Barbara Sjoholm's Blog, page 2

Barbara Sjoholm and Kaja Gjelde-Bennett talk about The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens

  

A new interview about The  Reindeer of Chinese Gardens with Sámi-American Ph.D. student Kaja Gjelde-Bennett. Kaja and I talk about immigration to the Pacific Northwest by Chinese, Norwegian, and Sámi at the turn of the 19th century and about the setting of the novel in Port Townsend, Washington. Kaja will be leading a book club discussion of the novel on February 27, 2025 at 6 pm. Sign up through Nordiska.

Water Street, Port Townsend, WA 1908

 

 

Upcoming Events for Reindeer of Chinese Gardens

 

My new historical novel, The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens, now feels officially launched, with some upcoming events scheduled for February and March.

On Thursday, February 20,  I'll be doing a reading from the novel in the Carnegie Room of the Port Townsend Library. It seems like a perfect place, since the stacks of maritime titles are nearby, and were an important source for me while writing the book. 

The library on Lawrence Street isn't far from where Dagny and her family and friends lived in the Uptown district of Port Townsend in the 1890s. 

After the reading, I'll be selling and signing books. You can also purchase copies in the historic Aldrich's market (founded in 1895), also on Lawrence Street, and at our local bookstore, Imprint Bookshop, down on Water Street, in the heart of Port Townsend. One of my favorite bookstores in the Pacific Northwest, Port Book and News in Port Angeles, also has copies.

Later in February, I'll be attending an online book club meeting about The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens, sponsored by the fantastic Nordiska shop in historic Poulsbo, Washington. Poulsbo is well-known for its Scandinavian roots, but it's not as well-known that a significant number of Sámi immigrants and their descendants also called and call Poulsbo home. The wonderful moderator of the book club, which has been going for three years, is Kaja Gjelde-Bennett, who herself has Sámi family connections to Poulsbo. She is currently living in New Mexico and pursuing a Ph.D. after having been awarded a master's in Indigenous Studies at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. The Nordiska is a great spot to shop for all things Nordic, and carries a selection of Scandinavian books as well. During February The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens can be purchased in person or online for a 15% discount. 

And finally, a heads up about an event on March 20 at the Nordic Museum in Ballard, a neighborhood of Seattle. I'm really pleased to be speaking at the Nordic again and in Ballard, where a good deal of the second half of the novel takes place in 1906-1907. I'm also delighted to be in conversation with Amy Swanson King. Amy is a journalist and past president of the Pacific Sámi Searvi. She's currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington, studying issues impacting the Sámi, American Sámi and descendants, Indigenous diaspora and language revitalization. Amy and I go back a few years, and in 2023 had a chance to discuss an earlier book of mine, From Lapland to Sápmi on Crossing North, a podcast sponsored by the University of Washington's Scandinavian Department. 

Velkommen to any and all of these events!

 

 

The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens, my new historical novel

 

Sjoholm is a gifted storyteller, eloquent on the subjectof Sámi prejudice and the poignant dilemma for all immigrants: Make a life foryourself in this new world, or surrender to the emotional pull of the oldcountry? And while Dagny has her own demons, she ends up being not just asurvivor, but a humane model for all of us. An engrossing novel that features a memorably strong,vibrant female character.

Kirkus Reviews

 

Through the journals of Dagny Bergland, Barbara Sjoholm has givenvoice to the challenges of immigration from a variety of viewpoints –Norwegian, Chinese, Sami. Their stories are complex, touching, sometimestragic. It is above all, a story of America and what it means to be assimilatedinto American culture and geography.

MarleneWisuri, Chair, Sami Cultural Center of North America

 

I’m thrilled to announce that my new historical novel, TheReindeer of Chinese Gardens, is now available in print and ebookeditions. I had the idea for a novel set in Port Townsend, where I live, manyyears ago, but it took a long time to come to fruition. It involved a lot ofresearch into not only this city’s boom-and-bust history in the late 1800s, butalso research on the “Reindeer Rescue” expedition that brought Sámi fromLapland to Seattle, Port Townsend, and Alaska in 1898, in an ill-fated attemptto supply the Yukon Gold Rush miners with food by reindeer. I also exploredPort Townsend’s Chinese district, Norwegian-American newspapers, seafaring inthe waning Age of Sail, Seattle’s history, especially the Ballardneighborhood—and much more. No wonder that with all this research, in additionto a number of other books and translations I published over the last decade,that The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens took me over twelve years tocomplete. 

