Sami Folktales from the Near and Far Worlds

The most comprehensive collection of Sámi folktales ever translated into EnglishFrom the vast region of Northern Sápmi comes Sámi Folktales from the Near and Far Worlds, the most extensive compilation of Sámi narratives recorded from Sámi storytellers ever published in English translation.Comprising more than 300 folktales and legends from Northern Norway, including many from the coastal Sámi and the Skolt Sámi of eastern Finnmark, this volume illuminates an oral storytelling tradition and shares narratives told by fishers, farmers, reindeer herders, lay preachers, and teachers from the interior plateaus and valleys to the Arctic fjords. Originally recorded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by the Norwegian philologist Just Knud Qvigstad and the Sámi politician and folklorist Isak Saba, this collection spans centuries of storytelling in multiple genres, from migratory fairytales with kings and princesses to legends of ghosts and the Devil to fables with talking anima