Museum programs
Sámi Experiences
Living Sámi culture and shamanic tradition at the museum: ceremonies and meetings led by a practicing Sámi shaman, side by side with the stories the museum tells
Who are the Sámi, and what is noaidevuohta?
The Sámi are the indigenous people of Sápmi, a region spanning northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia's Kola Peninsula. Noaidevuohta is their spiritual knowledge, a path of seeing in which the noaidi moves between the visible world and the invisible one to the heartbeat of a drum. Authorities banned the practice as witchcraft in the seventeenth century and burned the drums, but the tradition survived all the same and is carried onward at the museum by dedicated practitioners.
