… sukkajalka, kalppinokka, tuuliturpa …

Nils-Aslak Valkeapään porojen poetiikka

• Hanna Mattila Sámi University College, Koutokeino & Tampereen yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74996

Abstrakti

... sukkajalka, kalppinokka, tuuliturpa… Nils-Aslak Valkeapää’s Poetics of Reindeer

In the translations of Nils Aslak Valkeapää’s collection of poems Beaivi, Áhčážan (1988) the long poem number 272 has been left untranslated. Even in the Finnish translation of Aurinko, isäni (1992), the poem appears in its original language, Northern Sámi. In the academic literature this decision is often seen as an act of identity politics. Since the poem contains a lot of vocabulary pertaining to the central source of livelihood of the Sámi people, namely reindeer herding, the decision not to translate the poem has been understood to highlight the fact that the language which the colonist dismisses is so rich that the vocabulary of other languages is not able to express the world the poem depicts.

In this article, I suggest that the poem can be analysed from another point of view, outside of identity politics, and when analysed in that way, it becomes meaningful also to those readers who do not understand the Sámi language. When the semantic meaning of the poem is no longer taken as its primary meaning, the materiality of the poem is brought to light and the poem reveals its semiotic-material side. Left untranslated, the poem 272 of the collection Aurinko, isäni leads the reader to see language and the world as well as nature and culture, as one. It detaches itself from the semantic level of words and through the materiality of its language it facilitates the understanding of the naturecultures of the Sámi community.