Slow food Sápmi

 

När Göteborgs förskolor nyligen skulle uppmärksamma samernas nationaldag (!) valde man att servera hjortkött från Nya Zeeland (!!), eftersom detta visade sig vara billigare än renkött från lappmarkerna (?!). Ger en helt ny innebörd åt uttrycket "go Woke, get broke"...  

Kritik mot att hjortkött serverades

My scary Sweden

 

"Mitt Sverige" (My Sweden) is a nature documentary by Hungarian Zoltan Török. His Sweden turns out to be the scariest part! Think icy islands in the Gulf of Bothnia (?) featuring colonies of cormorants, eagles fighting each other, and ravens harassing seal cubs. 

Later, Zoltan and his family go trekking somewhere in Lapland, with its vast and seemingly empty hill tracts and woods. Or not so empty, since we do get to see bears, foxes, lynxes and wolverines. At one point, the documentary becomes unintentionally funny, as Zoltan says that the Sami (Laps) live in harmony with nature...while the camera shows how they herd reindeer with snowmobiles! I assume these are powered by gasoline?

But sure, if you want a good argument to stay indoors in some safe burb in southern Sweden (the civilized part), I suppose "Mitt Sverige" could be worth watching! 

  

Ödets ironi

 

Björn Lomborg börjar bli desperat...

Men visst, förr eller senare kommer någon att testa geoengineering. Om det fungerar, kommer den västerländska civilisationen gå under av *brist* på fossila bränslen istället. Ja, det är alltså en ändlig resurs...

Ironin! 

Politiken förstör för klimatet

När kolonialmakten blir Woke

 

Det behövs säkert insatser på detta område, men lägg märke till den pikanta motsägelsen. I samma ögonblick som det blivit "inne" att attackera svensk kolonialism i Sameland, så kommer den svenska staten på ett nytt sätt att blanda sig i samernas angelägenheter. Och karusellen snurrar vidare...  

Majoritet samiska kvinnor utsatta för sexuellt våld

Lilith´s spawn

 

"Nordiska väsen" is a entertaining book by Swedish author, illustrator and gamer Johan Egerkrans. The topic? Creatures of Nordic, mostly Swedish, folklore. Both the good, the bad and the literally ugly! The first edition was published in 2013. I recently procured the 2023 "jubilee edition", which apparently includes twelve new entries. For some reason, Egerkrans´ works are sold as children´s books, which may explain why I almost missed them! I´m not *entirely* convinced that "Nordiska väsen" is suitable for kids...or even adults, if you think ghouls and hobgoblins are real and haunt your back yard (or is it church yard).

The illustrations are somewhat "non-traditional", but as Egerkrans shrewdly points out, nobody really knows how the creatures of folklore really look like anyway. Besides, what counts as "traditional" might in many cases be national romantic images from the late 19th century (think John Bauer or Ernst Josephson). I´m not an expert on Swedish folklore, but if Egerkrans is to be believed, trolls weren´t seen as ugly or obviously different from humans - quite the contrary, they were often seen as (almost) human-like. Other critters look pretty much as expected: Näcken is green and dangerous, Odin is one-eyed and rides a fast horse, the gnomes are small and grumpy, and so on. 

I was surprised to learn that there are special gnomes associated with ships, and still others with water mills. Indeed, the folkloric imagination is virtually endless. Have you heard about merchildren before, or that some people living in coastal areas claimed descent from such? Did you know that the trolls have dangerous pets, such as hell hounds? Or that the often dangerous and ambivalent creatures of folklore are said to be descended from Adam´s first wife Lilith and her new husband Alför? According to another tale, the critters are spirits who fell out of heaven by mistake (!) during the war between God and Lucifer. Not belonging in hell, but unable to return to heaven, they have settled down in the Scandinavian forests... 

Some of the paranormal folkloric creatures would probably be seen as "cryptids" today, had people still searched for them. One example is the gamm or gam, an enormously large and evil raptor-like bird which preys on cattle. Another is the dragon-like lindorm, which indeed *was* downgraded to a cryptid during the 19th century by the maverick folklorist Hyltén-Cavallius. Other creatures seem to have been similar to modern cryptids from the start, such as the sea-serpent or the kraken. 