Norwegian-born Dagny Bergland and her husband arrive inturn-of-the-century Port Townsend, Washington after years of sailing theirmerchant ship around the globe. They’re just in time for the Yukon Gold Rushand the arrival of a group of Sámi reindeer herders from Lapland on their wayto Alaska to supply the ill-prepared miners. Dagny’s journals, beginning in1897, tell a fresh and riveting history of the Pacific Northwest and itsimmigrants. A novel of friendship, love, loss, and motherhood, The Reindeerof Chinese Gardens is the story of a remarkable woman who learns to steer anew course in a new country. 

 Although the official publication day is February 1, you canfind it on sale now at Amazon, in printand as an ebook, or fromother vendors via Draft2Digital,such as Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble. It is also availableor can be ordered from brick-and-mortar independent bookstores or online frombookshop.org.

I’ll be giving a reading at the Port Townsend LibraryThursday evening at 6pm on February 20. I’ll also be in conversation with AmySwanson King of the Pacific Sámi Searvi at the Nordic Museum in Seattle onThursday, March 20. Amy and I previously had a great talk for Crossing North about my previous book, From Lapland to Sapmi.

Barbara Sjoholm and Amy Swanson King, Seattle, Nov 2023

 

Helene Uri's Novel Clearing Out, now in paperback

 Thrilled to announce that Clearing Out, a fantastic novel by Norwegian author Helene Uri, is now available in paperback from the University of Minnesota Press. I had the joy of translating it some years ago, and it's one of those books that has really stayed with me. It's not just another book about the Sami by an outsider; nor is it a book by someone who has grown up in a Sami family. It's a layered story of a novelist very like Helene Uri who is writing a novel about a linguist who goes north to do language research, a novelist who in the course of writing this novel finds out that she has Sami background. This is not unusual in Norway, especially for those whose relatives once lived in Northern Norway. As readers we learn a lot, but in a natural and absorbing way, from both women's experiences--Helene's and her character Elinor's.

Nadia Christensen Prize for translation from the American-Scandinavian Foundation

Here's what the publishers write about it, in greater detail, followed by praise from two writers who have also spent time up in the North, Rebecca Dinnerstein and Vendala Vida.

Inspired by Helene Uri’s own journey into her family’s ancestry, Clearing Out, an emotionally resonant novel by one of Norway’s most celebrated authors, tells two intertwining stories. A novelist, named Helene, is living in Oslo with her husband and children and contemplating her new protagonist, Ellinor Smidt—a language researcher, divorced and in her late thirties, with a doctorate but no steady job.

An unexpected call from a distant relative reveals that Helene’s grandfather, Nicolai Nilsen, was the son of a coastal (sjø) Sami fisherman—something no one in her family ever talked about. Uncertain how to weave this new knowledge into who she believes she is, Helene continues to write her novel, in which her heroine Ellinor travels to Finnmark in the far north to study the dying languages of the Sami families there. What Ellinor finds among the Sami people she meets is a culture little known in her own world; she discovers history richer and more alluring than rumor and a connection charged with mystery and promise. Through her persistence in approaching an elderly Sami activist, and her relationship with a local Sami man, Ellinor confronts a rift that has existed between two families for generations.

Intricate and beautifully constructed, Clearing Out offers a solemn reflection on how identities, like families, are formed and fractured and recovered as stories are told. In its depiction of the forgotten and the fiercely held memories among the Sea (sjø) Sami of northern Norway, the novel is a powerful statement on what is lost, and what remains in reach, in the character and composition of contemporary life.

"Lyrical, brave, and luminous, Clearing Out offers the overdue translation of a signature Norwegian voice into rapturous English."—Rebecca Dinerstein, author of The Sunlit Night
 

"I’ve long been fascinated by the culture of the Sami people and the part of the world that Helene Uri explores in her new novel. Beautifully translated, Clearing Out is a well-crafted investigation of the stories we inherit and the stories we create."—Vendela Vida, author of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

A Skolt Sámi Folktale from Neiden

 

The Guoddan

Mother Ondrej had come from Suonjel [Suonjel, or Suõ’nn’jel, wasone of seven Skolt Sámi sijdds; Suõ’nn’jel is on the Russian side of the border with Norway.] Herchildhood home was Vilggis-vandet. She told me that once as a girl she went tosee the wild reindeer pit traps there. The pits were between two lakes, as isthe custom.

