Portrait of the Sámi author and artist Johan Turi (1854-1936). Photographer unknown (Borg Mesch?) c. 1910–1916. Photograph. Nordiska Museet. NMA.0056710.

Who was Johan Turi? 

A North Sámi artist, writer, hunter, and occasional tourist guide, Johan Turi (1854–1936) was born in Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino, Norway, but emigrated early in life with his reindeer herding family to the area of Čohkkiras/Jukkasjärvi, Sweden. He is the author of the first book in which the Sámi intentionally spoke back to their colonizers, the state administrations of Sweden and Norway. Titled Muitalus sámiid birra in the North Sámi language and published in Copenhagen in 1910, it included an atlas with fourteen line-drawings by the author. The Danish ethnographer and artist Emilie Demant Hatt assisted Turi in writing the book. Financial support by Hjalmar Lundbohm, mining executive in Giron/Kiruna, made the publication possible.  

Turi aimed at protecting Sápmi, “the general concrete and abstract concept referring to [the] … people, land and spirit” of the Sámi (Keskitalo 1994, 7), from the effects of colonization by settlers, mining companies, forestry, tourism, and so on.  In Muitalus sámiid birra Turi focused specifically on the seasonally travelling reindeer herders in the historical region of Torne lappmark (a Swedish geographical term meaning “Sámi land”), spanning six Sámi siidas, among them Talma to which the Turi-family belonged. A siida is the traditional social, economic, and geographical organization unit of a Sámi community. A premise on which Turi’s work rests is that the Sámi is an Indigenous people: “One never hears about the Sámi’s arrival, as if they had come from somewhere else. The Sámi have always lived in these parts, here in the Sámi homeland” (Turi 2012, 11). 

Essay by Svein Aamold    

References

Keskitalo, Alf Isak. 1994. Research as an Inter-Ethnic Relation. Paper originally presented at the 7th Meeting of Nordic Ethnographers, Tromsø, Norway, 1974. Republished, Arktisen keskuksen tiedotteita, no. 11, Dieđut, no. 7. Rovaniemi: Arctic Centre, University of Lapland; Guovdageaidnu: Sámi Instituhtta. 

Turi, Johan. 2012. An Account of the Sámi. Edited and translated by Thomas A. Dubois. Kárášjohka: ČálliidLágádus. 

Further reading

Svein Aamold. 2017. ‘Representing the Hidden and Perceptible: Johan Turi’s Images of Sápmi’, in Sámi Art and Aesthetics, edited by Svein Aamold et.al. Aarhus University Press. 69-98.