Some pagan deities seem to have survived the introduction of Christianity, although demoted to spirit status. Odin´s wild hunt was still seen and heard by the baptized but superstitious peasants, Odin supposedly being cursed (by God?) to search and destroy other spirit-beings until kingdom come. Every church was said to have a supernatural guardian: the spirit of an animal sacrificed when the church was built. It´s not clear from the account whether animals actually were sacrificed in this manner, or whether they were merely thought to have been so. The whole thing smacks of paganism. The goddess Hel lived on in the folklore, since her three-legged hell horse sometimes stalked the countryside. And ancient handaxes sometimes found in the wilderness were interpreted as Thor´s hammer and were said to protect the owner against all forms of malevolent sprites and spirits. 

Does anyone still believe in the creatures described in the book? That´s a good question. At least in my youth, a few people still took reports of Storsjöodjuret (known as Storsie in English) seriously - that would be the monster of Lake Storsjön. Our very own Loch Ness monster! Otherwise, I strongly suspect that the UFO-alien mythology has pretty much taken over everything...

"Nordiska väsen" (2023 edition) is recommended if you understand Swedish and/or like artistic books suitable as collector´s items. 

Those slanted eyes...

 

An interesting YouTube clip about "Asian eyes". Apart from actual East and Southeast Asians, many other peoples around the world have "Asian eyes" or at least somewhat "Asian looks": Polynesians, American Indians and the Inuit are obvious examples. Here, the explanation seems pretty straightforward: these ethnic groups are distant descendants from East Asians (or somewhat less distant in the Inuit case). 

But why do  some Europeans (yes, including the Sami - deal with it) have "Asian" eyes and/or looks? In some cases, genetic influx from Asians is the best explanation, in others, it´s something of a mystery. Why do some people in Britain have "Asian" eyes? Why does the Icelandic pop singer Björk look "Asian"? One explanation is that already the ancient Indo-Europeans had an Asiatic admixture, and that this particular lineage ended up among the Celts at the British Isles. Another possibility might be admixture with Americans Indians or Inuit. After the video was posted, Icelandic writer Bergsveinn Birgisson wrote a book about one of his medieval ancestors, a "Black Viking" whose mother may have been Siberian.

More unexpected are "Asian" eyes in Africa - except at Madagascar, where the population is partially descended from long-distance Asian seafarers. But why do Nilotic and Khoi-San people have "Asian" eyes? Perhaps here, we finally have a case of convergent evolution...

Surprisingly interesting for a "nerd video".      

 

En samisk adel?

Har väl ingen välgrundad åsikt om detta, och eftersom DN:s artikel faktiskt är låst har jag inte läst den! Nästa vecka: kvänernas ursprung, bjarmernas öde och teorin om att Stor-Finlands naturliga östgräns går vid Jalufloden...

"En samisk adel"

Welcome to the crisis

Previously posted on July 6, 2020. Reposted due to the extreme weather conditions all over the world (including Sweden) this summer. 

Erika Bjerström is a Swedish reporter and former environmentalist activist. "Klimatkrisens Sverige" is her recently published book about the climate crisis. Or rather the climate crisis in Sweden. It´s interesting comparing it to Jonathan Jeppson´s "Åtta steg mot avgrunden", reviewed by me elsewhere, another book on the climate crisis published in 2020 by a Swedish journalist. Jeppson´s book sounds apocalyptic, while Bjerström describes the climate crisis as something creeping and gradual. Ironically, this actually makes her book *more* scary than Jeppson´s. Although I don´t doubt that climate change could lead to apocalyptic consequences, the apocalypse meme as such feels old and worn out. We are being sold one every other week, it seems. But what if climate change is instead a slow decline that sneaks up on us, becoming "the new normal", until it´s suddenly too late? (Btw, I don´t believe Jeppson and Bjerström necessarily disagrees on the facts. I´m refering more to the general atmosphere of their respective books.) 

