The Duottarstophus lávvu (Photo by Ellen-J. Kvalsvik 2018).
I walk along a path a few meters away from the Duottarstophu and meet a young dog that has jumped over the fence. He is eager to get to know me and is jumping all around me. I hear a woman calling him to return and leave me alone. I tell her it’s no problem and I open the gate and approach her. I shake her hand and introduce myself. Her name is Siri and she is Piera’s aunt. She wonders where I come from and what errand I am on.
We talk about exploring the sounds of the surroundings and connecting to the safety of home. “It’s like when you’re in your mother’s womb”, she says. “You get used to sounds of the heart of your mother and the blood running through your common veins – it feels safe. You press your foot soles upwards towards her diaphragm and feel the heartbeats against your feet. You experience that your mother feels happy every time you do this, and you start to communicate with her with your feet. It’s the same way you communicate with earth. Earth communicates back if you stop and listen”. I tell her my three-year-old still connect to me through his foot soles so there is more to foot soles than we realise. “There’re a lot of memories connected to sound”, she says. “Another thing that feels comfortable and safe is lying in the front of a river boat as it runs up a river. I remember my father taking us up the river when I was a little girl. I used to lay in the front of the boat listening to the water sliding along the sides as it made way for the boat. You should make Piera bring you on a tour on the river to record that sound.” I thank her a lot for her valuable feedback and the good conversation and head back to my cabin.
7.1 Introduction
In the last chapter, I discussed the ways of knowing how to use sound and I linked it to the body – the who. The bodily sensation of sound is part of our everyday lives entangled in us through perception of language, nature, heritage and so on – like lines running through time (Ingold, 2011). In an indigenous context, this tells us how sound is perceived and used as devices for bodily practises (Carolan, 2009; Rodaway, 1994; Salmón, 2000; Whitinui, 2013). In this chapter, I focus on the question of how sonic skills have developed? Finally, I ask how knowledge of sound and soundscapes contribute in shaping the practices in the tundra? I do this by presenting my conversation with Piera’s aunt, Siri, about how sound is enlived in our bodies from way before we are born and think about how this presents itself in life after birth and during upbringing. Then I share my experiences of Piera’s knowledge presented through some of the practices Piera presents to his guests. In this chapter I address the question:
- Can bringing attention to soundscape become an important quality enhancer of experiences in indigenous tourism, and if so in what way?
We push the boat out into the luoppal (water inlet) and I’m told to jump in. I sit on my knees straight on the dilljá (the burden boards) in the middle of the johkafanas (river boat). I unload my sound equipment from my backpack and prepare to do sound takes. We head off and I immediately start to record the sound inside and outside the gunwale, along the sides of the boat, inside and outside, front and back, close to the outboard and in the bow.
I try to catch the sounds that might give me the same impression of what his aunt had told me. I visualise her as a nieidamánná (young girl) sitting by the stem post of the bow sheltered from the speed wind. The sound is rhythmic and very low pithed and to me it sounds very cosy and comforting, like a lullaby, so I do understand why she likes it. We cross the first luoppal, a small lake fenced in by the ridges of the tundra that have tried to stop the water flow. But the river has found its way to get on with her life and has meandered between the ridges.
7.2 Transcending knowledge along lines
Ingold (2002, 2011) rejected the sharp divisions made between human and animals, world and environment, being and existence. He argued that “organism-and-environment and being-in-the-world offers points of departure for understanding that are ontologically equivalent” (Ingold, 2011, p. 41), and he united ecological and phenomenological approaches to knowing in a single paradigm. Gibson (2014) contended that “…the biophysical ecology of space makes possible an array of doings, doings that in turn ‘tune’ bodies for certain understandings of the natural world.” Building on Gibson’s (1978) affordances and Merleau-Ponty (2013), Ingold (2002) purported that the world is sentient. This requires opening up to the world – being embraced by it and resonating one’s inner self to its impressions to embark your “movements along the way of life” (Ingold, 2011, p. 41).
The world is never complete but continuously surpassing itself through a concrescence of creativity and movement in time (Ingold, 2011). The movement of creation, of life and growth, lies in the essence of time. Time is inscribed in a register where anything lives. In theory, there could be a history of instants, but life continues even after ends meet. The end is just a position on a circle – the circle is continuing beyond the point. Like a wave on the ocean it rolls towards the shore and breaks but afterwards the water withdraws back into the sea to start a new life circulating in the atmosphere.
