The first Official Isogaisa dance is made!

I was asked to make a dance for the upcoming Isogaisa festival this year 26-28 august. The idea is that people will learn this dance before they come, or at the festival, and whenever they hear this song at the festival people can start dancing it. This dance is easy to learn, suits everyone, and has very typical sami moves.

So, just before this weekend I bought a new camera! Canon Eos 60D, and I filmed the whole thing myself. It was my first real movie project, as my old camera was so crappy I never wanted to watch anything of what I had filmed. It all looked so bad!
But this was so cool, everything looked so great! I still have alot to learn about lighting and all sorts of other stuff, but I am very proud of this video, since I eventually ended up doing the video myself, I am pretty pleased with the outcome.

This video will be out on youtube anytime now, and I will post it here the minute it is official!

www.isogaisa.no






Odd- Erling Simensen is helping me make the video

Venezuela!

It is absurd to be here in Venezuela! I have always wanted to come to South-America too see how people live here. I have met many Indians from these countries around the world, but have never actually been here, so this trip has made me understand a few things about the Indians from here.
It is very unusual for me who am from one of the richest countries in the world, Norway, and come here to Venezuela and the prices are twice as high as in Norway. I am just shocked about the prices! No wonder people are poor here, when even I with my salary much higher then people here have, have big problems with these prices. To buy anything is a big deal anyway, I would rather not buy anything, cause everytme I want to buy something they need my passport ID, name and address where I am staying.
Makes me kind of paranoid... There are a few things here that I dont understand, I must say...Why am I not allowed to take a picture of the Hotel? and why do they need my finger prints to exchange money? How come you need my passport id to buy a t-shirt? Why do I have to sign that I ate breakfast for 250 bolivares, when a breakfast buffest is included in the room? Simple questions, but I doubt there is a simple answer...

But besides all these political questions Odd-Erling and I have had a wonderful time here! We did a duo-concert where he played the baryton-guitar and we also played the traditional sami drum.
The event we where playing at was actually the opening of a photo excibition by Antonio Briceño called "520 Renos" (520 reindeer). He had been i Sapmi for a while taking pictures of sami people and learned alot about the sami people. He had some portraits of some people I actually know, which was really fun to see on the other side of the world. I was really touched when we got a guided tour through the exibition with him. I don tknow how to explain the feeling I had when I kind of came home to Sapmi on the other side of the world. The exibition was just perfect! His art was fantastic and so thought through, I dont have words. I actually had to stop myself from crying while I was there. It was such a big honour for me to play at the opening!


While we were there we also got to participate in a meeting with the wise-president of the Indigenous peoples standing commite in Venezuela. The wise president of The Sami Parlament in Finland,Irja Seurujärvi-Kari,was also there. And I was hosted by the Norwegian and Finnish embassy in Venezuela, and also the Swedish embassy was there. It was very interesting to hear about the differences between the sami people and Indians in Venezuela. There is such a big difference in the law and rights for the different indigenous people in the different countries. But it is amazing how we are helping and learning from each other and sticking together.


Info about the exibition

Homepage of Antonio Briceno

AUCH! I bit my tongue.

I had made dinner with some bacon and I was talking about how I dont eat much pork meat. I was saying that the pig is kind of a grouse animal. And then I bit my tongue.
It reminded me of my mother who would say "That's what you deserve for talking badly about other people."

One time when I was making fun of one of my former class-mates occupation, I hurt my elbow in the table, and she said those words to me. Now whenever I hurt myself like that, I always stop and think about what I have said or done, just when it happend.


These small signs are guideline for you to remember whats important, I think... So when I bit myself in the tongue while talking badly about the pig, I just remembered how lucky we are who can choose of any foods we want, and that this pig actually has given its life so that I will not starve today. I respect that alot. '
Another issue is how these pigs where treated. I can only hope they got treated with the respect they deserve.

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The Northern lights!

I have been thinking alot about Gardin/Ravnastua fjellstue/Ravnastua Mouintainhouse lately. I just wrote a small article about it, I will show you later.

This place is so special to me. It is a place up in the mountains where peope who are travelling in the wild can rent cabins and rooms. There is also showers and sauna there, dinner and meeting rooms too. My Grandma ran this place for 50 years,and we spent all the summers and easters up there! Now my uncle has taken over. It is the most beutiful place on earth. Did I tell you that?

Anyway, my cousin Eva, whom I shared alot of fun time with up there, found this amazing video on youtube. Many people travel to the north looking to see the northern lights, and this must be the most perfect place to watch it. It seems so close when you watch it out in the nature, away from the lights from the houses and traffic-lights. It feels like it is about to wrap you up.

In the old times they said that you should never tease the northern lights cause then it will catch you and you will get trapped...

Anyway, look at this amazing video!

The sami people

The Sami people lives in the northern parts of four countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia (the Kola Peninsula). In earlier times Sápmi (the land of the Sami) covered a much bigger part of the Scandinavian Peninsula, probably also more of northern Russia.



Lapps, Finns or Sami?
In earlier times the Sami were called Lapps (as in Lapland and Lappmarken) and Finns (as in Finnmark and Finland). During the centuries when they were suppressed by their majority neighbours the names 'Lapp' and 'Finn' acquired a disparaging value (in English the word 'Finn' means an inhabitant of Finland).

In the last decades Sami (or same in Norwegian and Swedish), derived from their own word sámit, has replaced the older names.



How many Sami?
Assimilation makes it difficult to give exact numbers for the Sami population today. They are at least 30 thousand, but they may be twice as many. The majority lives in Norway, where population numbers are at their most uncertain. Not only has assimilation gone very far in many areas, in addition a lot of Sami have moved to other parts of the country.

Russia has the smallest part. There are two thousand Sami on the Kola peninsula, fighting to survive as an ethnic group. A life-threatening environment in only one of their enemies!



The language
The Sami language is related to - but very different from - Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian. Is it divided into many dialects. Over the centuries each of these dialects developed until most of them became mutually unintelligible. However, the North Sami dialect is spoken by a majority of the population, and is the most used dialect in literature and education.

Almost all Sami speak the official language of the state where they live, but far from all speak Sami. However, the Sami language is now expanding among the groups who lost it due to assimilation and cultural suppression.


From:
http://www.borgos.nndata.no/samer.htm