Sweden is warming twice as fast as the global average, since the country is situated very far north. The average temperature has increased with 1.7 degrees centigrade compared to preindustrial times. The climate zones in Sweden are moving north with about eleven meters per day. In the future, the mountain ranges in northern Sweden will no longer have an Alpine climate. The tree line has moved steadily upwards, with 230 meters in 100 years. The pristine Alpine landscape will be turned into an enormous forest of conifers and birches. More rain will make mosquitos and flies super-abundant. One of Sweden´s foremost tourist attractions will be turned into "a shrubby mosquito hell". In Abisko national park, the local Arctic flora and fauna is heading for a mass extinction. The average temperatures in the park have increased with two degrees since 1913. Trees now grow at places where there have been none for 7,000 years! Meanwhile, Swedish glacials have lost one third of their total area since 1916. The growing season in the Arctic has increased with four weeks in a century, according to detailed studies made in Abisko. The plants become higher, the winters milder. When the permafrost thaws, quicksilver leaks out into the food chain. This can eventually lead to detrimental consequences for both reindeer and the Native Sami population. The entire reindeer herding business might disappear, for this and other climate-related reasons. 

Climate scientists predict that the annual average temperatures in Sweden will increase with 3 to 5 degrees until the end of the century. In northern Sweden, the increase might be 10 degrees! There will on average be more rainfall, although it´s possible that some areas will become drier instead. Heat waves will increase in numbers, more people will die of the heat and various diseases which thrive in warmer climactic conditions. Due to disturbances in the jet stream, both high-pressure and low-pressure areas might "get stuck" above Sweden for longer periods than usual, leading to extreme weather. Clean water will become more scarce as groundwater supplies are diminished, lakes turn dystrophic, or becomes poisoned by cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). Warmer water temperatures means more virus and bacteria. Swedish towns built around lakes and rivers are flooded already today, and this too will only get worse in the future. Of course, water purification and air conditioning will still be operational - but this requires enormous amounts of energy, and might led to higher energy prices. 

Another problem are "invasive species". The author does point out that such species are invasive only from a utilitarian human viewpoint. Nature doesn´t have a "viewpoint" at all, it´s simply out there. Ticks can already be found all over Sweden. More ominous are the "monster ticks" Hyalomma marginatum and Hyalomma rufipes, which can spread dangerous tropical diseases such as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. But Sweden is also invaded by regular tick species from Russia, which live by sucking blood from farm animals, often spreading disease in the process. Aphids are spreading in the new climate. The profitable Swedish forest industry could in the near future be attacked by the emerald ash borer and a moth known as black arches. They could also destroy city parks. Blueberries and lingonberries might disappear from Swedish forests, devastating another local industry. Other plant species will thrive: ferns, nettles or the Asian knotweed, which grows everywhere and slowly kills all other vegetation. 

Swedish agriculture was for a long time in denial about the consequences of global warming. It was rather seen as an excellent opportunity to introduce soy, quinoa and edible maize, three cash crops not grown in Sweden at present. Today, such dreams have been replaced by cold (or rather hot) realities. Climate change will lead to bad harvests. The production of dairy products, meat and beer will also be negatively impacted. Consumer prices will rise. Sweden has a self-sufficiency rate of only 45%, having an extremely globalized economy dependent on international supply chains (including food). A more ironic effect of climate change will be that the most privileged people in Sweden will be hit first by rising sea levels (in the so-called Third World, it´s usually the poorest that are impacted first). The luxury houses at Falsterbo in southern Sweden might be literally flooded at some point in the future, destroying property valued at a total of 70 billion kronor! 

While Bjerström´s book is about local conditions in Sweden, it´s obviously impossible to avoid the global big picture. At some point, the area around the Mediterranean Sea will become literally impossible to inhabit, due to average temperatures around 40 degrees centigrade. And even before that, agriculture will become almost impossible. Millions of people from southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East will move northwards, where the climate - despite everything I just said above - will still be tolerable compared to Mediterranean standards. They will be followed by even larger migrations from the tropics, which will also become uninhabitable. What will happen to Swedish democracy and hospitality when tens of millions of refugees want to get inside, perhaps desperately? One of the scientists interviewed by the author suggests that 50 million people might live in Sweden without any problems! (Today, Sweden has a population of 9 million.) Clearly a pro-immigration fanatic, since 50 million people *obviously* isn´t sustainable given all other facts mentioned in the book (and here above in the blog post). As a good liberal, Bjerström never calls for closed borders, but it´s difficult to see how this can be avoided already at much lower levels than 50 million. The book ends with some comic relief: an interview with an official optimist named Svante Axelsson who believes that of course we can solve all problems, blah blah.

