The article centres around a well-known artefact in Sámi history, the more than 300-year-old drum that once belonged to Poala Ánde/Anders Poulsen, that has recently been returned to Sápmi after a long restitution process. Sámi drums were deemed sorcerers’ devices and routinely confiscated and destroyed during seventeenth century Danish autocracy; their users prosecuted and sometimes executed. In the ...

The theory and practice of decolonization present an awkward paradox: How can social change occur in everyday life to disrupt state structures while entangled with the mundane, social, and institutional practices and representations that perpetuate state power? In Sápmi, the transborder Indigenous Sámi homeland, decolonization has been intertwined with the institutionalization of Sámi governance and ...

Whose story is told in the history of art? There are many different answers to that question depending on which art history one refers to and on the perspective applied to examine these histories. One approach is to look at the traditional framework for such examinations – which to a large degree still includes categories such as state, pla ...

Artikkelen løfter frem Lars Hættas miniatyrduodji, laget mens han satt fengslet på Akershus festning (1856–1867) og samlet av Etnografisk Museum i Christiania. Denne samlingen tematiserer aktuelle museumsspørsmål knyttet til gjenstander laget og ervervet i situasjoner med asymmetriske maktforhold. Artikkelen setter søkelys på betydningen av Hættas samiske kunnskapshorisont og konteksten han befant ...

På Universitetsplassen i Tromsø er gressganger og steiner lagt i en spiralform som leder inn til et basseng. I bunnen av bassenget er en metallplate hvor stjernene på nordhimmelen er stanset ut i miniatyr. Bassenget tilføres lys og varme under bakken, og om vinteren, når det er mørkt døgnet rundt, tegnes himmelrommet opp i vannoverflaten og lyser opp dampen. Om sommeren, når sola står høyt og ...

The article addresses how Sámi culture is presented by museums in Oslo. One of the findings is that the old binary of “art” and “ethnographica” is still common in this museumscape. This reflects the historical divide between the art museum showing “European” and “Norwegian” art, and the ethnographic museum showing the arts of “the rest”. It is argued that Sámi artists, works, themes, and practices ...