Our permanent exhibition links Sámi culture and northern nature to one another forming one whole, which offers a vivid and visual experience as well as an abundance of information. The Sámi Museum and the Nature Centre have worked together to produce the permanent exhibition.
The joint exhibition by the Sámi Museum and the Northern Lapland Nature Centre Siida, Enâmeh láá mii párnááh – “These lands are our children” explains and interprets the layers of the landscape through the Sámi concept of cultural environment. According to it, nature and culture are closely linked. The landscape around us is also formed over millions of years from an entity shaped by nature.
Our exhibition was named after a poem written by Inari Sámi Matti Morottaja.
In the Sámi cultural environment, connections to the land and the environment are built through memories and traditions. The knowledge of Sámi traditions has been carried in people’s memory from one generation to another through changes in nature and society. In the cultural contents of the exhibition, we consider how the past lives in us. A diverse heritage from different eras lives in all of us, allowing us to adapt to changes around us.
In the nature section of the exhibition, we encourage our guests to reflect on changes in our climate and what will happen to the climate in the future. The exhibition highlights climate history after the last Ice Age and speculates what will happen to the climate in the future. Nature topics are discussed through the conservation areas of Northern Lapland, their different habitat types, and the species living in them.
We care for biodiversity and the cultural heritage, and our work will bear fruit across generations.
The renewal of the cultural section of the exhibition is financed by Kone Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation/Museum Vision, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, Interreg Nord and Lapin Liitto. Metsähallitus received funding for the nature section of the exhibition from the supplementary state budget.