ERIKA LARSEN: The Sami are by
tradition reindeer herders
that have lived as nomads.
Everything revolved
around reindeer.
The food, the children, the
stories... everything.
Herders were working so
in tandem with nature
that they could interpret the
Arctic to the rest of the world.
The Sami people have
their own voice
and their own way to tell
the world who they were.
(SAMI YOIK CHANTING)
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
I'm going to open tonight
with a journal entry.
November 2010, reindeer
herd separation.
Dusatatsva, Norway.
'I'm not ready to
leave this place,
the longer I stay the
more it suits me.
The land is like
a magnet,
a person can either repel or
connect to this landscape.
I woke up this morning
and the lavut closest
to ours revealed it had
snowed all night.
It was covered like a
white sugar almond
that one might have received
as a wedding favor.
But as this world becomes more
real to me the other fades away.
I came here to find people
of when the land speaks
could interpret
it's language.
I came here in
search of silence
so that I could begin
to hear again.
I am now more a stranger in
my own home than here.'
So tonight I want to take you to
the Scandinavian Arctic,
where I encountered
the Sami people.
The Sami are by
tradition reindeer herders
that have lived
as nomads.
Today they are considered the
indigenous group of Europe.
To create this body of work, I
lived there for four years
and worked as a beaga.
A beaga is a woman
in Sami culture
that would go and live with a
family of reindeer herders.
She would help with the
children, she would help
cook and clean.
She would also travel
with the herders
when they were with
the reindeer.
She would help
slaughter the reindeer,
and basically anything
that needed to be done.
Um, but first let's
watch a small video.
This ran with my
article in 2011.
(INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(SAMI YOIK CHANTING)
-(BABY GIGGLING)
-(SAMI YOIK CHANTING)
(INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
So, the Sami homeland
is called Sapmi,
but maybe many people here have
heard it referred to as Lapland.
It ranges today in
four countries,
Norway, Sweden,
Finland and Russia.
But the majority of my work was
done in Norway and Sweden,
where you see the
grey dots.
Jokkmokk, Gallivare,
Harra, Kautokeino.
Today there's approximately
between 80,000 to 100,000 Sami.
But only 10 percent are actively
involved in reindeer herding.
So, my journey
began in 2007.
I had a few email
correspondences
with a Sami woman.
I wrote her a
letter and said,
I was interested in
learning about
traditional medicine of
the Arctic landscape.
And she invited me to come and
stay with her for several weeks.
And so I did.
And, when I got there, she made
a few things really clear to me.
One was that the Sami
people had their own voice
and their own way to tell
the world who they were.
They didn't need someone
coming from the outside
and telling them
who they were.
And the other was, 'but if you
want to learn who we are
then you need to stay
here for a long time.'
And I said,
'Well, you know
I worked on my last
project over eight years.'
And she said, 'Well,
that's great!'
- (AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
- And so
it kind of set the
scene for us.
So she said, 'Why don't you
go visit my husband,
he is a reindeer herder.'
And she goes, 'But I think he is
hunting moose right now.'
And she drew a map
on a napkin,
and she said, 'Just follow this
map and you'll find him.'
- (AUDIENCE LAUGHING) -
I said, 'Okay.'
So, I drove about an hour to
rail-- railroad tracks,
it was like the main
marker on the map.
I drove to the railroad tracks
and put on my backpack.
And, parked the car and
put on my backpack
and I walked another three miles
until I found this house.
And to me this house was
'the middle of nowhere'.
And, this is Arild
and he is slicing dried reindeer
meat at the table.
But this was the first thing
I noticed on the wall.
There was just this picture
and I really had no idea
what it was and what
was happening.
And I would truly have no idea
of the deep significance
of this event for another
year and a half.
But it was the only
thing on the wall,
so I figured intuitively it
must be important.
And, um... it's a reindeer calf
that's being marked in the ear.
The earmark shows
the ownership.
And in Scandinavia today the
majority of reindeer are owned.
And at that time,
I didn't speak Sami language and
Arild didn't speak English,
so we had to find ways
to communicate.
And the first thing he did
was come up to me
and he had me smell
his watchband.
He kind of put it up to my
nose and I said, 'Ah.'
And it smelled like he had just
slaughtered an animal.
And that was his
way of saying,
'Well, you know, we actually
did shoot a moose,
why don't you come out and
we'll show it to you.'
I said, 'Okay.' So, we walked
out and I followed him.
