Nuohtti platform improves accessibility to the digitised archives of Sámi cultural heritage

For centuries, travellers and scientists have visited Sápmi, the homeland of Sámi Indigenous People. Their notes, diaries, depictions of Sámi culture and Sámi artefacts they collected are in the holdings of archives and memory organisations around Europe. Discover how the Nuohtti portal makes access to these materials easier, and how the DIGICHer project is developing Sámi engagement in their digitised cultural heritage.

The Archive of The Suenjel Skolt Sámi community, in the holding of the Sámi Archives, Inari, Finland, is a treasure of the Sámi documentary heritage. It includes documents from 1601 to 1775. The Archive of The Suenjel Skolt Sámi community belongs to the UNESCO Memory of the World register. Find out more.

Introducing Nuohtti

Nuohtti is the name of a traditional fishing net used by the Sámi, and a suitable name also for a search portal for ‘fishing’ data from the digital archives of memory organisations and aggregators. The portal was launched in February 2023. While integration of more institutions and their materials is still ongoing, Nuohtti currently harvests data from 32 organisations, mapping Sámi related archival materials in European archives.

Collaboration with the Sámi community was of great importance from the very beginning of Nuohtti project, from creating ethical guidelines for using the materials to the piloting of the prototype in schools, libraries and different events in Sápmi, and to the naming of the tool in a name competition.

To break down the language barriers of the metadata, people can search Nuohtti in Northern Sámi (and hopefully in the future also with other Sámi languages). Nuohtti is also currently available in Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian. Search results can be examined by different facets, including through a timeline and map.

Nuohtti offers its users a series of ethical guidelines created to address the reuse of culturally sensitive materials, especially for non-Sámi users of Nuohtti. The ethical guidelines were carefully designed as part of the user-interface, appearing as a pop-up window for anyone searching the website, and also as a quiz for testing one’s understanding of the topic.

Nuohtti was developed and constructed in the Digital Access to Sámi Heritage Archives project (EU InterregNord 2018-2021), in co-operation between five partners from Finland, Norway and Sweden: the Sámi Archives in Finland and Norway, the University of Lapland (leader), the University of Oulu and the University of Umeå.

The project team included experts on archiving (Sámi archives), technical design and implementation (University of Oulu), human computer interaction design (universities of Lapland and Umeå), graphic design (University of Lapland), law and cultural history (University of Lapland).

Nuohtti is maintained in collaboration between the national archives of Norway, Sweden and Finland.

DIGICHer

Another EU-funded, multi-disciplinary project which aims to improve the digitalisation of Sámi cultural heritage is DIGICHer - Digitisation of cultural heritage of minority communities for equity and renewed engagement (EU Horizon Grant Agreement No. 101132481).

In collaboration with the Sámi, the Jewish and the Ladin people, the project will develop a new framework for increasing equitable, diverse and inclusive practices in the field of digitalisation of minorities’ cultural heritage. The framework will be scalable and adaptable to other minorities as well, and it is targeted to policy and decision-makers and cultural institutions.

The framework is based on the research focusing on the legal, policy, socio-economic and technological factors driving the digitisation of minority communities’ cultural heritage at the moment, and aims at providing new understandings on the potential, opportunities, barriers and risks of digitising minorities’ cultural heritage.

DIGICHer consortium of universities and cultural institutions in five European countries working in the field of minorities’ digital cultural heritage: Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (leader), Friedrich Schiller Universitat Jena, University of Lapland, Istituto Italiano di Studi Germanici, Europeana, National Archives of Finland, Jewish Heritage Network, Istituto Culturale Ladino, Lietuvos Inovaciju Centras, Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity and Time Machine.

The project started in February 2024 and runs for three years.

Find out more

Would you like to find out more about Sámi heritage and the projects mentioned in this post? Visit the Nuohtti portal and the Digital Access to Sámi Heritage Archives website. You can also find out more about the DIGICHer project.