children are so adept with sharp knives that they return calves to the mothers with only the faintest traces of blood on their ears. “Children must lift the culture,” Nils Peder says, though he acknowledges the pressures of outside cultural influences. Herding families now live in modern homes equipped with Internet and television. Sara, the youngest of the Gaups’ five children, spends much of the calf marking texting friends on her cell phone.

As herders face greater challenges, what path will girls like her choose? If reindeer herding disappears, Saami traditions may vanish too. The language itself reflects this powerful bond: The word for “herd” is eallu; the word for “life” is eallin.