The art of hinting and allusions in Sámi literature: a reading of Jovnna-Ánde Vest’s novel trilogy Árbbolaččat

Introduction

Finding a balance between your own wishes and dreams, being a single individual in a small village with strong collective norms, is a challenge for many of the characters in the novel trilogy Árbbolaččat (The Heirs), written by the Sámi author Jovnna-Ánde Vest (1997, 2002, 2005). This article presents readings of different situations where the mastering of the messages given in the communication both in the spoken and the unspoken is a central ingredient to coping in everyday life in a small Sámi village. Various means for levels of hinting at things or making allusions in the interaction between people are part of traditional Sámi knowledge and communication.

I refer to the Sámi yoik tradition, the ancient Sámi chanting tradition, as a theoretical backdrop to explain the individual’s place within the community. I especially emphasize the contextual part of the yoik tradition and how it has functioned as a social device in the Sámi community. A close reading of some of the dialogues in Árbbolaččat will reveal how hinting and allusions are part of the characters’ interaction and an important way of birget (coping) with your siidaguoibmi (fellow villager).

Jovnna-Ánde Vest

The author Jovnna-Ánde Vest is born in 1948 and is from Roavvesavo, a small Sámi village on the Finnish side of Sápmi in Northern Finland, close to the Norwegian border. Vest started his career as a writer after he moved to Paris, where he has been living for the last 30 years. His first novel Čáhcegáddái nohká boazobálggis (The Reindeer Path Ends at the Riverbank) was published in 1988. The novel was awarded first prize in the first Sámi novel competition, arranged by the Norwegian publisher Aschehoug & Co and the Sámi publisher Davvi Media. The trilogy Árbbolaččat consists of three novels published in 1997, 2002 and 2005. The novels are written in the Sámi language, within a realistic literary tradition. Árbbolaččat nubbi oassi (The Heirs part two) was awarded the Saami Council’s Literature Prize in 2003. In 2006, the last novel Árbbolaččat goalmmát oassi (The Heirs part three) was nominated for The Nordic Council’s Literature Prize and was translated into Swedish. Vest’s latest novel Astrid ja Anton (Astrid and Anton) was published in 2015.

The narrative of Árbbolaččat

The narrative in Árbbolaččat is situated in Máhtebáiki in Northern Finland, a fictional remote Sámi village on the Finnish side of the river Eatnu. The people there live a traditional agricultural way of life. Most of the characters are small-scale farmers. Among them are also housewives, craftsmen, retirees, a reindeer herder and even a man who is skilled in using his pen. The narrative is built on the stories of several of the characters from the beginning of the 1960s until the 1980s, and how they live in a time with great changes and modernization within the Finnish majority society. The narrative develops primarily through the characters’ inner life. In Árbbolaččat, it is hard to get away and just be on your own. The people are surrounded by neighbors and family, whether they like it or not. Therefore, the speech forms that are used in dialogues between the people are central and say a lot about the nature the relationship between them are and what kind of birgengoansta (coping skill) they use. Dialogue is one of the key elements of the text. The language used in the dialogues is the local Sámi dialect in the Deatnu valley, the author’s home territory. This brings the reader closer to the situations and gives vivid representations of conversations between the characters.

The yoik tradition

Hinting and allusions are an essential part of the Sámi yoik tradition. Johan Turi was the first Sámi author to publish a book in the Sámi language: Muitalus sámiid birra (1910). The book is translated into 11 languages. In 2012, it was published in a new English translation by Thomas A. DuBois, with the title An Account of the Sámi. Turi (1910/2012) gives the following explanation of yoik:

Sámi singing is called yoiking. It is a practice for recalling other people. Some are recalled with hate, and some with love, and some are recalled with sorrow. And sometimes such songs concern lands or animals: the wolf, and the reindeer, or wild reindeer. (p. 181)

