Do 30.9. Karasjok - Exploration of Sami Life and Culture

All day covered and cold

We take a bike tour along the sights of Karasjok, the cultural center of the Sami people. It has only been a few decades since the Norwegian government recognized the indigenous people of Norway, the Sami (called Lapps in Finland) as autonomous.

We follow the route description we received at the campsite, but it is in Norwegian. So we first reach a building occupied by working people and the Sami-Thing building, modeled after a Sami tent, which is the parliament of the Sami. Here we also find the source of the light beams that disturbed our northern lights observation last night.

Next, we reach a Sami park with a handicraft shop and an open-air museum. Here, summer and winter camps of the nomadic Sami are set up, who have followed the reindeer on their migration.

The actual Sami museum is located slightly outside, consisting of a large open-air museum and a museum building with a large indoor exhibition. Here, we learn a lot about the past 1,000 years of this people, such as the different tribes, their distribution to almost southern Norway, religion, craftsmanship, and traditions, and finally their struggle for autonomy in the state of Norway.

The crime novel "40 Days Night" is about one of the exhibited shaman drum and much more that is now familiar to us:

After wandering around the open-air museum for a while, a museum employee comes and unlocks the different huts for us.

The traditional life of this people, oriented towards the reindeer migration, is brought very close, the smell of the fire from the chimneys and ovens still hangs in the air.

Afterwards, we visit the old church of Karasjok, one of the few that has survived from that time. It is thus one of the memorials for all the many thousands of residential and commercial buildings, churches, fishing boats, etc., that were destroyed by German soldiers.

This reminder of our history has deeply moved us!

We spend the lunch break in our cabin, in the afternoon we visit another museum, this time contemporary Sami art.

After so much culture, we spend the evening quietly in our cabin with sauna, good food (reindeer with lingonberries, of course picked ourselves), and farewell to Norway.