The eight seasons
The year as herding and fishing divide it, not the European calendar.
MattiPaavola — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Manfred Werner - Tsui — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Kulttuurinavigaattori — CC BY-SA 4.0 · JIP — CC BY-SA 4.0
The national museum of the **Sámi** people in Finland and the nature centre for northern Lapland, fully reopened in 2022 with a new display. What sets it apart is that **the Sámi tell it themselves**. For a long time this people's history was written in other voices — ethnographers, missionaries and governments — and Siida is built on reversing that: the texts are in Sámi voices, and the objects are explained in their own terms. The permanent exhibition follows the **Sámi year**, which has eight seasons rather than four, because reindeer herding and fishing track shifts finer than the European division allows. There is a section on **forced assimilation**: the boarding schools where children were forbidden to speak their language, and the loss of languages — three Sámi languages survive in Finland, one of them **Inari Sámi**, spoken by only a few hundred people, almost all of them in this village. Note, and it is worth knowing: **in 2022 the museum received back over 2,000 Sámi objects** held at the National Museum of Finland in Helsinki — one of the largest repatriations of its kind in Europe. Behind the building is an **open-air museum** of traditional structures and a nature trail.
The year as herding and fishing divide it, not the European calendar.
Over two thousand objects come home from Helsinki.
Traditional structures and a nature trail behind the building, in summer.
Inarintie 46, Inari
The indigenous people of northern Scandinavia, and **the only recognised indigenous people within the European Union**. Their homeland, **Sápmi**, runs across northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia's Kola peninsula, and they number an estimated 80,000 to 100,000. They have their own **flag, anthem and elected parliaments** in three countries (Finland's sits in Inari itself), and around ten Sámi languages survive, several of them severely endangered. Some still practise traditional reindeer herding, but most today live ordinary modern lives. ⚠ **Many consider the words «Lapp» and «Laplander» offensive** — «Sámi» is correct. ⚠ And do not photograph anyone in traditional dress without asking; the clothing is not a tourist costume but carries precise family and regional meaning.
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