With the Lapps in the High Mountains: A Woman Among the Sami, 1907–1908 PDF
Preview With the Lapps in the High Mountains: A Woman Among the Sami, 1907–1908
With the Lapps in the High Mountains this first English translation supported by a grant from Figure Foundation With the Lapps in the High Mountains A Woman among the Sami, – (cid:2) Emilie Demant Hatt Edited and translated by Barbara Sjoholm the university of wisconsin press The University of Wisconsin Press Monroe Street, rd Floor Madison, Wisconsin - uwpress.wisc.edu Henrietta Street London wce lu, England eurospanbookstore.com Originally published in Danish as Med lapperne i højfjeldet, copyright © by Emilie Demant Hatt Introduction and translation copyright © by Barbara Sjoholm All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hatt, Emilie Demant, -. [Med Lapperne i højfjeldet. English] With the Lapps in the high mountains : a woman among the Sami, – / Emilie Demant Hatt ; edited and translated by Barbara Sjoholm. p. cm. Originally published in Sweden as Med lapperne i hojfjeldet, copyright . Includes bibliographical references. isbn---- (pbk. : alk. paper) — isbn---- (e-book) . Sami (European people)—Sweden. . Hatt, Emilie Demant, –—Travel. . Lapland—Description and travel. I. Sjoholm, Barbara, – II. Title. dl.lh .´—dc Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications, which first published excerpts from With the Lapps in the High Mountains: Two Lines (spring ), Antioch Review(spring ), Orion Magazine (July , web edition), and Natural Bridges(fall ). Contents Foreword by Hugh Beach vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii Translator’s Notes xxxvii With the Lapps in the High Mountains Notes Further Reading about the Sami and Sápmi Foreword No one wishing to know anything about the Sami reindeer herding people of northern Fennoscandia can fail to encounter the name of Emilie Demant Hatt, a name forever associated with that of Johan Turi and his book Muitalus sámiid birra. Muitalus appeared in English in as Turi’s Book of Lapp- land, the first book by a Sami author, but it is also very much Emilie’s book. She was its original translator and editor, as well as its promoter. As a young person growing up in America, I, like so many others, fell under its spell, and it fueled my dream of joining the reindeer herders. Remarkably, youth- ful dreams often do come true (perhaps because they are so many!), and I have had the pleasure to spend many years living with Sami herders in north- ern Sweden and in time to study their changing way of life as a professional anthropologist. I encountered Emilie a second time when reading With the Lapps in the High Mountains, first published in , but by then I had already spent some years with the herders myself, and my relation to it was therefore unlike that of so many others. These circumstances made this book all the more special to me, for I became amazed not so much by the material I read about the Sami, but rather by the kindred soul who had seen things so sharply and described them so lovingly. Yes, the book contains much of ethnographic value and provides a historic snapshot to academicians, but more than that, it is a riveting story filled with personal adventure and learning and yet entirely free of preten tiousness. In Emilie’s hands the Sami she meets come to life as human persons and are not simply objects of study or informants. Ironically, it is probably her lack of contemporary academic anthropological training, which frees her account from the contrivances of social theory of the times and concepts of the evolution of superior races, that makes her story timeless and brings it so much in line with the best of so-called postmodern anthropology. vii viii Foreword It is often the simplest things that bring us together across the years. How well I appreciate her account of seeking relief from an overly smoke-filled tent by opening a makeshift vent hole in the tent cloth, lying with face turned out- ward to clear the eyes and gasp for fresh air, only to be forced in again soon by the cold. There is hardly a page that does not instill in me a sense of familiar- ity rather than exoticism, and I feel I know her herding friends rather well through many of the characteristics I have encountered among my own. This is not a communality she has spun in me simply through the similarities of our experiences; I think it is basically a matter of tone. She tells things as they are; she makes no attempt to be an observing scientist “fly on the wall,” but is an active agent and companion in the life of her hosts; she is a humanist. Most importantly, she did not set herself apart but wished to live among the Sami she visited as one of them, to learn from them and to pitch in with the work wherever she could. With the Lappsis intimately related to Turi’s book about the Sami, but it is also entirely different. This is Emilie’s own account of her travels with the rein- deer herding nomads of northern Sweden. Thanks to Barbara Sjoholm it now appears for the first time in English translation. While Turi’s book attained relatively swift international acclaim, With the Lapps has remained a little known gem. Assuredly it did stimulate a couple of past generations of Scan- dinavians to learn about the Sami and some perhaps to visit Sápmi, but even for its limited readership the book has been out of print for decades. For a long time now it has held a place mainly in the hearts of scholars interested in the Sami and the north. Barbara Sjoholm complements her translation with a biographical intro- duction. I find this facet of Sjoholm’s work every bit as meritorious as the translation itself. She has brought Emilie to life in all her complexity and freed her at last from the grudging fetters that have continually surrounded the importance of her contributions. To achieve her goals, Emilie had to negotiate them constantly with those of other strong-willed partners and benefactors. She was under pressure, for example, to bend the thrust of her work to sub- stantiate the theoretical standpoint of her publisher, Hjalmar Lundbohm, re - garding the proper education for Sami children. She must have been a superb diplomat, for in the end she always did as she wanted while maintaining good favor and respect. Moreover, it cannot be denied that Emilie’s sizeable contributions to the spread of knowledge about and sympathy for Sami lifeways and culture, along with her appreciation of Sami people as equals to any others, has often been Foreword ix belittled by assertions of Sami cultural nationalism that occasionally have been misdirected. There are those who feel that Emilie’s light cannot shine too brightly lest it diminish the glow of Johan Turi’s as the first Sami author. She has therefore at times been portrayed as little more than a maid in his service to cook and wash while he wrote. Sjoholm’s exhaustive research through Emilie’s personal correspondence and that of those with whom she commu- nicated reveals the many layers of Emilie and Johan’s intense relationship and her essential part in the course of forming Muitaluseven if Johan did all the writing. Thanks to Sjoholm, readers should come to appreciate them both more as individuals and also to sense the real wonder of what they were able to accomplish together. Returning now to With the Lappsafter so many years, I appreciate it all the more in a professional capacity as well. The recent emphasis on hermeneutics and awareness of the biases of interpretation within the anthropological dis- cipline has caused modern researchers to realize the confines of their gender perspectives—and equally important, the gendered perspectives of the people around them. As a woman, Emilie could interrelate with women and children in the Sami camps in a way that a man never could. Our knowledge of Sami life would be impoverished without her voice, and the Sami have been for- tunate to have had such a person among them to tell about their daily lives. Her writing is easily accessible to all, laymen and professional anthropolo- gists alike. Because of her personal qualities, her sex, her artistic bent, freedom from schooled ethnographic aspirations, and her unusual pleasure in nomadic camp life which most women with her background shunned as an extreme discomfort, Emilie has given us a book of immense anthropological value far ahead of its time. She must be considered one of the earliest female ethnogra- phers in a period when this was almost unheard of, and she was not only early, she was also remarkably modern. Having been with the Sami in the high mountains myself, my only regret when rereading With the Lapps now in Sjoholm’s translation is that I will never be in person with Emilie in the high mountains. Then again, in another sense and thanks to Sjoholm all of us can join Emilie on her adventures and get to know her herding companions while at the same time enjoying the pleasure of her own company. Hugh Beach Professor of Anthropology, Uppsala University, Sweden, and author of A Year in Lapland: Guest of the Reindeer Herders
The list of books you might like
