Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf

A hare is sitting in winter in the hole in snow and he’s terribly cold. He tells to himself: „If I survive until summer, I’ll build a house for myself for next winter.“ When the summer comes the hare does not do anything and just pricks up his mouth to the sun, basks next hot stone and says:“ One winter won’t be worse than other one.“ So the house is not ever built.

Sápmi and Sámi

Sápmi or (mostly all around the world) Lapland. It is cultural region in Northern Europe streched in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
The land of Sámi is one of the things I would love to study.

The little story above is from anthology of Sámi fairytales and stories. And it comes from Isak Persen Saba, 1918 (he heard this story from his mother).

For the beginning I would like to write a bit about the language of Sámi. It does not have dialects but there are different kinds of Sámi languages. They belong to Uralic language family and they are also connected to Baltic-Finnic languages.
Down on the map You can see the regions of the different kinds of Sámi language.
Sámi has eleven kinds – conscription in Roman characters or Russian alphabet.
1. South (Åarjil) Sámi,
2. Ume (Upme) Sámi,
3. Pite (Bitthun)Sámi, 4. Lule (Julev) Sámi,
5. North (Davvi) Sámi,
6. Skolt Sámi,
7. Inari (Ánár) Sámi,
8. Kildin Sámi,
9. Ter Sámi.



The Kemi Sámi is already extinct and the Akkala Sámi too (the last speaker od Akkala died in December 2003).The North Sámi is most spoken (about 20.000 people).
The Kemi Sámi is preserved in several poems by Olof Sirma (was told these by vicars) in anthology by Johannes Schafferus „Lapponia“; 1673

The first mention about Sámi language we can found in „Orosius“ (the history of the world) written by Alfred the Great. He got information from Norwegian peasan/merchant Ottar from Helgoland who tells stories about Lapps – language similar like „Beorms“ (Perm? … maybe from Karelia)

Then in 16th century appears a dictionary for seafarers where are found first Sámi words.

In half of the 18th century came to Sápmi János Sajnovics to find some similarities between Hugnarian and Sámi language. – „Demonstratio Idioma Ungarorum et Laponum Idem Esse“; 1770.

1799 – Gyarmathi Sámuel writes another comparative philology of Ugro-Finnic languages – searching for similarities in Sámi, Finnish and Hungarian.


Would you like to hear how does it sound? Then I can recommend one of my favourite artists – Mari Boine.