Welcome to “Art, Culture & Books” with me Anthony King. Today I’ll be taking you on a photographic tour of the The Arctic University Museum of Norway, including the Sami exhibition which is in Tromso, Norway.
As always, I take all the photos and videos myself on location, ensuring you get an up-close and personal view of the fascinating world of art and culture. I’ll be popping in and out with commentary as this video progresses but for now let’s take a close up look.
Tromso is an incredibly beautiful place and I was lucky to interview the Norwegian Prime Minister there, for my book series on the Norwegian culture of Janteloven called; “The Secret Norwegian”. It’s also got quite a dark side too but it’s certainly a special place right towards the top of the north of Norway. Remember to pause the video to read any longer text in full. We’ll be taking a good look around the museum.
One of the main focuses of this museum is the Sami exhibition. I must say that this exhibition shocked me. I wrote extensively about the Sami people in my book, ‘The secret Norwegian Volume Two’. The Sámi people are the indigenous people of Scandinavia and large parts of northern Europe including Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. They have inhabited this area for thousands of years but did not implement borders because they travelled across wide areas. The Sami are known for engaging in herding, fishing and living nomadically, however, I am told that only 10% of the Sami people now herd animals with most of the population living in urban centres or towns and villages. The Sami people have been discriminated against historically and this remains to this day. Many have told me that they feel that their livelihood is being threatened along with their land due to mining and other types of industrialisation and development.
One of the most disturbing things I learned in this entire process was about the Norwegian official sterilisation of tens of thousands of Sami people. I interviewed many Sami in my book series so I suggest that if you want to know more you can check it out.
By Anthony King (c)