The yoik tradition provides a picture of how one sees the other, including peculiarities, as is common in rural communities, and how you are considered as a fellow villager according to local norms and customs. One could say that these are the characteristics of the yoik tradition that contain the denotative meanings of the yoik. Deceased Professor Nils Jernsletten shows in the book Dajahusat what the yoiker (chanter) Ándaras Ánde says about the yoik lyrics: they describe what is distinctive to the person; even if the person has not done only good things, they show at least what is unique to the person (Jernsletten, 1976, p. 3). Jernsletten also states that the yoik thus strengthens the person’s connection to his friends and to others. He refers to how Ándaras Ánde explains what the yoik means to the local community: “Yoik confirms a person’s identity. For ‘identity’ in a Sami society, it is not first and foremost to emphasize one’s individuality, but to feel belonging in the family and the society” (Jernsletten, 1978, pp. 109, 111, my translation). Kristoffer Sjulsson, who was from the Tarnaby area on the Swedish side, tells about the yoik as he knows it in the Vapsten area. Sjulsson says that the person who sings tells about the personality of a person or about feelings and memories. Sjulsson emphasizes that you do not need text to express this (Bäckman & Kjellström, 1979, p. 94).

The yoik tradition is a very old part of the Sami culture and perhaps the oldest musical tradition in Europe. Given the connotative side of the yoik, it also contains a traditional Sámi worldview and community philosophy. Yoik is a way of remembering, of greeting the land, of expressing joy and grief. Professor in Sámi literature Harald Gaski (2000) underlines the artistic and social function of the yoik. It is an aesthetic and artistic expression, it connects the individual to society and gives it its own status and identity (pp. 194, 204). In small rural communities, it is important to have a good relationship with your siidaguoibmi, which can sometimes be a challenge. In many situations, one must find the balance between one’s own and the community’s needs. When performing such an art, mastery of various skills must be used to specify your place in the local community. By listening to the traditional personal yoiks, I feel that the yoik represents life itself; Yoiks can be accounts of people’s lives and times, humorous allusions and existential images of people. It is not only the person who is being depicted in the yoik, but also the events and experiences in the person’s life and in other people’s lives, that someone finds worth remembering and therefore makes a yoik for the person depicted. The thing with the yoik is that you do not make one for yourself, someone else has to do it. This is a way of including a person into the collective. Nils Jernsletten (1978) describes this with the story of the boy who happily came home and told that now he was also recognized among people, because his grandmother had made him a yoik (p. 110).

I have borrowed the term birgengoansta from the famous yoiker Ánte Mikkel Gaup. Gaup explains in an interview that being able to adapt to different conditions and new situations is a value in the Sámi culture. Then you are strong. He says that the yoik tradition contains certain forms of birgengoansta, because the yoik philosophy shows that the human being is good at adapting to new conditions (Gaup, 2001, pp. 21–22). By using the yoik tradition in the reading of Árbbolaččat, I take the challenge given by another famous yoiker, Ánde Somby, to read the text as a yoik without melody, a yoik that tells something about individuals, about human interaction, what it means to be human. The yoik is the narrator of these narratives, perhaps as a parallel to the narrator in a fiction text. I am a Sámi and speak the language, and also use my knowledge about the traditional Sámi ways of communication in the investigation.

Birget

One of the terms for coping in the Sámi language is birget: “be able to live, manage” (Nielsen, 1934/1979, s.v. bir’git). Johan Turi gives an example of the use of birget in his book An Account of the Sámi. He writes about Niillas and Elle, a couple who are going to marry, and describes them: “Niillas was a hot-tempered guy and Elle was a very sensible person. Elle wondered how she could get along so well with Niillas, when he was so hot-tempered” (Turi, 1910/2012, p. 192). I have consulted with native speakers of Sámi to get explanations of the term. Two of them are Dagny Larsen and her son Torbjørn Larsen, both from the municipality Porsanger in Finnmark county, in the northernmost part of Norway. Dagny Larsen is an important Sámi culture bearer and a well-known duojár (Sámi artisan). Torbjørn Larsen is Dagny’s eldest son. Both take great interest in the Sámi language. Thorbjørn Larsen explains that birget means coping both practically in life and existentially and socially, that you manage socially (conversation with Dagny Larsen and Thorbjørn Larsen, 2 August 2009).

