also rely on snow conditions—a fact that reindeer herders must take into account. Reindeer and wolves thrive in different types of snow.
All of this—not to mention the properties of snow—changes through the seasons and so there are different words for autumn snow, winter snow, and spring snow. The mountain Sami actually have eight seasons: autumn, autumn-winter, winter, spring-winter, spring, spring-summer, summer, and autumn-summer—and to a great extent, they are defined by the snow conditions. There can, for example, be many kinds of winter: gassadálvve, thick snow winter, is everybody’s nightmare, while sekkadálvve means a winter with little snow. Skárkkadálvve is a winter with icy snow that has frozen to the reindeer lichen.22
Over the year, the snow changes and different words are used depending on when and how the snow settles: the first snow that doesn’t thaw on the surface but remains on the ground until spring is called dálvvevuodo. Very thin snow on the ground is called biera. The first proper snowfall that is suitable for travel is called doavgge. When a good 16 inches of snow have fallen, people speak of dálvvemuohta, winter snow. “What this means is: that’s enough now; we don’t want any more snow.”23 Words are also applied to the landscape according to snow conditions. Areas where it snows a lot are called atsádahka or just atsát. The opposite of atsát is sekkas: an area where it snows less. This kind of thing is good to know when, for example, people are planning to set up camp or a reindeer enclosure.
Snow terminology also varies depending on whether snow is being discussed in relation to people or reindeer, as different things are then relevant in each case. If a person is the yardstick, you can speak of gámamuohta, which means shoe snow. That’s when there is not much snow and it just about reaches the top of your shoes. Vuottamuohta is snow that reaches your shoe bands. Vargga buolvvaj is snow that comes almost to your knees. Buolvvamuohta is snow at knee height, while badárádjmuohta is snow that reaches your buttocks. Masses of snow are called giedavuolmuohta: snow that comes up to your armpits. But the most important measure for people is tjibbemuohta, snow up to your shins, the same snow depth as doavgge. It is a special event when tjibbemuohta arrives: “Now it has snowed tjibbemuohta. We can’t walk anymore; it’s time to get out the skis.”24
Snow terminology is different when reindeer are the yardstick. The most important word is tjievttjemuohta: this means snow that reaches to the knees of the reindeer’s hind legs. It’s a bit deeper than doavgge, toward 16 inches. With tjievttjemuohta, the reindeer’s hooves can touch the ground, so they can still walk and travel with relative ease. There is also a special word—doalli—for when the snow covers an old track, where the reindeer can gain a better foothold—and they seem to have a special sense that helps them to find their way to such places.
There are different words for falling snow: single snowflakes are called muohtatjalme, which translates literally as “snow eyes.” Big soft snowflakes are called tsihtsebelaga, while the driest, lightest snow that can fall in winter is habllek. The flakes are so big and weightless, sometimes they almost refuse to fall. While humans can cope with this snow, it is dangerous for animals, which can actually be suffocated by it. This is why it was common to hunt fox when there was habllek. A little new snow, say 1 or 2 inches deep, that settles on top of previous snowfall is called vahtsa. Loahtte is a heavy snowfall of 8 inches or more. Larkkat occurs when there has been a heavy fall of dry snow that has stopped quite abruptly. The worst precipitation is sleet, slabttse. This is problematic because it can’t be brushed off like dry snow but sticks to clothes and other places, making people wet.
A lot also happens to snow when it has settled, and then its name changes. Thin and slightly icy snow on the ground is called skártta. Tjalssa is soft snow that is trampled solid and freezes to the earth. Nearest the ground, the snow gradually turns into sänásj, large, coarse, icy grains that look like coarse-ground salt. It can also become tsievve, hard snow where the reindeer don’t dig. This kind of snow can almost bear the weight of a person without skis and the reindeer float on top of it, whereas åbådahka, or simply åbåt, is thick winter snow that is very soft and loose. Åbåt creates extremely difficult conditions. In the old days, people hunted wolves when there was åbåt, because then the wolves would become exhausted. Dáhapádahka means that conditions are so poor it is impossible to travel at all, while siebla is snow that has thawed and is wet all the way through to the ground, a typical spring phenomenon. Siebla cannot bear any weight: the skis sink straight through it. When siebla freezes it becomes tjarvva, a proper snow crust.
But the navigability of terrain is not the only important thing. For hunters—and hunting was (and remains) an important part of the mountain Sami livelihood—it is important for skis to move silently across the snow. So conditions that allow skis to glide quietly and softly, what we call “silk conditions” in Norwegian, are known in Lule Sami as linádahka.
The mountain Sami also had a rich vocabulary for ice, because in their world it was vitally important to be able to move over streams, rivers, and other water, so people needed to have words that told them whether the ice could bear the weight of people and animals. The first very thin ice to form on the lakes in autumn is called gabdda. It is barely one twenty-fifth of an inch thick. Álmasjjiegŋa is “people ice,” which can bear the weight of a person on foot, while hässtajiegŋa is ice that can bear a horse.
As with so much other traditional knowledge, this Sami snow terminology is disappearing. Fewer people are involved in reindeer husbandry, and since reindeer herders use snowmobiles rather than draft reindeer these days, perhaps they think they don’t need this “old-fashioned” knowledge. But the many snowmobile accidents, not least those where avalanches are triggered, may well suggest that modern-day reindeer herders could also benefit from a bit of knowledge of snow. Would it help to have a special word for ice that can bear the weight of a snowmobile? Perhaps the technicians waxing skis for the Norwegian cross-country team would also find it helpful to have a course in Sami snow terminology to avoid waxing blunders.
But this is about a lot more than an advanced vocabulary, rich in tradition, that is on the point of extinction. What we are now seeing vanish is also a lifeworld—the world of the Snow Queen—to which this language belongs and which it describes.
— 7 —
TRACES OF ICE: THE DISCOVERY OF OUR FROZEN PAST
I NEVER LEARNED THE three hundred Sami words for snow. I had to leave Finnmarksvidda early in my teenage years to go to school and I never went back. My first stop was the Arctic Ocean town of Tromsø, where I experienced a slightly different side of the cryosphere: severe snowstorms and endless snowfall. Some winters, so much snow fell that you just had to give up trying to keep the path clear and simply dig a tunnel to your door instead. It could stay like that until late April. On the other hand, Tromsø had fantastic skiing possibilities, offering the unbeatable combination of skiing and sea views. Here you got to experience the cryosphere at its best and worst. Sometimes there could be a bit much of both, but if you loved snow, it was fine. If you didn’t, you moved away.
Eventually, I ended up in western Norway, where snow and ice were things you only experienced once in a while, mostly as unforeseen problems—like suddenly waking up to find ice and snow on the roads, which came as just as much of a surprise every single time. Fortunately, this happened only a few days a year, so instead of bothering to change to winter tires, people tended to leave their cars at home. Snow and ice were mostly irrelevant there on the west coast. They were curiosities, of interest mainly to skiing enthusiasts—only a small minority there—not to mention tourists, who came in their thousands on cruise ships to visit Nordfjord and see the Briksdal Glacier close up.
