The Sami are an indigenous people in northern Europe. Their traditional territory, called Såpmi, extends across four countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Artefacts from MAA’s Sami collections are once again on display in the world anthropology galleries, in a new exhibition which opened on Saturday 27 February.
MAA holds a small but significant collection of Sami artefacts and photographs, including two rare and important eighteenth-century divination drums, craft items from the nineteenth century and a valuable collection made by Ethel Lindgren and Mikel Utsi in the 1930s.
The exhibit has been developed through cooperation between MAA staff, Sami colleagues in Sweden, and MPhil and doctoral students in Social Anthropology at Cambridge. This will be the first opportunity for visitors to see a newly commissioned Sami drum by Sweden-based artist Helge Sunna.
Also exhibited will be some of the photographs taken on Ethel Lindgren’s fieldwork in Sweden in the 1930s.
The exhibit is supported by the Crowther Beynon Fund and the Isaac Newton Trust.
Two million years of human history. One million artefacts. Countless astonishing stories.