Hinting and allusions

There are several terms for hinting and allusions in the Sami language, both verbal and non-verbal, something I will return to. These forms of hinting and allusions constitute a part of the literary capital within the Sámi society. According to Harald Gaski, these are communication modes that make it possible to address delicate matters without stepping on anyone’s feet: small community coping skills. These communication modes require skills to understand them. Reading “between the lines” is common in Sámi oral tradition, that is, in the yoik tradition, the Sámi music tradition (Gaski, 1997, pp. 210–212). Subtle ways of expressing anger and disagreement, and the virtue of controlling your anger, is also described among the Utkuhikhalingmiut people, a small group of Inuits, in the northwest of Hudson Bay (Briggs, 1970).

According to professor emerita of educational history and Sámi literature, Vuokko Hirvonen, it takes special knowledge to catch the connotative meaning in the yoik texts. A certain meaning comes from a certain context; you need good language and cultural knowledge to extract the meaning. The more defined and particular the issue is, the more difficult is the interpretation; in these cases, it is crucial to understand the language and the codes (Hirvonen, 1991, p. 24). The Kenyan author, scholar and activist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986/2005) puts it eloquently in his book Decolonizing the Mind: “Language as culture is the collective memory bank of people’s experience in history” (p. 15). Reading and interpreting the hints in the text and the context, in what is not said but still is said nevertheless, is a journey into the depth grammar of the Sámi language and culture. In the reading of Árbbolaččat, it is about reading between the lines, and reading between the words, to catch what is available to the vigilant listener and reader who is familiar with the communication codes.

Some of the terms for hinting and allusions in the Sámi language are geažidit: give an inkling of, hint at (Nielsen, 1934/1979, s.v. gæžedit); beasadit: try to escape, get out of (Nielsen, 1934/1979, s.v. bæsadit); garvvašit: several times make small detours to get around something (Nielsen, 1934/1979, s.v. garvašit); mohkohallat: use indirect or underhand means, make evasions, shuffle excuses, beat about the bush (Nielsen, 1934/1979, s.v. mokkutad’dat). This distinction in the dictionary is quite interesting, in the use of garvvašit: “several times make small detours to get around something.” The meaning is actually not to disguise, or get around the truth, it is to convey the truth, albeit not directly. The use of hinting and allusions thus opens a space where one can communicate, something the reading of different situations in Árbbolaččat will show.

One who can hold a pen

Heaika is the protagonist in Árbbolaččat. The narrative starts with Heaika sitting at the table in the little old house he has inherited from his mother, studying some papers at the table. It is in the beginning of the 1960s, and at this point, Heaika is the only one ever to have moved from Máhtebáiki who has come back home, something that from the very beginning of the narrative makes Heaika special, compared to his fellow villagers.

He moves to the capital Helsinki right after the end of World War II and lives there several years before he returns to his place of birth. Heaika has an ambition, he wants to write a book about the local history of Máhtebáiki. This is not a common occupation for a man in a rural Sámi community in the early 1960s; such a person would normally be a small-scale farmer, a hunter or a reindeer herder. Everyone in the village knows that Heaika is writing, but he keeps a low profile about what he is doing and tries not to make a big issue of it. He does not believe that anyone really understands how important his writing project is and knows that they think he should get a proper job. If someone asks him about the writing, he gives answers like, “ It’s nothing, I’m just scribbling a bit” (Vest, 1997, p. 199, 2002, p. 7, 2005, p. 60). This takes place in the dialogues. Heaika is careful not to be called iešlágan by the rest of the village. Denotatively, this word is understood as an individualist, while connotatively it means that he is a little strange.

