Past exhibitions

14.11.2025 - 15.3.2026

In the exhibition, we travel alongside two Saami artisans to explore the Saami craft traditions and skills passed down through their families. We also delve into the formation of the artisans’ own craft identities. 

14.4.— 5.1.2026

Rayann Elzein is a French nature photographer and polar expedition leader based in Utsjoki, the northernmost municipality of the Finnish Sapmi. His work is deeply rooted in the Arctic landscapes that surround him daily — silent forests, frozen rivers, reindeer trails, and the shifting skies of the Northern Lights. Through his photography, Rayann captures both the delicate stillness and raw...

22.5.2025 – 30.10.2025

Geahčan botniid duohkái – Beneath the lake bed – an exhibition where Sámi handicrafts, duodji, are intertwined with art and poetry. Sámi artists Jouni S. Laiti and Kirsi Máret Paltto combine traditional materials – cardboard, reindeer horn and wool – with industrial materials to create works that bring together past and present.

28.1.–3.5.2025

“In the Time of Aihki (The Old-Growth Pine)” exhibition was born from Anna Pakkanen’s personal experience during a skiing trip in Urho Kekkonen National Park, where she discovered an impressive forest full of old pines. The experience made her reflect on the long lifespan of trees and the shortness of human life. The exhibition offers visitors an opportunity to stop and...

12.10.2024 - 23.3.2025

Kaamosmaisemia – Skábmaduovdagat (Landscapes of the Polar Night) is an exhibition composed of sceneries of sound and movement and born from the emotional landscapes of the Polar Night. It is made of artistic short films in which the period of darkness is described in terms of subjective experiences. 

25.5.2024 - 29.9.2024

Bálvvosbáiki (worship site) is an exhibition composed of video works and based on the yoiks of the musician Ánnámáret. The works have been created in cooperation by Ánnámáret, the media artist Marja Viitahuhta and musicians Ilkka Heinonen (bowed lyre jouhikko) and Turkka Inkilä (elektronic music).

6.10.2024−26.1.2025

Exhibition, “Northern Taiga − Land of Willow Grouse and Rock Ptarmigan”, shows survivors, Willow Grouse and Rock Ptarmigan, which have perfectly adapted to the northern taiga over the times, in their own habitats.

4.10.2023–19.5.2024

How has our environment changed in 100 years? We will find out when we place next to each other photographs taken from the same landscape 100 years ago and today. The photograph exhibition shows the landscapes that Erkki Mikkola immortalized a century ago and the same objects that Tapio Tynys photographed over the last few years.

6.2.2024 – 29.9.2024

Aune Kaarina Huhtamella (née Magga, 1931–2013) was highly respected by her family as a maker of Sámi handicraft who clothed both her nine siblings and other relatives from an early age.

2.10.2023–28.2.2024

An artist, children´s author and cartoonist Ninka Reittu has written and illustrated five Outdoor Etiquette stories for children. The purpose of the fairy tales is to inspire children into the nature, and at the same time to tell them how to respect the nature and other hikers while moving around in the nature. The fairy tales will also be translated...

6.2.-24.9.2023

The ládjogahpir, a popular and striking Sámi women’s hat in the 18th and 19th centuries; forbidden, forgotten, and disappeared in the 19th and 20th centuries; revived and revitalised in the 21st century.

19.1.–24.9.2023

The kingbird of the old forests, capercaillie, has always had a special place in the heart of Martti Rikkonen, who is a nature photographer from Inari. Capercaillie of the Taiga forests -exhibition takes the visitors to the lands and lek areas of the capercaillie. It shows the largest hen bird in our forests as the target of a nature photographer’s...

Starting 10.6.2021

Zero Arctic -exhibition deals with a research project that examined how to benefit from traditional knowledge and the ideas of traditional construction in designing climate-friendly buildings. Studying traditional buildings makes it possible to create guidelines for the present and future sustainable construction.

1.6.2022 - 17.1.2023

The works of the In My Time, In Your Place exhibition reflect on the relation with place and surroundings, in which the natural environment of the north and the reindeer herding culture have a strong presence. The works are stories on canvas and paper that combine elements of the seen and the heard, experienced and imagined.

6.2. - 4.10.2020

The pop-up exhibition of the Sámi Museum Siida introduces Museum’s collections items that were conserved and restored by the students of the Conservation Study Programme of the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in autumn 2019 as a part of their conservation course on indigenous artefacts.

