“Hárre”,
a portrait of graylings,
a common fish in the lakes of the Finnmark tundra.
(Picture by Ellen-J. Kvalsvik 2018).
2.1 Introduction
In this chapter, I want to introduce the concept of Sámi tourism and the issues and implications involved in developing and enacting this concept. Then, I turn to Sámi practices that contribute to the basis of entrepreneurship in Sami tourism. Last, but not the least, I introduce you to the case I studied at Vuolit Mollešjohka Duottarstophu.
2.2 Issues and implications in Sámi tourism
Tourism is doing something other than what we do in our everyday life (MacCannell, 1976; McCabe, 2002; Urry, 1992). Hence, it is based on experiencing differences in nature and geographies (Müller & Viken, 2017). The periphery of Northern Europe is described as remote, isolated and a frontier with exotic natural scenery and attractive tourist places, sometimes including stories of colonialism and resource extraction (Barenholdt & Granas, 2008). Barenholdt and Granas (2008) have argued that new social-scapes are enacted across distinctions. Dichotomies like periphery-centre, local-global, urban-rural, modern-primitive, authentic-copied are all created from distant positions. Societies are performed and defined over distances and at a distance through social interaction, networks and fields where people perform corporeally, virtually or imaginarily (Barenholdt & Granas, 2008). Enacting places involve materials, politics and imaginations. Hence, practices of place enactment could involve nature, politics of nature and imaginations of nature. These are ambivalent and messy practises (Barenholdt & Granas, 2008). Tourists who travel to the north and to Sápmi, the territory of indigenous people in northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. They want to experience the Midnight Sun in summer, the Polar Nights with the Aurora borealis in winter, wild nature and local life. In addition, they also want to encounter the indigenous Sámi populating the area (Kramvig, 2017; Mathisen, 2004, 2010; Olsen, 2003).
Fascination with the Sámi has been routed deeply in the western colonisation project (Kramvig, 2017; Mathisen, 2004, 2010; Müller & Viken, 2017; Müller & Viken, 2017; Olsen, 2003; Viken & Müller, 2006). The first travellers in these regions were explorers discovering, documenting and claiming new land and resources driven by capitalism, technology and religion in attempts to expand the European continent (Kramvig, 2017). Kramvig (2017) argues that the concept “Ultima Thule” was used in the imaginary of Sápmi as “the End of the World”. The first travellers’ descriptions of the Sámi population were based on an “otherness” duality mirroring the travellers. Hence, the Sámi were described as barbaric, uncivilised, unruly and wild savages of the North. Their religious beliefs had to be overcome and the first recognition of being a “civilised world” came with the establishments of churches, followed by trading posts, military defence, schools and trade routes (Kramvig, 2017).
In the 11th century, mountain lodges were built to host the first travellers entering these roadless places (Guttormsen, 2019). At that time, infrastructure in the mountains was inadequate and the need for housing was severe. For those entering the tundra, building shelters, quarters and mountain lodges were part of the improvement of infrastructure. Initially, there were two types of mountain lodges that hosted officials, herders, hunters, gatherers, expeditioners and tourists. One type was the state-built and -owned ones and the other type was the completely private ones (Guttormsen, 2019). Today’s type of mountain lodge presented in the Finnmark tundra was shaped around 1840. As roads developed in Sápmi, opportunities to get further, faster and more often to the mainland increased (Viken & Müller, 2006). Of all the state-built ones, there are only three state-owned left with professional tenants (“oppsitter” in Norwegian) on state salary. These are the Jotka, Upper Mollešjohka and Ravna. The position as tenant runs in kinlines and they are officially employed by the Norwegian Department of Agriculture. These remaining state-owned lodges are situated in a straight line between Alta and Karasjok, called the Postal route. The remaining state-built lodges were sold to private people and a few of these are run as tourism businesses today. Most of these tourism lodges are found close to the county roads. The second type of lodges were initially built as private lodges for people living off inland fisheries. Today, they are tourism businesses and the families that live there must raise their income from tourism and/or have additional jobs.