Ingold (2011) commented that in order to be taken by immobility, we need to view the ends as part of a living process. The living can never become an object because it endures like a growing root endlessly creating itself – “trailing its history behind it as the past presses against the present” (Bergson 1911, p. 29 in Ingold, 2011, p. 46). This is a becoming along lines – along “bundles of lines” – “lines of flight” and “lines of becoming” (Deleuze and Guattari, p. 223 and p. 215 in Ingold, 2011, p. 46). Ingold (2011) described these lines as transitive and intransitive senses of production. The line of becoming is transitive and it takes us from a starting point to an end; from birth to death or from materials in nature to a duodji object. The line of flight carries on and on and is intransitive. Ingold (2011, p. 47) stated that we must not lose sight of the rivers by focusing on the banks because if there were no flow in the river there would be no banks created and recreated. The texture of the world is comprised by the entwining of ever-extending trajectories of becoming and we must follow what is going on (Ingold, 2011, p. 48).
We head toward a narrower part of the river. Starr is growing next to the opening of it. It is not very deep and it’s like a small stream and not very deep either. “You need to sit still now because I must aim properly to find the exact spot to enter”, he says. I’m not moving and hardly breathing. I sit very still in the middle of the boat. I hang the microphone out of the boat to catch the sound of shallow water. I look forward to seeing if we hit the right spot to enter and then I look at him watching him manoeuvre up the river. I can see the bottom about 40 cm down in the water, but some stones are higher up in the water. We pass them by millimetres. “Up the stream it is easy”, he says. “Down is worse because then the river controls the speed”. I hear the water being pressed between the planks of the wooden boat and the rocks. I can also hear the rocks being moved towards each other by the river as if they are loose but still stuck there. I realise there is water entering the bottom of the boat. I put my equipment in the waterproof bag to save it.
7.3 Ecological bundles of lines
Salmón (2000) notes that to many traditional practitioners of indigenous knowledge the awareness of information available in the world comes after years of practising, sensing, conversing, recalling, reflecting and listening to both nature and other practitioners. This complex process shapes our effects, stored in our body and mind as memories (Edensor, 2010). We can only know nature as bodies-in-nature (Carolan, 2009) as bodies doing nature or as doing in nature inspired by someone, somewhere in a particular way (Bourdieu & Nice, 1977; Edensor, 2010; Ingold, 2002; Veijola & Jokinen, 1994). The close relationship between sensation and emotions presents itself by multiple ways of attending to sense impressions and how they contribute to enact reality (Carolan, 2009; Salmón, 2000; Smith & Pijanowski, 2014). It is an ongoing silent conversation between our active bodies and the world (Abram, 1996). In Abram’s words:
…if human language arises from the perceptual interplay between the body and the world, then this language “belongs” to the animate landscape as much as it “belongs” to ourselves. (Abram, 1996, p. 91)
Ingold’s (2011) lines can be viewed as lines of our life, lines of language that runs through our life, lines of writing, lines of rivers, lines of heritage, lines of sound and so on. All the different types of lines are entangled, they converge and diverge into bundles and are brought forward in time by storytelling, music and embodied memories of language and practises. Battiste (2008) refers to second-language studies and argued that language is more than sound:
Language includes ways of knowing, ways of socialising and non-verbal communication. The spirits of the consciousness that created those languages are remarkably persistent and are still embedded in many Indigenous communities. Indigenous languages have spirits that can be known through the people who understand them and renewing and rebuilding from within the peoples is itself the process of coming to know. (Battiste, 2008, p. 504)
Loss of lines that belonged together creates a particularly challenging situation for indigenous people that have lost their land, languages and practises during political assimilation and government genocides (Battiste, 2008). Battiste and Henderson (2000) argue that indigenous knowledge and subsequent decolonisation cannot be codified and defined. It is so deeply embedded and part of communities’ and individual’s daily lives that it must be experienced. Brattland, Kramvig, and Verran (2018) proffered that doing research with indigenous representatives or by indigenous researchers is a relational position breaking down epistemically autoreactive images. This means that in order to understand that the lines we talk about along which knowledge is passed are not genealogical (Ingold & Kurttila, 2000). Tradition is not a fixed object handed over, it is a continuously ongoing process (Ingold & Kurttila, 2000) of weaving together pieces of different types of knowledge. I discussed this previously regarding Rudie (1994), as inscribed and embodied knowledge. It becomes a property of the whole human organism-person through a practical engagement with the environment following “a way of life” by negotiating a path through the world (Ingold & Kurttila, 2000). Bjerkli (1996) explained that this “way of life”, or “this is how we do it here”, refers to knowledge founded in livelihood activities that make a place of the land. Ingold and Kurttila (2000) argued that this meant that a person that is “really traditional” is the one that knows the land like “the back of his hand” and has learnt to know it in the same manner as how a craftsman learns to know his material. He is sensual to the forms and textures and knows how to creatively respond to variations in time and space, hence, is alert to possibilities and dangers by pursuing different kinds of tasks (Ingold & Kurttila, 2000).