And this is what I saw.
And I said, 'Ah, finally, like I
feel really comfortable.
This is... this is what I
came to look for.'
And instantly he just
made some gestures
and he was with his nephew
and they were telling me
to collect some wood to see if
I could build a fire.
And so that again set
the stage for
not only would I be here for an
extended period of time
but that I would be... needing
to make myself useful.
It wasn't that the Sami people
needed my help by any means,
but, um, they really
also didn't need
someone standing around
doing nothing.
Um... about a
year later,
I follow Arild to his
summer grounds
and this is a
calf marking.
And this is one of the
most important times
in the Sami herding year, as it
projects the prosperity
of the herd for the families
for the years to come.
And what's
happening here is
you see female reindeers
running in circles
and the herders are
watching their earmarks.
And they'll watch as the
calf is following
and then they'll lasso those
calves and mark the ears.
And that's how this continues,
this tradition.
And that fall, I followed
Arild's daughter, Sunna.
This is during the
fall slaughter
and I took notice of... a
few of the women
were collecting the blood after
the reindeer's were slaughtered.
And they would sit there and
stir it for about an hour.
And I asked her
what they were doing.
She said, 'We
collect the blood.
We can either dry it or
we will freeze it
and this will be later
used in cooking.'
And, when I began to
work as a beaga
this is one of the first things
I did was learn how to cook.
I cooked many
dishes with blood
but my favorite was
blood pancakes.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
The first year and a half
though I went back
and forth from New
York to Sapmi,
trying to find ways to...
to stay there, get visas,
how I could live in one
person's home,
just logistically how this
was going to work.
When I would go back and forth,
I thought of the images
and was making those
impressions,
my impressions of what
I was seeing.
And this, this reindeer skin
hanging on the side,
this is a side
of a shed,
but there would be houses
every-- and Sami villages
had skins and skin on houses
after house after house.
And I'd later find out that
these skins could be sold
but also they could be used
on the snowmobiles
to kind of keep warm, they would
wrap around the snowmobiles.
Or they'd put them on the
floor of the lavut
which was that first
structure you saw in the,
in the first slide
that I showed.
And this is Laila the
woman that invited me
with Sunna her daughter.
And, of course I was taken
by the visual beauty
of their traditional dress,
which is called the Gahkti.
But in time I learned that it
had deeper significance.
The Gahkti would tell
an outsider exactly where
they were coming from
what village they
were coming from.
But even more so it
could tell you what
family they belonged to.
And if you really knew
what you were doing
and you looked close enough, you
could tell who sewed the Gahkti.
I later learned that
if a minor,
Sami minor got in
trouble,
if a picture went in
the newspaper
no part of the Gahkti could be
shown as well as the face.
It would be like
identifying the person.
And, this is Ella-Li, she is the
niece of Arild and Laila.
She is from Jokkmokk and she
is a reindeer herder.
I was struck by this luminescent
quality she had,
but I was also taken
by her scarf.
And I had no idea if it
was Swedish or Sami.
And she said to me,
'Of course it's Sami!'
And she said, 'You know, we wear
it on our traditional Gahkti but
when we are in our
street clothes',
and I call it street clothes,
she didn't call them that but,
'you know, when we wear it in
our everyday clothes,
it's called
Sami-inspired.'
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And finally I made my
way to Kautokeino.
Kautokeino is considered
the-- it's just,
if you want to say, sort
of the Sami capital,
98 percent of the people
speak Sami language.
And Laila took me there to meet
her extended relatives.
And this is where I ended
up meeting Nils Peder
and Ingrid Gaup.
And it was them that I
worked for as the beaga.
And, Nils Peder comes
from a long lineage of
reindeer herders.
It was from him that I
could finally
begin to get answers about
my initial question.
Were there people that could
interpret nature's landscape?
And not only did the Sami
language itself have deep, deep
and rich vocabulary to describe
the natural world,
but herders were working so in
tandem with nature that in fact
they could interpret the Arctic
to the rest of the world.
Um... another thing
in this image, I think
it was the first time
I had experienced where I could
see no horizon line.
I just kept
looking around
and it was like you couldn't--
the focal point was this.
And this is Nils Peder and
Ingrid's main house.
And I say main house
because many herders have a
house in their summer grounds
and a house in their
winter grounds,
where the reindeer are
in the summer
and where the reindeer
are in the winter.
And then they have a
main house.