As she was walking and looking atthe pit traps, she heard a faint cry from up in the sky, and then it sounded abit stronger, and then she heard the crying coming closer. Then she saw afearfully large bird coming. It flew with the claws of both feet curledtogether, and in between the feet hung a young Russian woman crying. The birddropped her on the ground under a tree; it perched in the tree itself, and thetree began to sway this way and that, because the bird was as big as a reindeerox. The Russian woman said to the young Skolt girl, “You must tie yourself to apine tree or the bird will take you.” The bird could have left the Russianwoman, but it was better if it flew away with her since it had already almostcrushed her to death.

But when the bird noticed that theywere talking, it shook its head, and the feathers on its neck all sounded likebells, clanging so that they could no longer hear to keep talking.

The bird perchedin the tree for a while. It tried to attack the Skolt girl, but it only got thehat off her head, then it settled in the tree again. It perched there a while,and then it took hold of her again. But as she was tied to the pine tree, itcould not take her this time either. Still the bird grabbed her hair and herskin along with it. The girl fainted and fell to the ground. When she woke upagain, the bird was about to fly off. The Russian woman was again between itsclaws, crying, and then it flew westward. The Russian woman's cry was heard fora very long time in the air. Then that cry also disappeared

Such a bird was formerly called aguoddan. The guoddan was also the kind of bird that an evil man set on anotherman. From that comes the Sámi proverb: “He screams as though he’s in aguoddan's claw.”

MotherOndrej, to whom this happened, had come to Neiden and married. She had regainedsome hair, but it wasn’t much. And there were claw marks on her neck. 

(Translation copyright, Barbara Sjoholm, 2024)

           

 

Isak Saba, politician, teacher, folklorist
This Skolt Sámi story was transcribed in 1918 or 1919 byIsak Saba in the village of Neiden, Norway. The storyteller was either Ivan orNikolai Ondrevitsj, the sons of “Mother Ondrej,” Marie Avdatje Vasilevna. It’sone of many tales that Saba collected in Neiden withfinancial support from the Norwegian Folklore Archives in Oslo. Saba also collectedother tales about animals, about the hidden folk, andabout noaidis, revenants, and the robbers from “the East,” called Chudes. Saba’soriginal transcriptions and translations into Norwegian of this material becamepart of J.K. Qvigstad’s four volume work, Lappiske eventyr og sagn (SámiFolktales and Legends), published in 1927-29.

My translation from Norwegian is part of a selectedcollection of around three hundred tales collected by J.K. Qvigstad and IsakSaba, to be published in late 2025 by the University of Minnesota Press.

Norwegian Parliament Votes to Refer to the Sámi as Indigenous in the Constitution

 

On May 15, 2023, according to NRK, the Norwegian Parliament voted to amend their Constitution and refer to the Sámi people in Norway as Indigenous for the first time. 147 representatives voted for the proposal, while 22 representatives voted against, with the right-wing Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet) opposing the change. 

"It is of great symbolic importance," said the head of the Labor Party. "By recognizing the Sámi as an Indigenous people in the Constitution, you put a permanent end to the policy of Norwegianization."

Norwegianization was the longtime policy of the governmentfrom around 1880 to 1960 with the intention of assimilating the Sámi into thedominant society. While the change in status in the Constitution is welcome andnecessary, there are those in Norway who are still ambivalent about the use ofthe word Indigenous or urfolk (original people) for the Sámi.

Someone I know in Norway who is currently reading my latestbook From Lapland to Sápmi, wrote me to say they were enjoying it. Theyadded something to the effect that the Sámi were not actually Indigenous, sincethey arrived in Scandinavia after people were already living there: “So theyare not an aboriginal people as such.”

I don’t know all the ins and outs of the debates about “whocame first,” and I have consciously stayed out of discussions on this topic. Ido know, however, that the debate about who are the first inhabitants of Sápmi,although sometimes framed in a scientific way and buttressed by DNA data andother evidence, has been and is still employed by the dominant population inScandinavia to prove that the Sámi claims to territory and natural resourcesare bogus and self-serving.

The period of Sámi history I’m most familiar with is the late 19th century and the 20th century, a time connected with “Lappology” and Racial Biology, but also a time of growing Sámi political resistance and cultural renaissance. During the last half of the 20th century the term “Indigenous” was first claimed by certain Sámi groups as a means of finding connection with and support from other Indigenous people around the globe. This term spread in Sámi society and, although initially resisted by individuals and governments in the Nordic countries, it gradually was adopted in its basic outlines and is now generally accepted. The Sámi were politically recognized as an Indigenous group in Norway in 1987 with the Sámi Act, and again in 1990 when Norway signed the UN’s ILO  Convention No. 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries.