7.4 Analysis of practicing sonic skills
I have travelled a lot by myself and have experienced that it is a lot easier to get to know a place through the people living in it. I have realised that I will not be able to even scratch the surface of knowing a place without the insight of local people. Listening to people that have lived in a place for a long time give me more valuable information about a place and the ways of living there than even the best guidebooks. It is hard to generalise about the people with whom I talk, but when I met Siri, Piera’s aunt, I could read from her face that she had great histories to tell about the lived life at Vuolit Mollešjohka. Luckily for me, she welcomed me to share some of her histories. The conversation with Siri introduced me to the thinking of how important the sound of the river boat is to her traditional way of knowing. Her story made me aware of several things. First, sometimes silence can be very expressive. I often tend to become empty of words and struggle to find them. Often, if I am with good listeners or experienced people, they fill in the blanks for me and understand more than I need to tell them. Often these people are women and I have thought that this might be because of practices traditionally considered female, like caring for non-speaking children, horses, dogs and so on. Still, I do not think it is connected to gender due to genetically handed down lines, but a learned skill connected to experiences with attentive practices. Secondly, emotions and affect are often attached to sounds and influence how it is perceived and how it affects our body. Thirdly, different sounds afforded me calming nature experiences, memories of people I miss and times that have gone by. They also afforded me information about the place and impressions for my research.
I discovered that it was not so easy to observe how particular sounds were caused by another human’s affect. Laughter and silence were the most expressive sounds I found, and they spread easily to others. By observing, I could say that laughter and silence were communal experiences of sound. I guess I could say the same about informal conversations between people that felt safe and trusted one another. I was told that sound helped in different practices, but if I had not been told I would not have discovered it by observing. I would probably not have had a basis for forming questions about specific sounds either, unless I had been told so and had participated in the experience of the practice.
One of the men told me a story about one time when a visitor with a small group of hunters had stayed out in the tundra for a whole day. They had walked too far, looking for ptarmigans and ended up north of the cabin on the other side of Ĉorotjárvi and the river. It became dark before they reached home, and their GPS ran out of batteries. They had little ideas of where they were and had to call Piera for help. Piera told the tourist to hold his mobile phone out in the air so he could listen to the sounds of the surroundings. He then told them to stay there and he took his car and went out to get them. Everyone was impressed, but Piera acted as if it was the most natural thing to do.
Piera generously shared with me information about his life and the sounds that he found valuable around Vuolit Mollešjohka. He especially pointed out the specific sounds of the rivers. In the piece of ethnography, I incorporated above, I bring forward the story one of Piera’s guests told me. By listening to the surroundings over the mobile phone, Piera had localised some lost guests and brought them home safely. When I ask Piera about this, he told me that the rivers can be used as sound marks in the tundra. The river falls are different in steepness and hence sound, and the different sized waters make different sounds, as well as the wind in the landscape and between the ridges and bushes. I get a feeling that he has not reflected upon all the small bits and pieces that make him aware from where a specific key sound comes. I would imagine it would be difficult to present in words this kind of knowledge when it is so deeply embodied within him. This is the land- and soundscape that he has lived in his entire life and the flat and silent tundra might not be that flat and silent to him. He knows as to what to listen and what sounds are significant without constantly thinking about it. It is like walking. Unless you analyse every little sound of your move, you would not be attentive to it. As it is not possible to get into one’s head, I have tried to put myself in Piera’s shoes to reflect upon how would I possibly think of sounds if I was guiding a researcher through my meahcci? I think I would have zoomed in and out to figure out what was worth mentioning as key sounds. At the same time, I would never know if these sounds made up something that could present a general impression of the coastal way of knowing, or if it was just me. How much of me and the others would overlap, and how much of the outside of overlapping should be included. Traditional knowledge is a floating category made up of partial pieces, hence it needs to be created in cooperation between people that feel connected. This makes me think about what Ingold and Kurttila (2000) argue, that knowledge is local because it is embedded and stored in practises. It is the way of doing things “around here” that refers to traditions in a way that make the concept “tradition” hard to use. Piera needs to know his ways of doing things locally. He is connected with all the living and performing by the impressions of sound. For instance, he used Sámi words when describing things not easy to describe with Norwegian words, and I was surprised that I knew what he meant without knowing a word Sámi. I even felt it made more sense to the context than if it was described with words from Norwegian. Hence, he showed me that language is more than semiotic signs and that it is surely created through nature linguistics, which provides important insights to the indigenous way of understanding the world (Abram, 1996; Battiste, 2008; Kramvig, 2005; Merleau-Ponty, 2013).