My main take away from "Klimatkrisens Sverige" is that Nature will always find a way, even in the Anthropocene. The real challenge is for modern civilization, or at the very least the human species, to survive the coming storms. As long as the changes are as gradual as described in this volume, it´s still within the realm of the possible to adapt to them. Which doesn´t mean it will be easy! It requires a degree of national solidarity and resolve not seen in this country for a very long time. The problem, of course, is that Sweden ultimately cannot isolate itself from the rest of the world, or the rest of the atmosphere. Indeed, our little country might become a *very* valuable piece of real estate when the tropics and sub-tropics are emptied of human inhabitants, most of them moving north. Another problem is of course that the collapse will come even faster if we really would stop using fossil fuels tomorrow morning, suggesting that it won´t be done. The very same fossil fuels that "fuel" climate change in the first place... 

Perhaps the differences between Erika Bjerström and Jonathan Jeppson aren´t that large, after all. 

En varning

Sitter och funderar på om det här är en ursäkt, eller något slags varning...  

"Reflektioner"

Vithetsforskning?

 

En antropolog på 1800-talet förbereder en skallmätning på en same. Det känns som att något slags rolig dialog skulle passa till den här bilden, men jag kan inte komma på någon just nu... 

Welcome to the crisis

Erika Bjerström is a Swedish reporter and former environmentalist activist. "Klimatkrisens Sverige" is her recently published book about the climate crisis. Or rather the climate crisis in Sweden. It´s interesting comparing it to Jonathan Jeppson´s "Åtta steg mot avgrunden", reviewed by me elsewhere, another book on the climate crisis published in 2020 by a Swedish journalist. Jeppson´s book sounds apocalyptic, while Bjerström describes the climate crisis as something creeping and gradual. Ironically, this actually makes her book *more* scary than Jeppson´s. Although I don´t doubt that climate change could lead to apocalyptic consequences, the apocalypse meme as such feels old and worn out. We are being sold one every other week, it seems. But what if climate change is instead a slow decline that sneaks up on us, becoming "the new normal", until it´s suddenly too late? (Btw, I don´t believe Jeppson and Bjerström necessarily disagrees on the facts. I´m refering more to the general atmosphere of their respective books.) 

Sweden is warming twice as fast as the global average, since the country is situated very far north. The average temperature has increased with 1.7 degrees centigrade compared to preindustrial times. The climate zones in Sweden are moving north with about eleven meters per day. In the future, the mountain ranges in northern Sweden will no longer have an Alpine climate. The tree line has moved steadily upwards, with 230 meter in 100 years. The pristine Alpine landscape will be turned into an enormous forest of conifers and birches. More rain will make mosquitos and flies super-abundant. One of Sweden´s foremost tourist attractions will be turned into "a shrubby mosquito hell". In Abisko national park, the local Arctic flora and fauna is heading for a mass extinction. The average temperatures in the park have increased with two degrees since 1913. Trees now grow at places where there have been none for 7,000 years! Meanwhile, Swedish glacials have lost one third of their total area since 1916. The growing season in the Arctic has increased with four weeks in a century, according to detailed studies made in Abisko. The plants become higher, the winters milder. When the permafrost thaws, quicksilver leaks out into the food chain. This can eventually lead to detrimental consequences for both reindeer and the Native Sami population. The entire reindeer herding business might disappear, for this and other climate-related reasons. 

Climate scientists predict that the annual average temperatures in Sweden will increase with 3 to 5 degrees until the end of the century. In northern Sweden, the increase might be 10 degrees! There will on average be more rainfall, although it´s possible that some areas will become drier instead. Heat waves will increase in numbers, more people will die of the heat and various diseases which thrive in warmer climactic conditions. Due to disturbances in the jet stream, both high-pressure and low-pressure areas might "get stuck" above Sweden for longer periods than usual, leading to extreme weather. Clean water will become more scarce as groundwater supplies are diminished, lakes turn dystrophic, or becomes poisoned by cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). Warmer water temperatures means more virus and bacteria. Swedish towns built around lakes and rivers are flooded already today, and this too will only get worse in the future. Of course, water purification and air conditioning will still be operational - but this requires enormous amounts of energy, and might led to higher energy prices. 