Heaika works carefully and quietly, walks from house to house, drinks coffee, talks with people who have something to tell and helps with the hay-making when needed. Heaika lives alone and feels the loneliness. He does what it takes to fit in, to be counted on and to feel belonging. In all, he tries to be a good siidaguoibmi, which in the Sámi language means neighbor (Friis, 1887, s.v. sida-guoibme). Siidaguoibmi is compound of the nouns siida, which means “village,” or “gathered in one place” (Friis, 1887, s.v. sida), and guoibmi which means “friend,” “fellow worker,” “wife,” “next of kin” (Friis, 1887, s.v. guoibme). In daily life and in the real meaning and use of siidaguoibmi, it has a broader meaning than just “neighbor,” something that we see from the meaning of the two compound nouns. This leads to another important factor to life in Máhtebáiki: in such a small village, you cannot choose who you are dealing with, as you can in a more urban setting. Most of the people in the village are also relatives of Heaika. If you want good relationships with your siidaguoibmi, the art of understanding and practicing indirect forms of communication is essential for success. It is a form of Sámi aesthetics; a holistic approach to interaction that tells how to behave as a good siidaguoibmi, in relation to nature and in relation to traditions (cf. Gaski, 2012).

The dream of, and the pursuit of the good life, is important for several of the characters in Árbbolaččat. This is often expressed by the characters wanting to do what they wish to do, as opposed to perhaps doing what you are born to and what you are expected to do, such as taking over the farm after one’s parents. For others, the good life is just to keep on doing what they’ve always done or to see to it that their life’s work is carried on. You want a mielamiel bargu (a work that is something you enjoy and which is of your own choice). For Heaika, this is depicted through his project of becoming an author, as he feels that writing is something he is skilled for and something he desires (Vest, 1997, pp. 11, 14; cf. Fredriksen, 2015, pp. 97–105).

Heaika’s desire is conveyed directly to the reader via the external third-person narrator. Here, an attitude toward writing is expressed through Heaika’s thoughts, which shows that he considers the book he is writing to be very important for the village, for its history and for future generations. And as a way for him to be remembered, the day comes that he is no longer around. This is expressed early in the narrative, in the first book of the trilogy. Heaika has no more fire wood left and finds ways to excuse himself for not procuring his own supplies of firewood. The significance of firewood in winter time, in an arctic climate, cannot be underestimated. In a cold house, in the beginning of the 1960s, you would freeze to death or get seriously ill without sufficient wood supplies. Still Heaika prioritizes the writing:

Of course there would be firewood to find, but the most important thing is the writing. That comes first, and other things come after that. (Vest, 1997, p. 11, my translation)

I could try, of course, but when you really don’t have the time because of the writing, he thinks, and puts on his winter clothes. (Vest, 1997, p. 12, my translation)

He discovers that gathering wood for winter requires hard work, and he is not a logger, he was born for other tasks. (Vest, 1997, p. 14, my translation)

The quotes have both a first- and a third-person narrator. The verbs are mostly in present tense. When you read these quotes one after another, they work almost like an inner stream of thoughts. Free indirect style is used extensively in the description of Heaika’s thoughts, and the reader gets an idea of how secure Heaika is in his mission to write this book: he will succeed! The first-person narrator is not considered in literary theory to be a reliable narrator, since such a narrator sees events only from a single limited point of view. Literary critic James Wood (2008) has a different take on the role of the first-person narrator: “Actually, first-person narration is generally more reliable than unreliable; and third-person ‘omniscient’ narration is generally more partial than omniscient” (p. 5). Wood’s claim is interesting given the following quote, which brings together Heaika’s own thoughts concerning his writing project:

The writing task comes to his mind again, and the mind becomes soft when thinking about it, I am writing the history of Máhtebáiki and thus making the public aware of us, I have not lived for nothing, there will at least be something left when time has left me behind. (Vest, 1997, p. 85, my translation)

The sentence starts with a third-person narrator, and in the middle of the sentence, the narration switches to a first-person narrator. The narrator, according to Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan (2002), is central to the narration:

The narrative level to which the narrator belongs, the extent of his participation in the story, the degree of perceptibility of his role, and finally his reliability are crucial factors in the reader’s understanding of and attitude to the story. (p. 95)

