Mapping a Space for Sámi Studies in North America

THE APPEARANCE OF THIS SPECIAL ISSUE of Scandinavian Studies attests to a growing interest in Sapmi (Samiland) and the Sami among Scandinavianists in North America as does the quasi-institutionalization of a Sami section at the 2001 SASS annual conference in Chicago. As the following articles demonstrate, an increasing body of scholarship on the Sami is emerging in North America. This expanding body of research is also mirrored in the growing number of courses being offered on the Sami on college and university campuses across the continent. Sami studies in North America are achieving a kind of institutional critical mass and are becoming more than merely the isolated interest of individual scholars. They are developing into something loosely resembling a sub-discipline. As the emergent field takes shape, a self-reflective pause is in order. It is appropriate at this point that we who engage in Sami studies in the United States and Canada carefully consider the implications of our discursive actions and map out a space ourselves and our scholarly pursuits. This article is intended to contribute to just such a discussion. In March of 2001, Norwegian Princess Martha Louise made a highly publicized visit to Finnmark during which the rhetoric of Sapmi as a distinct place was strongly invoked. Having returned from England to Norway for good in December 2000, the princess was making an effort to become involved in a more public way in her role as a member of the Norwegian royal family. This gesture was a calculated attempt to draw public attention from Crown Prince Hakon and his fiancee, Mette Marit Tjessem Hoiby, was frankly admitted by the royal public relations adviser, Hans Geelmuyden. The palace announced that from now on the princess would be representing Norway more frequently and would take on an active, public role (Welde, Slik). As one of the first acts of her new, more visible position in domestic Norwegian space, Martha Louise accepted an invitation from the Kautokeino Ungkarslag to visit the remote Sami village in inner Finnmark. During her tour, she traveled by dog sled, snowmobile, and reindeer sledge, dined in a lavvo on traditional Sami fare, read children's literature in North Sami to a group of children at a local day-care center, and made a public appearance in a Kautokeino gakti or Sami national costume (Hundkjoring; Welde, byfolk; Ellen; Eventyrprinsesse; Masi; Slik; Bjornbakk, Martha; Prinsessen). An underlying message of this tour was that Sapmi was an integral part of Norway, and by visiting this remote part of the kingdom, the princess was emphasizing her new-found connection with the nation-state. Moreover, the syntagmatic signification process was two-fold and doubly reinforcing. Princess Martha Louise became more Norwegian by her association with Sapmi, and Sapmi became more Norwegian by its association with the country's princess. But this bilateral Norwegianizing was not the only result of the royal visit. The semiotic configuration of Sapmi's location within Norway was more ambivalent. Running counter to the rhetoric of national inclusion of Sapmi (or the representation of Samiland as an integral part of Norway) was a construction of Sapmi as remote, rural, and peripheral, as the marginal other to the metropolitan center of Oslo, where the princess had insinuated herself into a young, hip, night-clubbing social scene and where her burgeoning relationship with Ari Behn was beginning to draw uncomfortable attention (Hatun; Welde Slik'). Martha Louise's trip to arctic Finnmark was as much a flight from Oslo and unwanted publicity as it was a move to demonstrate the inclusion of Sapmi (and the Sami) within the nation-kingdom. The princess herself drew attention to the contrasts that served to separate Sapmi both geographically and semiotically from the metropolitan center when she said, Byfolk har godt av en tur pa vidda (Welde, byfolk) [A trip to the wide open spaces does urban dwellers good]. …

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