This is where I mostly
lived and worked.
And one day I had
been out all day,
most likely with the herd and
with Nils Peder and I came in
and I saw this sitting on the
table and I thought, 'Okay.'
And they told me,
you know, it was so
cold outside
that they couldn't cut
the meat up outside.
It was freezing, so they
had to bring it in.
So of course, I run
downstairs
and I get my camera and come
back up and everyone laughing.
'Oh my gosh, again she is taking
pictures every day.
This is-- what is she
taking a picture of.'
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And so, I was like, 'I have
to get this picture.'
They... 'okay'.
And then about a year later, I
came across the same scene.
I had been out all day, probably
with the reindeer and I came in
and the calf was
sitting on the table.
And I thought to myself, 'Oh my
gosh, I got to get some food.'
I've been out all day and I
made myself some soup
and I sat down and I
started eating.
And Ingrid raced and got her
camera and she came back.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And she took this
picture.
And she said, 'Well, now you're
part of the every day.'
And, but, you know, it--
I think it felt really good
but at the same time it
made me think,
'Wow, what's my perspective now,
what does that mean?'
And then I realized that
I... I... could make
pictures like this.
That's what it meant.
This is Nils Peder and his
herding dog, Giddeo.
And for them this is what
would be considered
the ultimate herder's
perspective.
You can see the entire herd
in the background,
you can see what
weather is coming in,
if there's
reindeer missing,
if there's predators,
if there's food.
But, you know, three
years before
I wanted to be as close as
possible to the reindeer,
I wanted to be as close as
possible to the people,
I wanted to capture
their face,
I would never have taken
a picture like this.
And also probably I
wouldn't have been
in a position to be
here to see this.
And as I studied more and
learned more about Sami artwork,
when a herder would
paint a herding scene,
it would always be
from this vantage point.
And the lavut again.
Many herders today
use the lavut
when they are actually out
with the reindeer.
And by this time I decided I had
to learn Sami language.
In Kautokeino, like I said 98%
of the people speak Sami,
so I was surround with it
all the time,
but there's also
something called
Sami Allaskuvla or
Sami University.
And I took a seven-month
immersion course.
And Sami were put in
boarding schools and
many generations lost
their language,
so this school kind of
gives this back
to the generations
that have lost it.
But I also took it and-- Finally
I could sit in a lavut like this
and this is when I began to
understand the history
and learn about the
culture because
grandparents,
extended family,
aunts, uncles, children were
all sitting in this lavut
and telling
stories in Sami
and drinking coffee and eating
dried reindeer meat.
And they weren't being
translated into English
and if they were, they really
lost the significance.
So, finally I could hear and
feel these stories.
And, this is
Mattis Gaup,
he's Nils Peder's
brother and they, they
work with the
herds together
and for me pictures like
this are important
because I didn't take
very many of them.
A lot of my work is
kind of silent
and still and more reflections
on the moments.
But it would be a
real disservice
to take away... what hard work
reindeer herding is.
It's all year long,
there's no vacations.
If a herder takes
vacations
it's usually to visit
extended family members
and help them with
their herd.
They are often working in minus
30, minus 40, minus 50.
It's not a lot of money,
this is a lifestyle.
One side note, I was at
a family party
and this guy
Mattis walks in.
His entire face is
frostbit,
it's brown and kind of
peeling away.
And nobody blinked. It's just
me, I was like, 'Wow'!
It was just...
just came in.
He'd been out with the reindeer
for a few weeks. So...
And one spring I got
to follow the Gaups on
their spring migration.
The spring migration is probably
about 200-250 kilometer trek
from the winter
grazing grounds north
to the summer
grazing grounds.
It can take anywhere from a
few days or a few weeks
depending on the
weather.
And in this situation,
the weather would,
you know, get a little bit
bad, so they would stop,
sometimes they would
pitch the lavut
and we could sit for
15 or 20 hours.
Or some times they just
take a break life this
for an hour and go
to sleep.
And this is how I saw the
herd on that migration.
And again I just
remember it was a--
the migration itself is
very meditative.
You're just kind of
going and going and
you don't see very much,
you just see the herd. And I
saw this and I realized,
'Wow, my only focal
point are reindeer'.
And... and that extended
to many years,
it wasn't just today
in this time.
And in that moment,
I realized
I had been living in a bubble of
reindeer for like years.