Through the first-person narrator, the reader gets an insight into what Heaika does not dare to say explicitly in the dialogues. A confidentiality is established between Heaika and the reader and a dialogue takes place, as if the reader is one who will better understand Heaika’s wishes and intentions with his book project. The present form makes Heaika speak directly to the reader, thereby emphasizing the value of his writing. One of the main themes in the narrative is the wish to be remembered, by the collective, and also that the collective will be remembered. In an extended sense, one can also read the quote as a hint from the author Vest that this novel trilogy is also a claim to his position in history. For Heaika, it is important that what is special about him as an individual gets its place in the collective, as it has been common to incorporate the individual into the community by giving him a yoik. According to Jon Eldar Einejord (1975), the yoik is also used as a way of describing and individualizing a person: “When I say that the yoik individualizes a person, that means that it latches onto whatever is particular about a certain person that makes that person stand out in relation to most people” (p. 18, my translation).

The reader’s sense of confidence with Heaika is enhanced by the contrast to the dialogues in Árbbolaččat, where Heaika is more careful to express an explicit pride of his work. In the traditional Sámi community, it is not well considered to brag about yourself, and Heaika is very careful in doing it. In the yoik tradition, we also find this custom. It is not common to yoik yourself, because it can be perceived as bragging (Gaup, 2003, p. 45). The Danish artist Emilie Demant-Hatt also made this observation when she lived for a year with a Sámi reindeer husbandry family in the early 1900s, which was the family of the brother of Johan Turi, who wrote the first book in the Sámi language. Demant-Hatt (1913) writes in her book: “[B]ut the one who sings his own songs is regarded as cinceited and boasting” (p. 52, my translation). In Árbbolaččat, Heaika nevertheless expresses a few times more explicitly the pride and importance of his project in conversation with other people, as in this dialogue where he is shopping in the town of Girkosiida and meets some acquaintances:

—Risten-Heaika has taken a trip to Girkosiida for fun, said Lintos-Márte.—Not only for fun, I came to take care of some business.—Our writer, Lintonen said with a smile.—Only a modest investigation. But it will be published, if you had any doubts about that.—Of course it will be published, no doubt about that, Lintonen said.—Not all books get published, it’s got to have content, you know what I mean? (Vest, 2002, p. 7, my translation)

At first Heaika will not call any attention to his book project and will make no fuss of it, calling it “Only a modest investigation.” But, in the last part of the dialogue, he leaves no doubt about the great importance of his project, even if it is not said explicitly: “Not all books get published, it’s got to have content . . . ” These are bold words for a man living in a small Sámi village in the late 1960s. This is before it becomes common for Sámis to receive higher education and get employment outside industry. Heaika is one of the characters in Árbbolaččat who is ahead of his time, together with several of the other characters (cf. Fredriksen, 2015, pp. 273–274).

Heaika’s book does get published. He is disappointed when he sees the result. The book is in his eyes just a little tiny book, and he wonders if it is possible, that so many years of work fit between those covers (Vest, 2002, pp. 100–101). Heaika nevertheless continues his work as an author, and in the second book of the trilogy, Heaika starts a new project: to write about Heargenjár-Lásse, an old man who lived in the area some time ago. This man knew most types of outdoor work and other traditional crafts. Heaika portrays Heargenjár-Lásse as if he were all that Heaika is not. Heaika was raised by his mother, and he never knew his father. He has an uncle though, who has taken care of him and helped him and his mother, but he has not taught the nephew any of the traditional work that a man is expected to carry out. For Heaika, Heargenjár-Lásse is such an exciting figure that he would like to write a book about him. For this task, he gets help from his neighbor Káhtarin. Káhtarin is from the place where Heargenjár-Lasse lived and knows a lot about the man. Káhtarin also sees Heaika’s book as her opportunity to escape from the shadows of the life as a housewife in Máhtebáiki, to get her name into the book covers and to be remembered. Heaika, on the contrary, realizes that he is unable to write this book. But he is reluctant to say that to Káhtarin. In this dialogue, Káhtarin urges Heaika to take a trip to Stálonjárga, the village where she is from, to talk to her brother and get more information about Hearenjár-Lásse:

—Well if you went to Stálonjárga in person, then you would get a lot more information, Káhtarin said and poured some coffee for Heaika.—Of course it would be possible to make the trip.—That would definitely pay off.—Well, it might pay off.—We could go there together, the two of us, we’ll ask Nillá to drive us.—That wouldn’t be impossible for us to do, said Heaika and started to drink his coffee. (Vest, 2002, p. 223, my translation)

Káhtarin is enthusiastic about the trip. Heaika tries to communicate his situation and that he actually does not want to travel to visit her brother. The use of conditional tense, “Of course it would be . . ., well, it might . . ., that wouldn’t be . . .,” shows how Heaika gently tries to convey his message. He does not want to hurt Káhtarin’s feelings, by directly saying that there will be no book about Heargenjár-Lásse, that he cannot write it. This information is provided to the reader by the third-person narrator, but Káhtarin has her own agenda and does not listen to Heaika’s subtle resistance. Káhtarin belongs to the same community as Heaika and should be able to understand the cultural linguistic codes and the non-verbal messages. In order for such wordplay and hinting to work, both actors, in this context in a conversation, must help to promote understanding. It’s like Jon Eldar Einejord (1975) writes about the yoik: “But the yoik is, just as other art forms, connected to more than just the creator and the performer; in a social context, the impact of it depends on both the yoiker and the listener, as creator and co-creator” (p. 15, my translation). In the quotation from Árbbolaččat, Káhtarin uses the space of interpretation to overlook Heaika’s hint and continues to promote her own cause. Heaika, in turn, prepares Káhtarin for the message that comes later in the novel, where Heaika says he is unable to write the book. Káhtarin is disappointed, but the writing project does not totally fail; Heaika writes texts that he publishes as newspaper articles, something that both descendants of Heargenjár-Lásse and Káhtarin appreciate.

Put an end to a discussion

Early in the trilogy, the protagonist Heaika is in dialogue with his neighbor Sire, a woman married to his cousin Máhte-Máhtte. Erke, a drinking companion of another cousin, Issát, has drowned and is to be buried. A funeral is an important social event that brings together the group, the collective. You do not need an invitation. Participating in a fellow villager’s, or in an acquaintance’s funeral, is one of the strongest social norms in the Sámi community. You do that as a siidaguoibmi. Heaika does not go to the funeral. On some occasions, Erke visited Heaika, together with Issát and some of his other drinking mates. They go there to party, but Heaika himself does not drink anything. He just enjoys having a little company. Sire wonders why Heaika did not go to the funeral:

—Then Erke died. You didn’t have time to go to his funeral?—When it comes to time, surely I would have found the time, but I didn’t manage to go.—He probably visited you often?—He stopped in by coincidence sometimes, but not so often as you seem to think. He popped in to my place sometimes together with Issát.—Of course he would visit his friend.—Just an acquaintance, not a friend Sire, you know what I mean by that. (Vest, 1997, pp. 54–55, my translation)

In this dialogue, both Heaika and Sire show that they know the art of hinting and the cultural codes. Sire observes that Heaika did not go to Erke’s funeral. Instead of asking Heaika whether Erke was a close friend, she asks, “He probably visited you often?” Since she does not know for sure how close they were, she is careful with her criticism. Heaika, on the contrary, tries to tell Sire that Erke was not a close friend: “He stopped in by coincidence sometimes, but not so often as you seem to think. He popped in to my place sometimes together with Issát.” Thus Heaika explains that Erke was not his friend and that it therefore was not natural for him to go to the funeral. From the narrative, it appears that Heaika was considering going to the funeral, but decided not to, as this would interrupt his writing. Moreover, Erke was never someone close to Heaika (Vest, 1997, p. 54). In this situation, individualism wins over the collective norms. Participating in a funeral is a way to recognize that the deceased was part of the local community, no matter what kind of position the person had had. By Sire’s indirect critique of Heaika not going to the funeral, she connects him to the community and expects him to do it himself. As in the yoik tradition, where the yoik assesses an individual according to the community’s social norms, and is a picture of how other people see you, as a member of a collective network (cf. Jernsletten, 1978, p. 109). This is part of the epistemology of the yoik tradition, like saying “who you are among us,” and in relation to Heaika: “who I am among you.” Heaika has lived far away from Máhtebáiki, in the capital for a few years, but it is not clear from the context, if this motivates Heaika to emphasize individualism in relation to prevailing norms. This is why Sire reacts as if she does not understand what Heaika says and almost insists that Erke was a friend: “Of course he would visit his friend.” Heaika then needs to step out of the hinting mode and become more direct toward Sire: “—Just an acquaintance, not a friend Sire, you know what I mean by that.” In the original Sámi text, verdde is a person who may also be one you are in close relation to, but here it is used in the meaning of “only an acquaintance.” This is Heaika’s way of telling Sire that this is nothing further to discuss. No sharp words have been uttered, but the message is clear.