For my part, when questions of indigenity come aroundthe Sámi, I’ve often referred back to the fact sheet,“Who are indigenous peoples?” put out by the United Nations Permanent Forum onIndigenous Issues. The UN emphasizes they do not have an official definitionof “Indigenous,” given the diversity of the 370 million Indigenous peoplespread across 70 countries worldwide. Instead they offer a modernunderstanding of the term, based on the following:       • Self- identification asindigenous peoples at the individual level and accepted by the community as theirmember. • Historicalcontinuity with pre-colonial and/or pre-settler societies • Strong linkto territories and surrounding natural resources • Distinctsocial, economic or political systems • Distinctlanguage, culture and beliefs • Formnon-dominant groups of society • Resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environmentsand systems as distinctive peoples and communities.  Allof these criteria the Sámi meet. I’m especially struck by the last item in thelist: “Resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments andsystems as distinctive peoples and communities.” Whywaste time debating who came first and instead celebrate the Sámi for this stubbornand creative resolve in the face of centuries of territorial dispossession andcultural racism?   

Sámi Events at Scandinavia House in New York and online, April 2023

First of all, a quick reminder that I'm doing a virtual talk with slides from my new book, From Lapland to Sápmi TUE—April 18—7 PM EST from Scandinavia House in New York. It's a free on Zoom, but you'll need to register at https://scandinaviahouse.org/events/from-lapland-to-sapmi/. It will later be available on their YouTube channel.

 

 This is a big week for Scandinavia House in their efforts to highlight Sámi and Indigenous people. On April 15 the exhibition, "Arctic Highways: Works by by Twelve Indigenous Artists from Sápmi, Canada, and Alaska opens there. Running through July, the exhibition is curated by Indigenous artists Tomas Colbengtson, Gunvor Guttorm, Dan Jåma and Britta Marakatt-Labba, the exhibition includes their own works alongside those of artists Matti Aikio, Marja Helander, Laila Susanna Kuhmunen, Olof Marsja, Máret Ánne Sara, Sonya Kelliher-Combs, Maureen Gruben and Meryl McMaster.

As a special opening event on Saturday, April 15,there will be a performance and film screening. Greenlandic dancer Elisabeth Heilmann Blind will  perform “UaaJeerneq – the Greenlandic Mask Dance,” followed by a screening of Historjá – Stitches For Sápmi (dir. Thomas Jackson), depicting artist Britta Marakatt-Labba’s battle for her culture against the threats of climate change. Next, Sámi Yoiker Lars-Henrik Blind will perform, followed by a panel with Britta Marakatt-Labba, Thomas Jackson, Elisabeth Heilmann Blind and Tomas Colbengston. Learn more and register.

On April 21 & 22, American-Scandinavian Foundation and the Arctic Indigenous Film Fund AIFF present a special film event “Climate Action — Future Changes,” exploring the Arctic Indigenous peoples’ fight against climate change through films and media. The program will begin with a panel discussion and reception on Friday, April 21, followed by film screenings on Saturday, April 22.

[From their website] "Arctic Indigenous peoples have a vivid and active storytelling tradition, with stories that have played an essential role in maintaining sustainable living in the Sámi and other Indigenous people’s traditional living areas. By telling their own stories and being in charge of their narratives, they create a new future for their people. This is why all Indigenous peoples must have the ultimate right to tell their own stories about climate change in the Arctic tipping points — ice caps melting, permafrost collapsing, and changing the Oceans and vanishing the snow. How we can fight back?

"In this two-day program held in coordination with the UN Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues 2023, tonight will feature a panel discussion with film director Elle Máijá Tailfeathers (Sámi/Blackfoot, Canada), film producer Emile Hertling Péronard (Inuk, Greenland), director Anna Hoover (Unangax̂,  USA), and AIFF’s Liisa Holmberg (Sápmi), moderated by Jason Ryle (Canada). Welcoming notes to the program will be provided by Dariio Mejia Montalvo (Chair of the Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues), Aslak Holmberg (President, Saami Council), and Petteri Vuorimäki (Ambassador for Arctic Affairs, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland). The discussion will be followed by a screening of the documentary short Salmon Reflection (dir. Anna Hoover, Alaska, 2022), and a reception. "

 

 

Maria Persson, Who Taught and Inspired Karl Tirén, Joik Musicologist

 

A post on February 17, 2008, about the Swedish collector of joik music, Karl Tirén, has always been one of my most popular offerings on Northwords. I suspect it’s because it turns up in searches on joiking, and Tirén was a key figure in recording joik music in the Swedish part of Sápmi in the early twentieth century.

