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The most comprehensive collection of Sami folktales ever translated into English

From the vast region of Northern Sapmi comes Sami Folktales from the Near and Far Worlds, the most extensive compilation of Sami narratives recorded from Sami storytellers ever published in English translation. Comprising more than 300 folktales and legends from Northern Norway, including many from the coastal Sami and the Skolt Sami of Eastern Finnmark, this volume illuminates an oral storytelling tradition and shares narratives told by fishers, farmers, reindeer herders, lay preachers, and teachers from the interior plateaus and valleys to the Arctic fjords.

Originally recorded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by the Norwegian philologist Just Knud Qvigstad and the Sami politician and folklorist Isak Saba, this collection spans centuries of storytelling in multiple genres, from migratory fairytales with kings and princesses to legends of ghosts and the Devil to fables with talking animals. A young lad from a poor family embarks on a quest through the wilderness to find treasure, receiving help from a wise female elder along his path. A Sami boy falls in love with a haldi girl from another world, and they find a way to marry. A man carries sickness out of a village and stops the plague from spreading. Cunning foxes outsmart bears and humans alike. The villainous Chudes are tricked, foiled in their plans to steal from and kill the Sami. People are turned into wolves, able to turn back only if they don't taste the blood of a reindeer or if they are given cooked food. The ogre Stallu appears again and again, terrorizing the community until he's outwitted or subdued. Ravgas, undead creatures of the sea, drag themselves out of the depths to lure others to their demise.

With historical context that reveals the cultural resilience of the Sami people, Sami Folktales from the Near and Far Worlds honors these traditional narratives, often overlooked in other folktale anthologies from the Nordic countries. Translator Barbara Sjoholm's insightful introduction describes Qvigstad's and Saba's backgrounds and their work in gathering and translating these essential texts, and she introduces Sami storytellers Johan Aikio, Efraim Pedersen, and Elen Utsi, who contributed dozens of stories.

An unprecedented trove of Sami narratives, this expansive collection brings most of these tales to English readers for the first time, marking a major contribution to Indigenous folk literature and enhancing a broader understanding of Sami and Nordic cultures.

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