NIKO VALKEAPÄÄ takes a deep breath. When he lets it out again, his voice seems to unleash a pack of wolves. It howls, runs, keeps going until the wolves have passed nine valleys by dawn. They don’t run fast, but they run far, and soon Valkeapää is out of breath. When he catches it again, he explains that what he just did was perform a joik — the wolf joik, to be specific. “In joik,” he says, “you don’t joik about an animal or about a person or place for that matter. You joik the animal, capturing its spirit, habits and characteristics.” The wolf isn’t the swiftest of animals, but it has stamina, which is why Valkeapää draws out the notes, long “lo,” “no,” “go” and “nu” sounds that also reflect the length and breadth of the valleys the wolf pack runs through. Contrast that with the ptarmigan: as Valkeapää creates and projects tones from the far back of his mouth, you can see the bird running in your mind’s eye, drumroll steps that stop abruptly and only long enough to ascertain its safe passage, in silence, before getting going again. 

So coming to Tromsø for Sámi Vahkku feels a bit like an act of defiance, because it proves that we are still here — the ones who have never forgotten who they are, and the ones, like me, who are unforgetting. Take Jorunn Løkvold. She is educated as a duojár, an artisan who creates duodji, Sámi handicrafts. Løkvold specializes in sewing gákti, the Sámi regalia that uses a different ornamentation around the neck and shoulders and on sleeve ends and hem, depending on where the wearer comes from or has roots. She also makes Sámi capes and hoodies, as well as belts that incorporate riebangolli (fool’s gold or mica) for pizzazz. But at the festival, she’s teaching a room full of people how to sew a coffee bag, a traditional leather pouch for carrying coffee while out on the land. “It’s important to show what duodji is and how long it takes to make something by hand, because it’s our history,” she says.

I’M STANDING FACE to photographed face with the world’s largest portrait of a Sámi person. The man depicted is Per Savio, whose likeness, at 13 metres tall, dominates the atrium at the Fram Centre. As part of Sámi Week, the scientific research complex on the waterfront is hosting a seminar about Savio and Ole Must — likely the first Sámi men to travel to Antarctica. In May 1898, Savio and Must set sail aboard the Southern Cross, becoming part of the first expedition to overwinter on the Antarctic mainland, more than a decade before Robert Scott’s famed Terra Nova Expedition. 

Ann Kristin Balto, herself Sámi and the centre’s photo archivist, found an album with pictures from the Southern Cross Expedition. “I’d never heard of any Sámi participating in Antarctica, so discovering the album was a big surprise,” she says, addressing a group of people who’ve come to learn about the Sámi presence in Antarctica.

For the Southern Cross Expedition, leader Carsten Borchgrevink wanted two Sámi men with ski experience who knew how to handle and care for dogs. What he got were two men with life-saving traditional knowledge: not only were Savio and Must adept at sewing clothing from reindeer skin and fur (the hairs are hollow, keeping the crew warm even in Antarctica), but they also brought loads of lesser bladder-sedge, a grass used to insulate footwear. (Carex vesicaria has been used across Sápmi for centuries to keep feet warm in winter; in North America, Indigenous Peoples use it to weave baskets.) Savio and Must also knew how to manage polar night (a.k.a. seasonal affective disorder), loneliness and extreme cold — all guaranteed on trips to the southern antipode — and were instrumental in catching and preparing fish, including a handful of new species, for later analysis and classification.