And in, in the best way, I mean
everything revolved--
with the herding
families I lived with
everything revolved
around reindeer.
The food, the children,
the stories... everything had
to do with reindeer.
And this picture is
really important to me
because this is Nils Peder
sitting with his herd.
Actually today the herds
are a lot more wild
than they used to be.
Because of things like
snowmobiles and helicopters,
which a lot of
herders use,
they are not physically with the
herds the way they used to be.
They used to ski with the herds
or walk with the herds
so the herd was
more tame.
So for him to sit
and have the herd kind of
circling with... around him,
it means he's been with his
herd every single day.
And then he sat there and
he began to yoik.
And yoik is that sort of throaty
chant you heard in the video
I showed at the
beginning.
And, um, the yoik has-- it's
very special to the Sami.
It's a way to pay reverence
to a person, place or thing.
And he sat down and he
began to yoik his wife,
which means he is evoking her
presence in the herd.
And, this is his
wife, Ingrid.
And she took me under her
wing when I was there.
And she showed me what
a woman's role
was in a reindeer
herding family.
And the role is to be the heart
and soul of the family.
And that's what she was.
And just like Arild in
the very beginning
that had me
build a fire,
Ingrid did the
same thing.
She had me cook, she, she
went out to cut grass
which she is doing here. I would
go out and cut grass.
And she is cutting grass,
it will later be dried,
it will be put in shoes
in the winter time.
And she swears this is warmer
than synthetic material.
And, this is skin,
reindeer skin.
And Ingrid taught me how
to work with skin.
How to take the hair off,
how to dry it,
how to later make a
bark concoction,
which would preserve the skin,
and also how to sew with it.
When I was six months
pregnant, I went back
and we sewed shoes for my son,
which is a tradition.
(AUDIENCE MURMURING)
And, these are not my
son's shoes.
(LAUGHTER)
But these are
reindeer shoes.
But these have...
this has the hair on it,
so these will be shoes that
are used in the winter.
These are for female and
these would be for fancy,
very dressy occasion, it would
be used with the Gahkti.
But this style of the
toe being curled up
would be on men or
women's shoes
and it comes from
the old days
when they used to lock
into the skis with it.
This is Ellen-Ingrid,
this is the granddaughter of
Nils Peder and Ingrid.
And, this would be
like similar to a
Native American cradleboard,
and you can see here the
wood has been covered
with this skin that's finally
been preserved by the bark.
A lot of the women today use
these for the children.
And, this is Ingrid
and her youngest daughter,
Sara, in a lavut.
And this is during
their calf marking.
And I followed them when we were
here for a couple of weeks.
We set up the lavut and
we went inside,
and you can see the skins
that I showed you
in the beginning
on the shed,
they are on the ground
there sitting.
They set up the fireplace
and she cooked coffee.
Um, and, she sat down and
all she said to me,
she said, 'This is home,
this is what home is.'
This is Johann, he is a
young herder from Sweden
and I spent a couple of
weeks with him.
And I asked him, 'What
is herding to you?
What are you going to do?
What are you going to be?'
And he said,
'Herding is everything.
I've learned this
from my uncles,
I've learned it from my aunts,
I learned it from my mother.
I am a reindeer herder.
But to be a reindeer
herder today,
it's very, very difficult.
I won't be able to be just
a reindeer herder.
I will have to take
another job.'
Just the cost of the gas,
and the equipment,
reindeer herding isn't
economically viable,
it's regulated by
the EU but
what he was telling me is that
young reindeer herders,
they can continue but they will
have to take other work.
And, this is Sven. I spent a
lot of time with Sven.
He came to visit me
in New York.
He is 70, he's been reindeer
herding his entire life.
And I'm going to end on
another journal entry.
'Today we came across
two women reindeer
that while fighting
locked horns.
Unable to unlock they
starved to death.
I watched Sven as he
approached the scene.
He seemed forlorn and
lost in thought.
I only took a few pictures.
It struck me how
a man close to 70
that had been a reindeer herder
his entire life could be so sad.
I could only imagine
how many reindeer he had
slaughtered in his lifetime.
And that this cycle of life and
death would seem so natural.
When I asked him, he said
that they had suffered.
He estimated it took
them three days
to die of
starvation and cold.
And this is what
bothered him.
He looked at the earmark to see
whom they belonged to.
One was his and one
was his cousin.
He separated their
locked horns,
cut them off and brought them
home to give as a keepsake.'
Thank you.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