However, development of Sámi tourism in the Arctic has several “issues and implications”. Hinch and Butler (2007) describe them as complex matters balancing tourism between threats and opportunities for indigenous people. The rights of indigenous people have been recognised by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) of the United Nation (UN) through the Indigenous Tribal Peoples Convention, ILO C169 of June 27th, 1989 (Pillay, 2013). It is the most important operative international law to guarantee the rights of indigenous peoples. The UN provides a continuously negotiated definition of indigenous people. The most cited “working definition” of indigenous peoples is provided by the Martinez Cobo Study:
Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them (Pillay, 2013, p. 6)
However, the strength of the ILO convention is dependent on a number of ratifications amongst the United Nations. The Sámi are regarded as one people, even though there are nine different languages and multiple other differences regarding traditions and practices (Kramvig, 2005). Norway was the first nation to ratify the ILO convention on June 19, 1990 (Åhrén, 2016). Still, there are issues to attend to when it comes to possibilities of making a living in Sápmi. Issues like being heard properly concerning management and access to traditional coastal fisheries and pasture lands, and the right to use Sámi expressions, for example, using the Gákti as a commodified product in Finland as described by Åhrén (2016). Sámi ways and traditions are protected by international conventions, like the ILO 169 and are not to be used for exploitation in disrespect of the Sámi people. Those who are Sámi have the right to protect their cultural expression to keep their status as a defined people (Wright, 2014). Hence, the Sámediggi has gained initial rights to be consulted in cases concerning governmental decisions affecting Sámi people and communities (Åhrén, 2016). Wright (2014) reminds us that tourism is a place where colloquial expressions are moved into a space of the market. The elements of nature and business are entangled in indigenous businesses presented in tourism contexts, hence also in Sami tourism (Kramvig, 2017). Olsen (2003) argued that the tourism industry has taken over the exhibition of culture. The challenge being that the industry often needs to use emblematic signs to make it possible for tourists to recognise an attraction (Olsen, 2003).
Mathisen (2004, 2010) has argued that Sámi are emblematically represented in contemporary tourism as reindeer herders, representatives of a life lived in close contact with nature, and as carriers of a spirituality reflecting deeper concerns for the environment and powers of nature. These signs contributed to the enhancement of a Western narrative of noble savages and of prelapsarian and a pre-colonial past (Mathisen, 2010). Mathisen (2010) reported that the historical perspective of the Sámi is that various groups have relied on subsistence economies with fishing along the coast and rivers, and hunting and reindeer herding on the tundra as main activities. Some contemporary Sámi still work within these traditional economies, but the majorities work in combinations with or in different economies (Mathisen, 2010). The challenge of presenting the Sámi way of life based on ecological attitudes towards nature, traditionalism, spirituality and harmony is that:
…the boundary between popular myths or narratives about indigenous peoples and representations of these cultures in tourism becomes unclear and fuzzy. (Mathisen, 2010, p. 55)
Olsen (2003) are concerned with how the Sámi are “consumed” by the tourist’s gaze. He noted that when the emblematic Sami is not found, people and areas are regarded as Norwegian. This is a view that is easily found in tourism (Olsen, 2003).
Kramvig (2017) discusses the consequences of this complex dilemma. On the bright side, we find the opportunity to articulate self-respect and pride in a cultural background, to preserve knowledge and make a living out of Sámi practices and traditions, as well as simultaneously cope with contemporary issues and ways of knowing. The downside being that the same efforts that forward possibilities brings out new forms of ownership where important elements are transformed into market products. Some of them are made for external markets and some for locals (Kramvig, 2017). Discussions about the use of indigenous expressions occur in media from time to time, like who have the right to use the Gákti, who can make duodji products and collect duodji materials. The rights have been ratified in the ILO 169 convention, as mentioned earlier, but the borders are not defined and highly politically practised. Kramvig (2017) says that these products come with disturbance and a passion that creates new encounters, conflicts and debates in the minority-majority interface along with new inter- and intra-ethnic ties.
