PRESENTATIONS | "Retracing the Journeys and stories of Sámi Artefacts" + "A Dance Studies Approach to Premodern Sámi Culture"

"From Sápmi to Florence:
Retracing the Journeys and stories of Sámi Artefacts"

By Erika De Vivo

Samiske gjenstander på museum i Florence, Italia. Foto: Sistema Museale di Ateneo

In the heart of Florence, Italy, lies a remarkable yet little-known collection of Sámi artifacts. For 140 years, this collection has been housed in the University’s Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology, thousands of kilometers from the lands where their original owners once lived. Most of these objects were gathered in Troms and Finnmark in the late 19th century by physician and anthropologist Paolo Mantegazza and botanist Stephen Sommier during their expeditions to Northern Norway. Today, they constitute the only Sámi collection in an Italian museum.

Despite their cultural and historical significance, much about this collection remains shrouded in mystery, including the precise origins of many items. However, archival documents, 19th-century scientific publications, and other materials authored by Mantegazza provide a partial contextualization of some of these artifacts, shedding light on the stories behind them. 

The presentation focuses on some of the artefacts now in Florence, highlighting the dual role of museums as both custodians of cultural heritage and participants in colonial histories.

Erika De Vivo is an early-career researcher specializing in Sámi studies, cultural anthropology, and critical museology. She is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) postdoctoral fellow at the University Museum of the University of Tromsø (Norway). Her MSCA project focuses on Sámi people’s experiences during colonial encounters in the late 19th century.

"Performing Movement, Forming Identity:
A Dance Studies Approach to Premodern Sámi Culture"

By Lynneth Miller Renberg

Image from Olaus Magnus’s Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus, book 4 “On Dances that Are Executed During Lamentations”, accessed via Wikimedia Commons.

Using methods from dance and kinesic studies, Lynneth Miller Renberg rereads the well-known body of texts recording European encounters and perceptions of the Sámi in the premodern era. By tracing moving bodies through the archives and the contexts in which their motion is framed, we can “hear” silenced Sámi figures, as well as better understand what the voices of Scandinavian authors might have conveyed to their audiences. The malleability of movement meant that the formation of identity in the premodern North was not a straightforward process of colonial “othering,” but instead a nuanced process of identity formation.

Lynneth Miller Renberg is Associate Professor of History (Anderson University) and guest researcher at UiT The Arctic University of Norway as Fulbright U.S. Scholar (2025-2026).