Another problem are "invasive species". The author does point out that such species are invasive only from a utilitarian human viewpoint. Nature doesn´t have a "viewpoint" at all, it´s simply out there. Ticks can already be found all over Sweden. More ominous are the "monster ticks" Hyalomma marginatum and Hyalomma rufipes, which can spread dangerous tropical diseases such as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. But Sweden is also invaded by regular tick species from Russia, which live by sucking blood from farm animals, often spreading disease in the process. Aphids are spreading in the new climate. The profitable Swedish forest industry could in the near future be attacked by the emerald ash borer and a moth known as black arches. They could also destroy city parks. Blueberries and lingonberries might disappear from Swedish forests, devastating another local industry. Other plant species will thrive: ferns, nettles or the Asian knotweed, which grows everywhere and slowly kills all other vegetation. 

Swedish agriculture was for a long time in denial about the consequences of global warming. It was rather seen as an excellent opportunity to introduce soy, quinoa and edible maize, three cash crops not grown in Sweden at present. Today, such dreams have been replaced by cold (or rather hot) realities. Climate change will lead to bad harvests. The production of dairy products, meat and beer will also be negatively impacted. Consumer prices will rise. Sweden has a self-sufficiency rate of only 45%, having an extremely globalized economy dependent on international supply chains (including food). A more ironic effect of climate change will be that the most privileged people in Sweden will be hit first by rising sea levels (in the so-called Third World, it´s usually the poorest that are impacted first). The luxury houses at Falsterbo in southern Sweden might be literally flooded at some point in the future, destroying property valued at a total of 70 billion kronor! 

While Bjerström´s book is about local conditions in Sweden, it´s obviously impossible to avoid the global big picture. At some point, the area around the Mediterranean Sea will become literally impossible to inhabit, due to average temperatures around 40 degrees centigrade. And even before that, agriculture will become almost impossible. Millions of people from southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East will move northwards, where the climate - despite everything I just said above - will still be tolerable compared to Mediterranean standards. They will be followed by even larger migrations from the tropics, which will also become uninhabitable. What will happen to Swedish democracy and hospitality when tens of millions of refugees want to get inside, perhaps desperately? One of the scientists interviewed by the author suggests that 50 million people might live in Sweden without any problems! (Today, Sweden has a population of 9 million.) Clearly a pro-immigration fanatic, since 50 million people *obviously* isn´t sustainable given all other facts mentioned in the book (and here above in the blog post). As a good liberal, Bjerström never calls for closed borders, but it´s difficult to see how this can be avoided already at much lower levels than 50 million. The book ends with some comic relief: an interview with an official optimist named Svante Axelsson who believes that of course we can solve all problems, blah blah.

My main take away from "Klimatkrisens Sverige" is that Nature will always find a way, even in the Anthropocene. The real challenge is for modern civilization, or at the very least the human species, to survive the coming storms. As long as the changes are as gradual as described in this volume, it´s still within the realm of the possible to adapt to them. Which doesn´t mean it will be easy! It requires a degree of national solidarity and resolve not seen in this country for a very long time. The problem, of course, is that Sweden ultimately cannot isolate itself from the rest of the world, or the rest of the atmosphere. Indeed, our little country might become a *very* valuable piece of real estate when the tropics and sub-tropics are emptied of human inhabitants, most of them moving north. Another problem is of course that the collapse will come even faster if we really would stop using fossil fuels tomorrow morning, suggesting that it won´t be done. The very same fossil fuels that "fuel" climate change in the first place... 

Perhaps the differences between Erika Bjerström and Jonathan Jeppson aren´t that large, after all. 

We wuz kangz, we wuz Vy-kangz

The first human inhabitants of Scandinavia after the end of the so-called last Ice Age, apparently looked nothing like Conan the Barbarian or the gorgeous blonde on the cover of "Winter of the World".

No, they were apparently Black and blue-eyed?! Another group came from the East and were probably some kind of proto-Lapid paleo-Uralics.

Or not, since today, these groups are extinct, leaving but little trace in our genome. They were presumably replaced, first by Neolithic farmers originally from the Middle East and then by the White, based and Conan-like Indo-Europeans.

So I suppose the Alt Right can sleep well tonight. Don´t worry, your ancestors weren´t niggaz…

Still, it *is* funny that the Afro-centrists have been proven right for once!


The mysterious origins of the first Scandinavians

Give me copper or give me heat death

The demand for copper will have surged by 250% in the car industry by the year 2030. The reason? Electric cars. Which are touted as the solution to the climate crisis by sectors of the establishment.