Expressing anger and frustration

A situation between Heaika’s neighbor and cousin Ánde, and his wife Birgget takes place in the third novel. To Birgget’s great delight, their youngest daughter Biret-Káre, her husband Antero and their children will move back to Máhtebáiki after trying their luck in Sweden. They will take over Ánde and Birgget’s small farm, as their only son Heandarat is not interested in continuing the family business. Birgget wants everything to be settled when her daughter’s family arrives, but she is not happy with the young man who her husband Ánde has employed to help with the hay-making:

Because of the untrained farmhand, the start of the short season for farm work was very delayed, which again meant that the hay-making also would be delayed. Birgget knew that, and she was in a bad mood for several days. She hardly spoke with her husband, just looked at him with an accusing gaze and sighed deeply. (Vest, 2005, p. 67, my translation)

Non-verbal communication and criticism communicated with body language is an important skill to master in Árbbolaččat. Birgget does not use to go directly in opposition to Ánde, but she has her own way of saying things, and the message should still be clear enough for her husband. The context, conveyed through the external third-person narrator, reinforces this image of the situation. The contextual reading of the passage gives the reader a deeper understanding of this episode. Most female characters in Árbbolaččat are strong and hard-working women. Birgget is very caring. She looks after her family and neighbors who need some assistance. She is a kind of “village mother.” But she does not focus on herself, or claim any special attention or authority, despite the key role she has in the local community. An important backdrop is that the narrative in Árbbolaččat takes place at a time when the Laestadianism was strong in Sámi rural communities, at least in the northern areas of Sápmi. Birgget’s way of responding can be seen as a consequence of the fact that it was not well considered nor acceptable for a woman to speak out in public or in direct opposition to her husband. Birgget’s reaction in this passage corresponds with the picture the reader gets of her in the narrative. She has strong opinions of things but does not speak them out loudly.

Conclusion

Hinting and allusions as a means of balancing the interaction and communication of the literary universe of the novel trilogy Árbbolaččat is part of the characters’ birgengoansta. The yoik tradition, with emphasis on the contextual function of the yoik in the Sámi community, forms the theoretical foundation of the investigation. This tradition also describes a community philosophy where human interaction and interpersonal relationships are central. The individual’s self-esteem and identity in society are important. Interpreting the tone of relations between the characters in Árbbolaččat, where the text functions as a yoik without melody, is an exciting part of the reading. Here, the interaction between the purely textual level and the external context provides a dynamic interpretive space for the reader. In Árbbolaččat, hinting and allusions are used and act as textual means in situations where people do not want to boast about themselves or others, or be too direct when expressing disagreement with anyone. The contextual knowledge about Sámi traditional ways of communication, and the epistemology of the yoik tradition, provides the understanding that the rather soft way of giving a message does not mean that the characters do not give clear messages, on the contrary. By using the Sámi communication skills, the characters demonstrate their coping skills and manage to live and get along together. Not without challenges and disagreements that appear in life, but still in a mutual understanding. The different voices in Árbbolaččat thus depict how to be a good siidaguoibmi, a good fellow villager.