8.6. – 27.9.2020

River Teno, one of the greatest streams in Sámi people’s homeland, is over 200 km long. River begins at Karigasniemi village and ends at the rocky landscape of Teno Fjord in Norway. There the River flows into the Arctic Ocean. Teno is the border river between Norway and Finland, and Teno units Sámi people living on both shores.

10.10.2019 - 10.05.2020

What is the relationship between man and animal like in the northern nature? What do we see or what do we miss (do we not see) when we look at the forest animals? In the exhibition of the artist Sirpa Mänty, the guest is encouraged to think about the importance of the co-existence, similarities and neighborhood between human and forest...

17.11.2019 - 3.5.2020

The exhibition helps the visitor to combine existing information about the winter of northern Finland, its animals and landscapes, to the knowledge of the future and to perceive the changes caused by global warming to the northern winter.

14.06.2019 - 19.04.2020

“Toovláš já tááláš anarâš kietâtyeji – Inari Sámi Handicraft of the Past and the Present” is the first museum exhibition that focuses on Inari Sámi handicraft tradition alone. The exhibition introduces the audience to a rich variety of old and new Inari Sámi handicrafts and methods of crafting. It is produced by the Sámi Museum Siida.

17.04. - 27.10.2019

The Arctic Dreams exhibition introduces the audience to travelling to and architecture in the Finnish North from the 1930s to the 1950s. Looking at the hotels and inns in Lapland, we get an idea of the development of Finnish tourism but also of the international and national influence that affected the character of the country of growth.

27.3.2018-28.4.2019

The Sámi Museum Siida’s 20th anniversary exhibition tells about Johan Nuorgam. Johan Nuorgam from Lake Iijärvi (1910–78) was an early broker of Sámi culture. He was a connoisseur of Sámi traditions with high proficiency in the Sámi language, whom many researchers used as their source. In the 1930s, he worked as a guide of the Seurasaari Open-Air Museum of the Finnish National Museum, collecting...

In Sevettijärvi 30.6-18.7. and 23.7.-15.9.2019 and in Nellim 19.-21.7.2019

Šäigg is a collection of newly recorded stories, experiences and leu’dd from Nellim, Keväjärvi and Sevettijärvi. Voices are echoed from within fallen trees, buildings and birdhouse for a goldeneye etc., taking the listener on a journey from one voice to the next.

15.10.2020 - 29.4.2021

Sámi Museum Siida’s pop-up exhibition showcases creative and experimental Sámi artisan Karen Jomppanen’s (1923–1996) handcraft collection. The heirs of Karen Jomppanen donated her Sámi handcraft collection to the Sámi Museum Siida on September 30th in 2020. Large collection of 220 objects consists of Sámi clothing, dolls, bags, and purses as well as material examples. Connected to the collections there is...

23.6.2020 - 30.4.2021

The Sámi Museum Siida’s temporary photograph exhibition “Albma olbmot – Real People” displays Pekka Sammallahti’s black-and-white portraits of people living in the north, showing them in their everyday surroundings. The time span is seven decades, starting from the 1960s. The exhibition focuses on people living on the Teno River and its river system, but there are also portraits from Inari, Enontekiö, Sodankylä, Kaaresuvanto, Gällivare and the Varanger and Alta fjords, etc. The title reflects the...

8.10.2020 – 28.4.2021

The Sámi Museum Siida’s temporary exhibition Sámi seremoniijat – Sámi ceremonies follows, from the point of view of the Sámi crafting tradition, how Maarit Magga prepares as a mother and an artisan for her family’s ceremonies – confirmation and baptism. The story proceeds on several levels: those of crafting, or duodji, and Sámi values, view of life, customs and spirituality.

21.1.–28.4.2021

The exhibition is Maarit Magga’s second artistic production of her doctoral thesis on duodji (Sámi craft), which she is doing for the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland. Magga works as a doctoral researcher of duodji at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences. 

1.7.2020 – 25.4.2021

Eight seasons in Lapland provide also the photographer with great possibilities to experience and live in the world of arctic wild light. The contrasts between neverending light in the summer and delicate pastel colours of the polar night and bright colours in the autumn have fascinated the minds of people for immemorial times. People living in Lapland have adjusted as...