Now the same formal owners of 300-year-old shaman drum – VG
After over 40 years of struggle, the shaman’s drum is officially back in Sami ownership.
– Finally! Finally it’s home again! It took many years. And for a trip, says Sami Parliament President Silje Muotka (NSR) in a speech VG has received.
She says she is proud of the process of getting back what has always been theirs.
– This is a day that fills me with faith and hope that our culture and our cultural objects will be returned home to Sápmi where they can be available to our people and that the objects can be disseminated and managed in their own professional strong environment, says Muotka in a press release .
It was her predecessor Aili Keskitalo who in January asked the Danish queen for help to keep the Sami cultural treasure.
The Sami Parliament and several Sami communities argued that the ownership had to be transferred from Denmark back to the same.
The drum was taken from the shaman Anders Poulsson, before he was bestially killed with an ax while waiting for his sentence, accused of “wicked and naughty sorcery”.
The drum has a well-documented, and very dramatic history as VG has previously told.
Since 1979, the rare Sami drum from the 17th century has been kept on loan to RiddoDuottarMuseat, the Sami museum in Karasjok, from the National Museum in Denmark.
On December 1, this loan agreement expired.
The Danes expressed that they wanted to get the drum “home” to Denmark. But museum director Anne May Olli at RiddoDuottarMuseat has been clear that the drum is already at home.
The museum has struggled for 40 years to gain ownership of the drum. In January, it became clear that Denmark is giving up the shaman’s drum.
– It is gratifying to register that the end of time. We are in the process of taking a big step away from having to argue and negotiate about every smallest object from our precious cultural heritage, which for various reasons has ended up in museums around Norway, in the Nordic countries or as part of museum collections abroad, Sami Parliament President Silje Muotka.
She says that they are now experiencing that return is “the right thing to do”.
– It’s in time. We are happy about that, and it is worth celebrating, she says.