Sieidi

This work is the result of a four-person working group:

Marja Viitahuhta (moving image)
Ánnámáret (vocals)
Ilkka Heinonen (Carelian / Estonian bowed lyre jouhikko)
and Turkka Inkilä (electronic music)

The group has been collaborating since 2019, convened by the indigenous Sámi musician Ánnámáret to explore the themes of her luohtis (Northern Sami yoiking) and to parallel both contemporary and traditional visual and auditory elements with them. The group has released two music albums, performed live in concerts with visuals and released a series of video works.

The traditional music of the Northern Sámi -speaking communities is luohti, a vocal music tradition passed down from generation to generation. Luohti is not just music, but a communication through yoiking and describing the objective of the luohti in its whole essence. In Sieidi, Ánnámáret constructs and strengthens a relationship with the sieidi, an offering place and its being, by yoiking. Turkka Inkilä has composed the electronic music part and Ilkka Heinonen plays the traditional instrument jouhikko in a very modern and fierce way in the composition.

Ánnámáret has studied the old luohti recordings of her ancestors from archives in Finland and Norway. Thus she has strengthened her knowledge of the tradition and been inspired by it.

Also, the video work has been created using an archive image: it is an animated work featuring manipulated versions of a photograph from 1930 by. The photograph is taken of a sieidi stone located in the Enontekiö region in Sápmi. In the video the stone seems to come to life and transform, alternately hiding beneath its own surface textures and reappearing again, the triangular shape of the stone coming to mind even when it doesn’t appear in the image.

Archive image: Seita, Terbmisvaarri, photographer Samuli Paulaharju, 1930, Finna.fi, The Finnish Heritage Agency, Samuli Paulaharju and ethnographic image collections