 

Greta Persson, Maria Persson and Karl Tirén in Arjeplog, 1937

But Karl Tirén’s work couldn’t have been accomplished without the insight and traditional knowledge of his friend Maria Persson, from Arjeplog in Pite Sápmi, a highly talented joiker and a seamstress. 

During the last few years I’ve learned much more about Maria Persson, who is only mentioned in passing in the 2008 blogpost, and about her life and collaboration with Karl Tirén. A chapter in my upcoming book, From Lapland to Sápmi, is dedicated to exploring Tirén’s collection of wax cylinders of joiks (now at the archives of Musikverket in Stockholm). I emphasize the key role Maria Persson and other Sámi played in Tirén's years of collecting, recording, and writing about the joik.

Here's a brief excerpt from “Wax Cylinders, Sámi Voices”:

 Maria Persson was born in the mountain district of Luokta-Malvas, just south of the Arctic Circle, one of fifty-one districts carved out of Swedish Sápmi during the reindeer herding act of 1886...Maria’s parents were nomadic herders, and she grew up in a traditional siida,a community that still actively recalled and passed on stories and joiks. Her parents gave up the migratory life in the 1890s, and like many Sámi of the period, they became smallholders, with a farm outside Arjeplog; they raised goats and sheep, along with a few reindeer. In her teens Maria suffered an accident to her hip or back and was sent to the town of Piteå on the coast, where she lay in hospital for two years “in a plaster cradle,” according to her daughter in an interview years later....In Piteå she would have spoken Swedish nearly all the time; her fluency put her in the position of being able to negotiate the borders of Sápmi and Sweden. Perhaps it was for that reason she was asked to go to Stockholm in 1909 for the Industrial Arts Exhibition to help represent the large province of Norrbotten.

This exhibition followed on the world’s fair held in the city in 1897, an extravaganza that introduced Stockholm’s culture and industrial products to the world and that coincided with Artur Hazelius’s founding of Skansen and plans for the Nordic Museum. In the midst of “the summer city,” as the Industrial Arts Exhibition came to be called, a Sámi couple were invited to display themselves and their belongings as an example of nomadic life in northern Sweden. In the Norrbotten rooms they set up their tent and lit a campfire to boil coffee and make food. The fire created a ruckus with the managers of the exposition. Maria Persson stood up for the Sámi couple. A tent without a fire was not a home at all. Surprisingly, she was joined in her protest by a big Swede with a short beard whom she had met at the exposition. Karl Tirén was in Stockholm to show his paintings over in the Jämtland rooms. He too argued with the directors over the importance of the campfire....

When the Sámi couple decided to pack up and leave the Stockholm exposition, Maria went with them, and so did Karl Tirén. A short time later, Maria arrived as an invited guest to the home that Karl shared with his wife, Karen, and their five children in Boden. Tirén had long wished to hear true joiking and to learn more about the Sámi’s musical traditions. Over the course of a few days, Maria Persson shared joiks and explanations, and he noted down her words and melodies as best he could. In letters at the time and later in his published work, he emphasized the importance of his meeting with her: “What I learned from Maria Person . . . in the form of both tones and information on the character and concept of Lapp song greatly increased my interest and evoked the idea of making journeys to collect and research in this field.”

 

You can listen to Maria Persson and her sister Greta joiking by opening one of the historical Tirén collections on CD or online at Musikverket.

 

Prepub discount sale from University of Minnesota Press for From Lapland to Sapmi through March 1, 2023!

 

Get 40% off From Lapland to Sápmi (coming in March '23!) when you order at z.umn.edu/lsmla using code MNMLA23. This is part of @UMinnPress's Humanities and Arts sale, the full list of which can be found at z.umn.edu/mla23. Offer expires March 1.

Reindeer herders fear Arctic industry boom

 

A well-researched article on the BBC website about challenges facing the Sami as the so-called Green Revolution pushes forward with more mining and wind farming in Northern Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Depressing but crucial reading.