The net is out, and he throws in the floater. “Now we just have to wait until tomorrow”, he says. He sits down and starts the engine again. We head the same way back. The evening sun shines over the lake and I get some nice pictures. When we enter the narrow part, ha tells me to sit further towards the back. I video tape the run on my phone. It becomes a very nice piece of material for me to show his river skills. He tells me he once was handed a pair of Polaroid glasses by a friend. He could see through the water and see all the stones. “I had to throw them away because my intuition was disturbed by the images of the rocks”, he says. “You just have to feel the river and float with it. You must not try to read it like a book cause the information cannot be written in words.” I know what he means. It’s like dancing – you must feel it. Slide along with your dance partner and feel the rhythm of the music. I have often felt the same way as a teacher of practical skills. It is impossible to tell people how to do it because sometimes you actually don’t know. You need to show them, and they must develop the skills themselves – watching closely, fetching details, asking for guidance, trying and failing, polishing their skills. After years of practice they become masters to teach others.
Some specific practices, like driving the river boat between the luoppals of Iešjávri, provided me with another type of information about how sounds can be used and how they are embodied in practical skills. In the rivers, there are shallower parts and an important skill for river boat drivers is to manoeuvre the wooden boat through the streams without destroying the boat or the stem or propeller of the outboard engine. I watched Piera drive up and dance down the stream with the boat. I asked him how he knew where to put the boat, and I guessed he had experienced were the larger rocks were situated. He told me he felt it in his body and that he once got to borrow a pair of polaroid glasses to see into the water. He had to take them off because the vision made him uncertain of his practice. Later, I attended a seminar on traditional boats, and I met a practitioner, who told me the sound of the water between a specific wooden boat and the rocks on the bottom gave information on depth. He also told me that a lot of those that had been driving with boats had never reflected upon this. It was a tacit knowledge embedded in their bodies and had to be adjusted with new boats and other rivers. This is knowledge that is forwarded through kin-lines and continuously built on and perfected during a long life of practice. You systematise the information of your meahcci and build čuvget (enlightenment), by being there, with and in it, for a long time – perceiving, dovddaipmárdus (sense impression), and emotionally evaluating, dovddavásihus (sense experience) all the small bits and pieces of information, dovddavaikkuhus (sense stimuli), that float through time in that place. Practises and stories are conveyed through kin-lines and provide generations with dáidu (sense, attitude), máhttu (skills) and theoretical knowledge (oahppu) that comes together in indigenous knowledge. Caring for his meahcci has provided Piera with knowledge of it and he has learnt from his ancestors as well as through being with his land and doing his tasks in it. Listening is an essential part of developing knowledge and practical skills (Bijsterveld, 2019a, 2019b). It is not enough just to be able to hear the sounds but to be attentive, listen by different modes, reflect upon the results of your ways of doing to incorporate the knowledge as embodied sonic skills (Bijsterveld, 2019b).
I tried to imagine what sonic skills is necessary to drive a riverboat up a shallow stream. Remember, as this is tacit knowledge, I would not ask Piera to begin to reflect over this. This is better done if you have the distance of not having the exact same experience. One must observe and try to connect it to one’s own practical experiences. I feel that asking craftsmen and traditional practitioners, how they do it, demonstrates a lack of respect for the incorporated knowledge they have built through a lifetime of doing it. You do not ask people how they live, how they walk, how they sleep. These are natural things you just do and as the skills become embodied you can use your attention span to think about other differences. I have myself experienced that if I try to explain some of the things at which I am skilled to other people, it messes things up. Everyone has their own special body with long and short extremities, with different experience and different attention spans, to mention just a few things. Someday something works, and another day something else, depending on how you feel that day and how the surroundings afford you with information and challenges.
Working with this thesis have made me realise that there are different kinds of tensions between the different ways of knowing and types of knowledge between the Sámi people. I have tried to sort this out by dividing the knowledge into different types of knowledge based on how they are performed in practice. First, there are beliefs, artefacts and practices that are traditional, that is, they exist in and are connected to practise. They are handed down in kin-lines through the stories and the pedagogics of doing. Like the language, the use of the Gákti, ways of gathering and preparing food and taking care of the homeland. There is a public discourse on the division between what is Sámi culture, what is reindeer Sámi culture, North Sámi culture and Sea Sámi culture. The challenge is when you look closer the culture concept does not fit. The divisions are enacted through individual ways of being and doing and local ways of knowing. If you look at the practices as a wood, the Sámi ways of knowing is one tree in the wood, and the North Sami and Sea Sámi doings are branches on that tree. The being of a reindeer Sámi are a smaller branch and each family or Siida (relatives) a twig. The individuals are leaves on the tree turning against the sun to get the right amount of light. How they perform are individual and situational, but they are still dependent upon the rest of the tree with its stem and root system, as well as the sun, the air, water and the rest of the life in the wood.
