Anna Kuhmunen is 18 and lives most of the year in Jokkmokk. But when the summer comes she moves to the mountains with the rest of her family. They spend their summers in a place called Rinim, at the edge of Sweden’s most dramatic mountainous area in Sarek National Park. Since 1996, it has also been part of the Laponia World Heritage Site.
“I’ve never stayed in Jokkmokk for the whole summer. If I don’t come up here to the mountains it’s not a real summer holiday,” she says.
The cottage in Rinim is hidden in leafy mountain birch forest. There is plenty of room in the large kitchen for the family: her father Per-Olov, mother Dagny, elder brother Mikael, elder sister Laila and younger sister Ellinor. Anna and Ellinor share a room.
“In Jokkmokk I have a bigger room with all the usual things, like a CD player and so on. Here there’s hardly anything except my bed. When I get back to Jokkmokk in the autumn my room there feels huge.”
Reindeer-herding is the Kuhmunen family’s main livelihood. As Saami (or Lapps as they used to be called), they are also entitled to fish in the national parks. There are plenty of fish in the river and the lake near the cottage, and fishing is one of Anna’s main hobbies.
“We use both rods and nets. I go out fishing every day, and my rod is the first thing I pack to come here.”
Another of Anna’s pastimes is walking in the mountains. She says that she doesn’t actually do much in the summer. Some days are spent branding calves. The reindeer-herding Saami collect their reindeer and brand the calves on the ear to make it clearly visible whom they belong to. Anna has her own brand and reindeer of her own, but she is not plannign to make reindeer husbandry her lifelong occupation.
“The work’s too heavy for a woman. Anyway, it depends on whether you marry a Saami or a Swede. But I’d like to hang on to this life all the same. I enjoy it, and don’t want to give it up.”
But first she wants to get an education — to complete her upper-secondary schooling and then go to college or university. She has finished her second year in the science study programme at upper-secondary school, and will soon be spending a year in Japan as an exchange student.
“First I wanted to go to the USA. Japan was my second choice. It was a joke to start with. Mum always has to take up the hems on Dad’s trousers because he has such short legs, so she sometimes says she ought to send him to Japan to buy trousers. I joked that I’d better go to Japan, buy some trousers and send them home — and that’s what I’m going to do!”
In Japan, Anna is going to study Japanese. She has already started learning the Japanese characters and is looking forward to learning about a new culture. She is already bilingual. Her mother tongue is North Saami. This is the language used by the family, while Swedish is the language she uses at school, with her friends and in the community generally.
Most of Anna’s friends are Swedish. It just so happens that the only Saami among all her classmates is a cousin of hers.
“When I tell them about my summers in the mountains they say it’s a different world and wonder how I get through a whole summer there. But it’s a part of my life that goes without saying, and since I know I can’t be with my friends in the summer I don’t miss them.”
In the winter, things are different. Then, Anna is busy with school, her friends, swimming and skiing. She does some training, but would never compete.
“I don’t like competition in any shape or form.”
Anna is not particularly interested in politics, although she does try to keep up with current events. In general, she says that she is not all that interested in social issues. What can arouse her interest is Saami issues. In discussions with others, she sometimes encounters misunderstandings and ignorance. But she has never experienced any specific racism.
“No-one has ever called me a ‘bloody Lapp’ or anything, but you do hear the occasional crack and our rights being questioned. Racism isn’t a problem, but maybe people don’t always say everything they think.”
When asked whether she has high hopes for the future, Anna says yes, of course, she has — “you must”. But her answer to the question of whether she also believes in the future of reindeer-herding is not quite as spontaneous, nor as optimistic.
“But you’ve got to believe there’s a future in that too. Otherwise it’ll die out. Many parents encourage their children to go in for something else, but I think that’s wrong. If everybody reasoned like that, reindeer-herding as a way of life would definitely die out.”
ÅSA LINDSTRAND
Translated by Clare James, Språkverkstan AB