Thus, in order to save the world, we need copper. And lots of it! Which means we need copper mines. And lots of them. In Sweden, that means Lappland. You know, the pristine wilderness area in the north inhabited by wolves, wolverines, caribou and some recalcitrant Saami Natives (who use gasoline to their snowmobiles and want to exterminate the wolves). Coming soon to an area the local Sierra Club wants to save: yuge copper mining operations!

But don´t worry. Apparently, mines can be electrified, too. So who knows? Maybe we *can* save the world, after all.
Next question.

Oh, wait, you are *against* copper mining cuz pristine wilderness or something? There´s the door. Eco-fascist!

Copper demand to surge

Paved in copper? The "renewable energy" hoax

Climate kids in London, happily oblivious to copper mining situation

Paved in copper

The above is a laudatory article from 2016 about renewable energy. Curiously, the article admits that wind, solar and electric cars need copper wiring - and lots of it - to work. 

What the article doesn´t say is where the copper is mined...

How about poor Third World nations such as the Congo or Zambia? Or supposedly pristine wilderness areas such as Lapland in Sweden and Finland...

The radical Greens who want wind and solar, also want to save the Sami, the Natives of Lapland, and the pristine wilderness. I assume they don´t want to super-exploit Africa, either.

In other words, the math doesn´t add up. 

Just as a side point, I also noticed that the radical Greens oppose hunting of wolves, bears and foxes. So when the chips are down, they are not particularly pro-Sami either. The Sami want the predators gone, since they threaten their reindeer flocks... 

Being a radical Green can´t be easy. Which may or may not explain why they want to legalize cannabis!

And no, I´m not a brownlash cornucopian. I´m just the old grumpy guy in the background pointing out what we are really up against. 

Heja Norge

Vi kan väl passa på att hylla Norge (eller var det Nordnorge? Nej, det var ju Makedonien). Det gick ju lite bättre för deras disco-jojk än förra gången de jojkade i en ESC-final circa 1978 eller så. Sedan är det ju kul att de ural-altaiska språken gör comeback i ESC-sammanhang, jag har noterat att varken Finland eller Estland vill sjunga på sina modersmål numera, ha ha. Synd bara att finalen var på den 18 maj, inte 17 maj, men man kan ju inte få allt här i världen.


Inte ens i Keiino sameby.

Based

The natural border of Greater Finland is in the Ural Mountains, and the natural border of Greater Lapponia is at the Amur River. Or is it the other way around? Should the Saami pay homage to the Emperor of Manchukuo, since their distant ancestors inhabited Manchuria after Atlantis but before the Sons of Arya invaded Dravidaland? Well, that is an interesting question to ponder! Then there´s the entire Pan-Turanian problem complex, wow…

A long winter

A review of "A Grammar of Pite Saami" by Joshua Wilbur 

This is a book strictly for linguists or perhaps really serious “language nerds”. It's also available on the web. Pite Sami (or Pite Saami) is an almost extinct Sami language spoken by 30 people in the Arjeplog municipality in the southern part of Swedish Lapland. The area is also known as Pite Lappmark.

The Sami (often called Lapps in English) are the native inhabitants of northern Scandinavia, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. They speak about 10 different but closely related languages, all of which belong to the Uralic language family (which also comprise Finnish and Hungarian). The largest Sami tongue is called Northern Sami. As already indicated, Pite Sami is one of the smallest. Most Sami in Pite Lappmark speak Swedish, but there is also pressure from Northern Sami, which is promoted by the Swedish government and local authorities, while Pite Sami is not.

This book isn't a general introduction to Pite Sami culture or history, but a detailed grammatical analysis of their language, so brace yourself for some heavy scholarly terminology! Here is a typical sample: “With the exception of the glottal fricative /h/, there is a length distinction for all consonants (singleton and geminate pairs). There are both voiceless and preaspirated plosive and affricate phonemes. Geminates and preaspirated segments are restricted to footmedial position. Vowel length is only distinctive in open front position. Linear morphology in Pite Saami is exclusively suffixing. However, grammatical categories are often expressed non-linearly as well. This can take the form of foot-internal consonant alternations, umlaut in the first vowel of the initial foot, and regressive vowel harmony between both vowels of a foot.”

Well, at least you don't have to learn Pite Sami to read this work! For the effort (the winters are long in Arjeplog), I will give Joshua Wilbur's grammar five stars, although most of it was all Greek to me.