Encounters are meetings that are not simply in the present: each encounter reopens past encounters (Kramvig, 2017, p. 63).
The double-edged sword will appear anywhere one tries to add cultures, identities and other ways of knowing as input factors in economic activities, as it is with indigenous tourism (Kramvig, 2017). Hence, the largest challenge in contemporary Sámi tourism is how to find a balance between the danger of exotification and the quest for autonomy?
In the beginning of this chapter, I presented tourism as doing something other than what we do in our everyday life (MacCannell, 1976; McCabe, 2002; Urry, 1992). Hence, it should be based on experiencing differences in nature and geographies (Müller & Viken, 2017). Wright (2017) argues that this view has traditionally contributed to an analytic approach presenting tourism as something out of the ordinary, separated from the everyday as a different activity, as a phenomenon. She points out that from a post-structuralist and post-colonial perspective this should not go by unnoticed. She forwards a view based on a new ontology where tourism is considered part of a world-creating practise with action, object and performance done through relationships and networks. This is not necessarily relationships between humans, but also relationships between humans and nature, the non-human, in addition to the sensuous multiple body. An example of the latter is the sensuous encounter with Oscypek cheese described by Ren (2011). She analysed the experience of the cheese presented by four orderings of our multiple realities (Law, 1992) – the traditional, the tourism, the modern and the unique cheese. Her performative/material contribution is argued by Wright (2017) as enabling ways of presenting the complexity and the different realities of the world without reducing it to a one-world theory (Law, 2007). Wright (2017) calls for a change of focus in tourism research from the destructive focus of representation and identity, authenticity, commodification, and socio-economic effects, towards Sámi ontologies and landscape creating new realities of tourist-local encounters in tourism.
Vuolit Mollešjohka Duottarstophu viewed from Iešjohka (Picture by Ellen-J. Kvalsvik 2018).
2.3 Case description
In addition to a native lifelong relationship with the Arctic tundra, my fieldwork has consisted of two visits to Vuolit Mollešjohka Duottarstophu. One in the autumn and one in wintertime, resulting in two totally different experiences of soundscape, landscape and people. The lodge is run by a family that have spent their whole life at this specific place. They have gathered fish in the lakes and rivers and exported it across the border to Sweden. When breeding of trout and char in aquaculture became successful, they lost market space and had to adjust to other ways of living. As they had hosted people passing by all along, they continued to develop that part of the business. I have particularly cooperated with and followed the manager at the lodge, known by locals as Molleš Piera. He is a North Sámi man that has lived in this landscape his entire life making a living out of traditional practises of fishing, hunting and gathering, in addition to facilitating and making a living out of tourism. Still, as I have learned, his touristic activity is connected to and developed in line with Sámi philosophy and landscape practises. As presented above, the tourism industry has contributed to the “exotification” of knowledges of indigenous people for a long time (Kramvig, 2017; Müller & Viken, 2017; Viken & Müller, 2017; Viken & Müller, 2006). Living off Sámi tourism could have put Molleš Piera on the edge of a sword. Subsequently, when trying to make a living, where he uses his local and traditional knowledge, how does he find a balance between the danger of exotification and the quest for autonomy? This is something that is highly at stake in some other Sámi tourism businesses, but at Vuolit Mollešjohka Duottarstophu this has not been a relevant issue. It has taken Molleš Piera and his family a long time to build a new form of a combination business focused on caring for people and the environment. This is based on traditional practises of hosting guests passing by and introducing fishing, hunting, gathering, snow mobile rides, skiing tours and reindeer sledding in addition to preparing and serving local food.
