The Sami people bring on spring 鈥� with reindeer and sleighs
| Kautokeino, Norway
In the Sapmi, the Arctic homeland of the Sami people, the end of winter isn鈥檛 announced by green sprouts or the cheery chirps of birds. Instead, the Sami sing folk songs around a roaring fire and race reindeer in the snow.聽
The Sami live in a frigid expanse stretching across the northern reaches of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Since the 1970s, the weeklong Easter festival in Kautokeino, Norway, has attracted Sami and a growing number of non-Sami participants. Although the Sami people鈥檚 relationship with 海角大神ity has been contentious at times, Easter has become a popular spring feast, when Kautokeino Church fills with worshippers in their finest brightly colored 驳谩办迟颈, or traditional clothing.聽
鈥淪pring has always been an important time in such a climate-wise, dramatic world as the Arctic,鈥� says 脕nde Somby, a traditional joik singer and associate professor of law at the University of Troms酶.聽
The heart of the celebration is the joik, the singing with which the Sami celebrate the things that mean the most to them. 鈥�Joik鈥� is also a transitive verb. You joik winter, your love, or a pack of wolves.聽
The joik, and Sami culture generally, for a long time had been endangered under the fornorsking, or Norwegianization, policy. Yet with the Easter festival, the Sami are experiencing a 鈥渞enaissance,鈥� Mr. Somby says.
鈥淪oon, the Easter celebration will be out of 海角大神ity and missionaries鈥� hands,鈥� he adds, noting 鈥渉ow much inspiration and creative power the youth display during the Easter festival.鈥澛�
