They’re threatened by loggers, miners, global heating and culling laws – but the Sámi are fighting back with art. Our writer meets them in the frozen tundra as they prepare for the art world’s biggest global gathering
The tundra of northern Norway is a long way from the Venice Biennale. Indeed, it is a long way from anywhere, at least viewed through western eyes. To reach the gentle herd of reindeer who are now feeding under the long pale glow of an Arctic sunset, I have ridden for three and a half hours across the snowy wastes, partly in a sled and partly on the back of a snowmobile, pausing halfway at a herders’ hut (no electricity, no water, but nevertheless a cosy refuge). We are somewhere off the road that links the villages of Karasjok and Kautokeino. To the north of us is Hammerfest. North of that, the Barents Sea.
Artist Máret Ánne Sara is with her husband, brother and 18-month-old, the child cheerfully bundled up and goggled against the chill and the snow’s bright glare. She is telling me about the yearly passage of these, her brother’s reindeer, from the tundra up to the northern coastal summer lands, 250km away: how the biggest cow will start to move when she’s heavily pregnant, and the whole herd will inexorably, mysteriously make its way north. “It’s the animals who control everything,” she says. “We just follow them and try to keep them safe.”
