Sámicosmologies: Exploring Indigenous Knowledge Cultures and Practices of Star-Gazing

This project offers increased understanding of arctic Indigenous cosmologies as a form of environmental knowledge and traces their significance for communities in times of environmental crisis.

With a special focus on traditional Sámi cosmologies and Sámi contemporary art, the goal is to explore and trace the appearance of human and non-human protagonists within Indigenous stories, especially about the starry polar night skies.

By reappearing each night, these more-than-human figures became haunting entities which provided abstract nature-human relationships with a concrete, sensual and alluring form.

Today, Sámi artists refer to these haunting figures to draw attention to their troubled cultural history and the present reality of climate-affected regions.

The integration of traditional, recurring ghostly figures from Sámi storytelling – that migrate between the celestial and the earthly, as well as the human and the non-human – stresses the urgency of changing the way humans relate to nature.

What is more, these fascinating, haunting and visionary figures provoke speculative futures, in which nature is regarded as a non-human subject.

As this concept is becoming increasingly crucial in eco-philosophical debates and policy decisions on environmental justice, this project aims to show that Sámi cosmologies – especially when mediated through art – can play a vital role in changing humans’ perspective on nature.

In recent years, contemporary art has been called upon to give a sensual form to the abstract systematic connections of climate change; the extent of the current crisis is difficult for people to grasp.

As a consequence, art is gaining a central role within our societies; it stands at the threshold between sciences, politics and culture.

This project deals with art that is engaged in the severe environmental changes of this planet and that stands on the threshold between communicating urgency and being more than a mere messenger of environmental research.