From Petsamo to Inari

A review of "A Grammar of Skolt Sami" by Timothy Feist 

This is a doctoral dissertation on Skolt Sami (or Skolt Saami), one of the Sami languages. The Sami, often called Lapps in older literature, are the native people of the northern districts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, plus the Kola Peninsula in Russia. The ancestors of the Sami probably arrived in the Nordic region during the Stone Age, following the reindeer herds. The Sami are “White” (not “colored”, as some people imagine), but their languages are not Indo-European. Rather, they belong to the Uralic language family (sometimes called Finno-Ugric), together with Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian. 10 different Sami languages, with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility, are recognized by linguists. The dominant one is called Northern Sami. By contrast, Skolt Sami is very small and only spoken by a few hundred people. In fact, many individuals who are Skolt Sami ethnically speaking no longer speak the Skolt Sami language, instead using the language of the surrounding majority population.

The original homeland of the Skolt Sami is the Kola Peninsula, with Petsamo (Pechenga) as the westernmost outpost. The area was controlled by the Russians, except for Petsamo, which was Finnish during the interwar period. After World War II, Petsamo was permanently awarded to the Soviet Union. Since the Skolt Sami in the Petsamo region had sided with Finland against the Soviets, the local Skolts had to leave the area and move to Finnish territory after the war. In Finland, the Skolts settled in Inari, a Finnish municipality which today boasts four official languages: Finnish, Northern Sami, Inari Sami and Skolt Sami. This doctoral dissertation only deals with the Skolt dialects spoken in Inari (and originally around Petsamo). The Skolt Sami who always lived on Russian territory further east are not included in this study.

It should be noted that this isn't a cultural and historical study, and only one brief chapter deals with such issues. Nor is it a dictionary. It's above all a linguistic study of Skolt Sami grammar. It's therefore a rather narrow work only of interest to other linguists. The book is also available on the web. I admit that I don't belong to the target audience! That being said, I must nevertheless commend the author for collecting information on this endangered language during restless white nights in northern Finland…

Welcome to Arjeplog

A review of "A Grammar of Pite Saami" by Joshua Wilbur 

This obscure publication actually has three product pages on Amazon. My full review can be found on the first one. Pite Saami is a Saami language spoken in the Swedish municipality of Arjeplog and adjacent parts of Norway. The Saami, Sami or Lapps are native people in northern Scandinavia and Finland, but today they are a minority group.

I never been to the Arjeplog area, but as far as I understand, this is “end of the world” territory. Or maybe not, since Arjeplog has apparently become something of a center for the international car industry – due to its harsh winters, this is where car manufacturers want to test their vehicles for durability! But that's another show…

As for Pite Saami, the language is almost extinct and only about 30 people speak it fluently. This book is a detailed study of Pite Saami's grammar and is therefore unsuitable for the general reader. If you are a linguist with an interest in Uralic languages (or are they Ural-Altaic? Or Finno-Ugric? Or Pan-Turanian?), this might be just what you have been looking for *all these years*.

Tracking the wolf

Roger Pontare is a Swedish pop singer of mixed Swedish and Sami (Lapp) ancestry. He was born in Sorsele in southern Lapland. Pontare is mostly known for his curious stage costumes, who are often freely inspired by Native styles of dress. When Pontare made a brief promotion tour in New York City (sic) circa 2000, passers-by assumed he was a Native American shaman! Pontare represented Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest the same year with the song “When Spirits Are Calling My Name” backed up by a Sami, an Inuit and a Native American on stage. The original Swedish version of the song is controversial, since its pro-Native lyrics can also be given a nationalist spin, making the song an underground hit among right-wing Swedish nationalists and outright Nazis.

“I Vargens Spår” (On the track of the wolf) is one of Pontare's album releases. It includes “När vindarna viskar mitt namn”, the Swedish version of Pontare's ESC entry. I can't say I like the album, though. The songs are very basic pop tunes enhanced with some Sami joik to make them sound more “deep” and “mysterious”. The lyrics are what you except from a guy with a Native image – a lot of stuff about silver moons, beaten tracks, wolves, ancestral altars, etc. Not very deep, if you ask me, but perhaps it can move someone. Personally, I find Nordman's lyrics more convincing…

In the end, I will only give Pontare the Wolf-tracker two stars.