One people, four states
Sápmi appears on no political map. It is the land of the Sámi, the only recognised Indigenous people of the European Union, and it stretches across the top of Norway, Sweden, Finland and as far as the Kola peninsula, in Russia. Four states, one language in several variants, and a dress that ignores the borders others have drawn.
That dress is the gákti. A wool tunic, most often blue, edged in red, yellow and green. But there is not one gákti, there are as many as there are valleys. The cut, the colours, the width of the bands change from one region to the next, sometimes from one family to another. Whoever can read it sees where you come from, and sometimes whether you are married.
For a long time the state sought to make all this disappear: schooling in the dominant language, contempt for nomadic herding. That the gákti is still worn, and proudly, is something of a revenge.
The gákti and its bands
Look closely at the collar, the cuffs, the hem of a gákti: that is where everything happens. Bands of coloured cloth, often laid flat then re-embroidered with a woven braid, ring the body where it opens. The ground stays plain, the ornament gathers into crisp friezes.
The colour combinations are not free. They point to a precise area, sometimes to a status. Red dominates here, blue there, and a local eye tells a Kautokeino gákti from a Karasjok one the way you tell two accents apart.
Around the waist, a woven or pewter-studded belt holds the whole together and carries the knife. Nothing is idle: each piece has a use before it has a meaning.
The reindeer, everything comes from it
It is hard to speak of Sámi dress without speaking of the reindeer, for over centuries it gave almost everything. The hide for winter coats, the beaska, worn fur-out against the blizzard. The sinew, dried then split, for sewing. The leg skin, hard and smooth, for shoes.
These shoes, with their turned-up toes, were worn not with socks but stuffed with a marsh grass, sennegras, beaten to soften it. The grass drinks the sweat, you take it out in the evening, dry it, and it keeps the feet warmer than wet wool.
Nothing was wasted. One animal clothed, shod, fed and moved a family. Sámi dress was born of that economy, where you draw the most from a single resource, holding nothing back.
Silver and pewter
On this ground of wool and hide, two metals bring the light. Silver first, in broad brooches and collars. The risku, a pierced silver disc, is worn at the throat; it tells a family's wealth, serves as a dowry and is held to ward off the evil eye.
Then pewter, spun. The metal is drawn into a very fine thread wound onto a strand of sinew, then embroidered in tight spirals on leather and cloth. This pewter embroidery, the tinntrådbroderi, covers bags, collars and bracelets with a grey mesh that shines without shouting.
Two ways of being precious: silver you display, pewter you sew. Both demand a patience that everyday dress, for its part, did not ask for.
The cap tells where you come from
Like the rest, the headdress is read. The most striking is the men's so-called “four-winds” cap of Finnmark: four points of blue cloth mounted on a red band, once padded with down. It is said the points stood up according to the wind. A pretty thing to say, no doubt a little arranged.
Women have their own caps, most often red, embroidered and ribboned, whose shape changes from region to region. Here too, the headdress ranks: it places a person on the map of Sápmi before they have even spoken.
These headgears nearly became costumes, sold to tourists in fake versions. The real cap, though, remains a serious marker, not put on lightly.
A living craft, not a museum costume
All this has a name: duodji, Sámi craft. Not a frozen folklore but a know-how that is passed on, sold and today protected by a mark of authenticity, so common are the imitations.
The gákti is still worn. It is brought out on 6 February, the Sámi national day, for weddings, confirmations, great gatherings. Many young people bring it up to date and make it a sign of pride rather than a keepsake.
One thing deserves to be said plainly: a gákti is not a costume anyone slips on for an evening. It is a marker of belonging, with its codes and its limits. You can admire it without appropriating it, and that is just as it should be.
