Sámi Museology

FROM LAPPOLOGY TO SÁMI MUSEOLOGY 1 The Journal Nordic Museology Nordic The Journal USEOLOGI M Tomas Colbengtson: Sami Culture. ORDISK N 2019 • 3 Contents PREFACE 3 Preface Brita Brenna 5 Introduction Cathrine Baglo, Jukka Nyyssönen & Rossella Ragazzi ARTICLES 8 A record of ethnographic objects procured for the Crystal Palace exhibition in Sydenham Silje Opdal Mathisen 25 The disappearance of the Sea Sámi as a cultural display category Cathrine Baglo 45 Skolt Sámi Heritage, Toivo Immanuel Itkonen (1891–1968), and the Sámi Collections at the National Museum of Finland Eeva-Kristiina Harlin & Veli-Pekka Lehtola 61 The role of museum institutions in relation to research on Sámi culture, history, and society in Norway until the post World War II years Dikka Storm 77 Johan Nuorgam: Sámi Squanto and cultural broker Veli-Pekka Lehtola 96 Sociomaterial intertwinements in Sami research Eva Silvén 118 TheSamekulturen exhibition. A social actor at the Tromsø University Museum Trude Fonneland 134 Discourses, practices and performances in Sámi museology at Tromsø University Museum Rossella Ragazzi & Giacomo Nerici 152 Religion of the past or living heritage? Tiina Äikäs 169 Sámi (re)presentation in a differentiating museumscape: Revisiting the art-culture system Monica Grini Nordic museology 2019 • 3 Preface In this special issue of Nordic Museology we present a range of articles that give us unprecedented insights into the development and changes of museum representations of Sámi culture. The articles offer a thorough investigation of how Sámi culture has been an object of knowledge for museums and how this knowledge production has been entangled with representations of the Sámi in Nordic museums and society. Sámi culture is specific to Scandinavia and Russia, and Sámi museology is an important topic for which our journal ought to be a central hub. And indeed, this has also been the case in the latter years. In 2015 Nordic Museology made the special issue “Rethinking Sámi cultures in museums”, where a range of authors discussed contemporary Sámi displays and heritage work. Some articles also delved into the history of collecting and collections of Sámi artefacts. However, that issue dealt mostly with contemporary colleting and display. The present issue, we believe, can work very well as a sequel where more attention is given to historical transformations – as stated in the title for the issue – from Lappology to Sámi museology. In the introductory article to the 2015 issue, anthropologist Christina Kreps claimed that much attention had been given to collaboration and changes in the relations between indigenous communities and museums in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. However, she claimed, less is known “about the current status of relationships between indigenous populations, such as the Sámi, and the Nordic museums. Similarly, the literature on indigenous peoples’ museums and cultural centers has expanded greatly in recent years but includes limited contributions about Sámi museums” (Kreps 2015, 4). This new issue will not rectify the lack of attention to contemporary Sámi museums and cultural centres, but it gives us insights into how the changes in representation of and knowledge production about Sámi cultures have been interconnected with changes in the societal discourses about the Sámi. This historical perspective, moving from the 19th century to the present, gives a unique comparative understanding of Nordic institutional research on and representation of Sámi culture. We hope this will provide yet another stone to step on in establishing Sámi museology as a thriving field. Brita Brenna Literature Kreps, Christina 2015. “Appropriate museology and the ‘new museum ethics’”. Nordic Museology 2, 4–16. Preface 4 Tomas Colbengtson: Sami Culture. Nordic museology 2019 • 3, s. 5–7 Introduction Museums as arenas for the production and circulation of knowledge on Sámi cultures, societies and identities Cathrine Baglo, Jukka Nyyssönen & Rossella Ragazzi Museums have been central sites for production which the Sámi build their identities and voice of knowledge on the Sámi.1 Being equipped their demands. We are particularly interested to disseminate this knowledge in novel ways, in exploring how different discourses, and museums have a special role and responsibility institutional and societal contexts, in this case towards, both, the majority societies and Sámi museums or exhibition arenas, have had impact societies alike. This publication examines on and continue to impact the production of how the relationship between society and the knowledge on Sámi cultures, histories and production and dissemination of knowledge identities across time. on Sámi cultures has changed in the context of The contributors are museologists, his- Nordic museums. A more ambitious scope is to torians, anthropologists, archaeologists and see whether and how these changes have had an cultural studies scholars with experience from impact on the societal discourses about the Sámi working in and writing about museums and and on the representation and construction of their