As I have touched upon several times in this thesis, the world is multiple, and it is dynamically changing as we speak. There are several different Sámi languages, Gáktis, ways of hunting, gathering, preparing food and caring for homelands, all created by creative customisation of a continuously changing environment. All you need to know is where to get or make the tools you need and how to use them properly. As such, materials and materiality become entangled concepts (Ingold, 2012). Local knowledge of traditional materials is important. But in the sense of surviving in the tundra, the materials change their materiality to become tools, as the environment is the material with which to work as well as the tools to use in relation to survival. I have not only noticed the importance of having materials in clothes that keep you warm when it is cold and cool while it is hot. Natural materials, like wool and fur, have that character. The sound of natural materials is softer and quieter and does not interfere much with the perceived loudness of the soundscape. The Gákti are made of woven wool and contribute to a softer anthrophonic soundscape. Other materials like goat skin are used in children’s clothing and smaller garments because of its softness and easiness to sew and form. The “pesk” (fur coat) and “skaller” (beaked fur boots) are made of reindeer pelt. These are life savers in winter as they keep you warm and dry. The “skaller” have no soles and it’s like walking barefoot. One gets close to the ground and feel sounds of different types of snow and how dense or hollow the snow is, the sound of the ice and of snowmobiles closing. It was a sensation I had forgotten and had not felt since I used this kind of boots as a young girl. By using these kinds of boots, the sensation you have barefooted in summer becomes possible also in wintertime. I guess Ingold would have been satisfied by having this experience related to both material and the sensation of sound through the sole of the foot (Ingold, 2011).
Local knowledge of materials also becomes important in fishing with the wooden boat in the rivers. The wood and the water make a soundscape together with the bottom of a stream and can be used to navigate safely through shallow waters. I will come back to this shortly. Other materials are used to make specific sounds like the “rune” drum made by birch and reindeer leather. There is also a small hammer-like drumstick of birch or reindeer horn used on this. The sound varies with the materials, size and handcraft. That makes each drum specific. Even so they are very much industrialised products sold to tourists as souvenirs. Such kinds of artefacts are useless to the Sámi people, and some view them as a threat to how their quality handcraft is being received. The price of industrially made substitute products are at a price where no one could make a living. Hence, they are undermining Sámi entrepreneurship.
Local knowledge of sounds might teach you to pay attention to key sounds in your surroundings, and how to care for those sounds. You look after the fire by listening to the crackling sound of burning wood and the windy draught up the chimney. You listen to the voices of your guests to care if they are anxious, sleepy, hungry or having a good time. You listen to the bells of the sheep or the reindeers if they are grazing comfortably or running around scared of predators. The knowledge of how you use your voice and when, is important in places where you are often by yourself. You do not shout unless you are in danger, because if you do that too often no one will know when to rescue you if it becomes serious. There are also other safety procedures connected to sound. You listen to the sound of the snow and ice to sense if it is going to bare the weight of you. Navigating by sound is a well-known practice in indigenous communities (Carolan, 2009; Carpenter, 1973; Ingold & Kurttila, 2000; Rodaway, 1994; Salmón, 2000).
To develop such a close relationship with the soundscape of your surrounding you need to live with it and live in it. This is true for Piera who has lived and practised at Vuolit Mollešjohka for more than half a century. The rivers and lakes, the ridges and hills, the living life, and how water and wind flow through the landscape has embodied a soundscape with sound marks tacitly embodied within him. Being without this experience he would not have been able to develop his knowledge of the place; hence, he would have had little to offer the type of tourists that visit. His best sales argument is the knowledge he has and the way he is able to use it to host and care for visitors. To the guests that do not want to be seen as tourists, it is more acceptable to have your knowledge compared with Piera’s, even though it means he has access to superior knowledge, because you respect the way he has gained his knowledge. It takes a lifetime to build such knowledge and you know that this knowledge is continuously improved and built upon by staying with the surroundings. You can never be another person’s body, and you can never hold another person’s knowledge of the world. You can just walk along and try to experience it and try to build on your own knowledge from that. This is what Piera offers. An insight to his ways of knowing sounds by showing us by participating in his practices, not by putting words on it that would complicate things and maybe make the transferring of experience come out wrongly. I will dig deeper into this in the next chapter.