After the first days of my first visit, I had collected enormous amounts of sound materials related only to this place and this tourism business. This occurred in early September during the first days of small game hunting. The second visit was made in late January during the Aurora season and Polar nights. It became clear to me that all this material related to site specific events, in the land defined by the host as his nurture land – meahcci (Oskal, 1995). Through his business, he offers partial access to his surroundings and the landscape he regards as his meahcci. To Piera, nature is not an abstract category but alive, and it has the capacity to act back in specific events. Learning involves being with and being shown and told by one or several family masters of a practice. Situational practices offer us the possibility to open up to sensuous experiences of dissonance and consonance that guide and safeguard us in other specific situations and practises throughout life. The pedagogics in short are as follow: Based on what you learn, you will be on your own one day and need these learnings to find your way, to be safe, to develop your practices and pass them on to the next generation. The North Sámi word luondu have been translated to “nature”, but it is more correct to say “the character of nature” (Østmo, 2013). The word exemplifies more than just the visible nature but also all that nature can afford us. This is not the same as the word meahcci that could be translated as the terrain outside fences. The former describes an area that people regard as their place to afford a good living (Østmo, 2013). It is a place where people, animals, plants, water, forest and marshes relate to one another (Oskal, 1995). It is a home and a self away from home and your embodied self, a place for walking, playing, learning, spending your leisure time, hunting, gathering and where worshiping is performed. You know the area like your home and are just as safe there (Østmo, 2013). Meahcci is part of your reflections of yourself and develops your inner self. Outside the meahcci is amas meahcci, a place where you can do the same things, but is foreign and strange although not a complete wilderness (Østmo, 2013).
Piera practises jávredikšun/Sámi management of his meahcci (Joks & Law, 2017a, 2017b; Østmo, 2013). In the same way, you take care of your home and your body, Østmo (2013) argued, you also take care of your meahcci. Jávredikšun, is a concept and a Sámi traditional way of taking care of your meahcci (Østmo, 2013). The concept comes from managing (dikšun) your lake (jávre) and describes the way Sámi people provide circulation by removing stones and wood from river inlets and estuaries or manage growth of Carex along the water edges to protect the water from successive regrowth. This way fish will continue to spawn, and waters remain healthy. It also means that you do not fish more than what can be reproduced (Østmo, 2013).
Piera uses sounds and soundscapes as important embodied devices for his daily practises in tourism. By soundscape I, for now, mean a composition of different key sounds that are present in a specific place (Farina 2014). The embodied knowledge is not so easy to translate and has been articulated as “soft” knowledge in contradiction to “hard” knowledge produced by science (Joks & Law, 2017b). The “soft” knowledges of locals and indigenous people have been valued as insignificant to nature management (Joks & Law, 2017a, 2017b; Oskal, 1995; Østmo, 2013) ) even though this is slowly changing through recognition of TEK (traditional ecological knowledge) by political and academic institutions, such as the Arctic Council, Sami Parliament as well as the Norwegian Research Council and Norwegian nature management institutions. Working through my empirical material and analysis, I became in need of a framework that could lead me along a winding road through messy practises. Moving from the “hard” natural science of hearing, that gives little room for social sciences, towards the “softer” science of listening, living and caring, I use the sense of sound and soundscape to zoom in on the multiple bodies that are performing in tourism – whether they are guests or hosts. In Sámi traditions, you can become kin in different ways. Guests that have visited for decades are more than guests. They relate to the hosts as being a guest-family-friend, verdde. Traditionally, this was a relationship between the reindeer herding family and the resident family of the mountain lodges or by the coastal summer pastures (Paine, 1957). Such friendship was based on practices of exchanging goods, information and help, verddevuohta. It was a cooperative system, where nothing was expected in return and there was no payment involved. It was a mutual exchange of value. The relationship was often based on both biological or ritual kinship and passed on to the next generation. The resident family sometimes owned reindeer in the herd to be looked after by the herding family. In return, the herders and their family were offered lodging and assistance during labour-intensive periods when moving the herds (Paine, 1957). This formed the basis of a new concept called Verdde tourism developed by Piera and his family.