practices. They are all from countries with Sámi museology. The aim is to offer a critical native Sámi populations (Norway, Finland, view on the history of “Lappology” up to Sweden, Russia), and they have specialised in contemporary research and representation of various fields of study and issues relating to the the Sámi as it has unfolded in Scandinavia, and Sámi. The contributors are part of the Nordic in part also northern Russia. research project “Societal Dimensions of Sámi The point of departure is that the scholarly Research”, financed by the Norwegian Research production of knowledge and society share Council.2 a complex interdependence. In museums in This publication has ten articles organised general, the voice of the Sámi has grown from according to a chronological historical timeline. a muted research object to a strong researching In her article about a double set of Sámi subject with a morally compelling voice. The artefacts collected in Norway in the 1850s, old authorities of Sámi research collecting Silje Opdahl Mathisen offers a critical view and mouth-piecing the Sámi have been on the establishment of a Sámi collection at transformed into objects of deconstructive the Museum of Ethnography in Oslo, as well research. As a result of this democratization, as notions of ethnicity and race. While one set museums have become sites of more equal remained in Oslo the other was to be exhibited encounters and an ethno-political platform in at the Crystal Palace exhibition in London. Cathrine Baglo, Jukka Nyyssönen and Rossella Ragazzi 6 Moreover, the author demonstrates how parts Sámi research and the bolstering of the Sámi of the collection have roots in one of the ethno-political movement. darkest chapters in Sámi-Norwegian history – Veli-Pekka Lehtola challenges the percep- the Kautokeino uprising. tion of the muted Sámi research object in his Cathrine Baglo explores the connection article on the life and career of Johan Nuorgam, between two early industrial expositions, a Sámi expert and future museum expert. In the Norwegian assimilation policies towards the 1930s, he worked as a custodian and presenter Sámi in the last part of the nineteenth century at the “Lapp section” of the open-air museum and what she argues is the disappearance of at Seurasaari in Helsinki, and during the period the Sea Sámi as a cultural display category. 1959-63 he brought this knowledge home and According to a classic study conducted in a Sea established the first Sámi museum in Inari in Sámi community, in 1971, all signs of a Sámi Finland. Lehtola analyses Nuorgam’s life in terms past were associated with the social stigma of James Clifford’s concept of the “Squanto”, a and shame of the inhabitants. It is the contours cultural broker with complex relations to both of this path that we see sign of in the Tromsø “outsiders” and his own community. expositions, Baglo argues. Eva Silvén offers an overview of Sámi Eeva-Kristiina Harlin and Veli-Pekka Lehtola research and collecting at the Nordic Museum examine the Sámi collections in the National in Stockholm with focus on the curator Ernst Museum of Finland, which were provided Manker and the period 1930-1970. The author by the Finnish Lappologist T. I. Itkonen from focuses on the friction between the potentially 1912 to 1927. More than ninety percent of his essentialising and emancipatory effects of collections came from the Skolt Sámi area. The Manker’s work in relation to its societal impact. objects received a fair amount of attention at The cultural heritage created by Manker the National Museum, but were subjected to the at the Nordic Museum (object collections, almost compulsory representation of reindeer photographs, media, scientific research and herding. Today, Itkonen’s collection has gained popular travelogues texts) was definitely based new meaning for the Skolt Sámi community on an outsider’s view of the Sámi, but in ways due to the repatriation of the entire Sámi that today may lead to decolonising and re- collection of the National Museum to the Siida appropriating it. Sámi Museum, as the article demonstrates. Trude Fonneland retraces the social and Dikka Storm looks at the roles of the political consequences of the exhibition Ethnographic Museum in Oslo and Tromsø Samekulturen (The Sámi Culture, 1973), at Museum in relation to the production of Sámi Tromsø University Museum, which still serves research from the end of the nineteenth century as an arena forty years on for the dissemination until the post-war years. By emphasising the of Sámi culture to visitors. By contextualising academic development of particular individuals the production of Samekulturen and discussing and the development of professional networks, its genesis, particularly in relation to the later she calls attention to the establishment exhibition Sápmi – en nasjon blir til (Sápmi – and effects of a specific research strategy. becoming a nation), the chapter argues that Moreover, she argues that the ethnographer Samekulturen has regained validity as a social Ørnulv Vorren and Tromsø Museum became actor.

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