Page 19 - The University of Wisconsin Press Spring 2013
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TR AVEL / ANTHROPOLOGY/ SCANDINAVIAN STUDIES / WOMEN’S STUDIES
A classic travel account, vividly depicting Sami life in Lapland in the early
twentieth century.
With the Lapps in the High Mountains
is an entrancing true account, a classic of
travel literature, and a work that deserves wider recognition as an early contri-
bution to ethnographic writing. Published in 1913 and available here in its first
English translation, it is the narrative of Emilie Demant Hatt’s nine-month stay
in the tent of a Sami family in northern Sweden in 1907–8 and her participation
in a dramatic reindeer migration over snow-packed mountains to Norway with
another Sami community in 1908. A single woman in her thirties, Demant Hatt
immersed herself in the Sami language and culture. She writes vividly of daily
life, women’s work, children’s play, and the care of reindeer herds in Lapland a
century ago.
While still an art student in Copenhagen in 1904, Demant Hatt had taken a
vacation trip to northern Sweden, where she chanced to meet Sami wolf hunter
Johan Turi. His dream of writing a book about his people sparked her interest in
the culture, and she began to study the Sami language at the University of Copen-
hagen. Though not formally trained as an ethnographer, she had an eye for detail.
The journals, photographs, sketches, and paintings she made during her travels
with the Sami enriched her eventual book, and in
With the Lapps in the High
Mountains
she memorably portrays people, dogs, reindeer, and the beauty of the
landscape above the Arctic Circle. This English-language edition also includes
photographs by Demant Hatt, an introduction by translator Barbara Sjoholm,
and a foreword by Hugh Beach, author of
A Year in Lapland: Guest of the Rein-
deer Herders
.
Emilie Demant Hatt
(1873–1958) became a prominent artist in Denmark.
She helped Johan Turi write and publish his book,
An Account of the Sami
,
which appeared in 1910 in an innovative bilingual Sami/Danish edition.
Barbara Sjoholm
is an award-winning novelist, frequent translator of Danish
and Norwegian fiction and nonfiction, and cofounder of the small literary pub-
lisher Seal Press. Her work also appears under the name Barbara Wilson.
She lives in Port Townsend, Washington.
PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
MAY
LC: 2012032682 DL
192 PP. 6 X 9 15 B/W PHOTOS, 3 MAPS
E-BOOK $19.95 ISBN 978-0-299-29233-1
• Prior edition: danish language, a. b.
NORDISKA BOKHANDLEN DENMARK, 1913,
CLOTH
“A treasure trove of ethnographic
and historical information for
scholars of Sami and other pastoral-
ists, especially those interested in
gender dynamics, domestic life, and
social relations. Sjoholm’s introduc-
tion provides helpful biographical
and historical information about
the author, Emilie Demant Hatt, and
the Sami, while Demant Hatt’s eth-
nography is vivid and informative.”
Dorothy L. Hodgson, former
president of the Association for
Feminist Anthropology
UWPRESS
.
WISC
.
EDU
19
New i n pa p e r ba c k
“Andrews’ pioneering explorations in Mon-
golia greatly advanced science and archae-
ology; his life and adventures there, which
Indiana Jones would envy, make this a wel-
come reissue of a thrilling read.”
—
ForeWord Reviews
FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION
MARCH LC: 2008928321 280 PP. 6 X 8 ½
Distributed for Borderland Books
