School Memories
by Hans Hansen

Long before I started school I knew that we weren’t
    as good and wise as those in suits, coats and
    shoes.

My father took me to school the first day.
We walked the country road the three miles.
I was in gákti.
Most were at that time.
We took Bible history and catechism home with us
    – in Norwegian.

I had heard the sheriff and tax collector speak
    Norwegian.
More about Norwegian I did not
    know before I started school.

    Our teacher spoke Sami and Finnish.
He had learned at school in Leavdnja
    (Lakselv). 
When he went there they had
    textbooks in two languages.
Sami and Norwegian.
He spoke Sami with us both outside
    and inside, but had to teach us to
    read using Norwegian.

    We learned the 29 letters of the Norwegian alphabet.
To put the letters together into words
    was difficult.
We learned numbers.
Four and five, said the teacher.
Difficult to know what that meant.
The teacher explained that it was njeallje and
    vihtta.
Then we knew.

We wrote with slate pencils on tablets of stone.
Spit on the tablet and erased with the gákti sleeve.
But didn’t know what we wrote.

Read many books – Norwegian books on
    geography and science.
Knew what the teacher asked about, but couldn’t
    answer.
Couldn’t talk and explain.

Some children understood nothing.
They were punished.
Had to stand during the whole class.

I was lucky.
The teacher used Sami to explain to me.
Maybe he saw that I had the talent of learning,
    even if I didn’t know the language. 
92 weeks I have gone to school.
For 46 of those weeks I didn’t understand much of
    what the teacher said.
Further education was for a few.
Some went to agricultural school, some to folk high
    school.

The rest of us continued to live as we had.
What we took with us from school was a feeling of
    inferiority.
Everywhere in society Norwegian was spoken.
For us it was difficult.
We weren’t able to express ourselves.
At the same time we were supposed to obey the
    authorities who spoke to us in Norwegian.

    When we couldn’t take it anymore they began to talk about how we had to be impartial and restrained.
It wasn’t so easy to know what they
    meant by that.
Eventually I realized that they were

    demanding of us what they
    themselves lacked:  impartiality
    and restraint.

They can have fine positions, angles
    or stars.
It doesn’t make any difference to me.
I speak to people, not to positions or
    stars..

Southerners are not the worst.
The worst are among our own.
Many came here from other places.
Here they could hide that they were Sami.
That was the way out for those who could speak a
    little Norwegian.
That is how they came to get better jobs.

I have never tried to hide myself.
Have not had the sense for it.

Those who cut off their roots don’t grow anymore.

From Sámi skuvlahistorjá 1/Samisk skolehistorie 1, published by Davvi Girji, 2005.
Translated from Norwegian by Arden Johnson.

From #44, Fall 2006

Archive