COMPROMISO RELIGIOSO

Inger, a woman in her early 40s, was born and brought up in Ájluokta. She rarely spoke at great length of her upbringing, but I knew that, although she regularly makes the gáppte

nowadays, she had not worn or learnt to make the garment as a child. On one occasion towards the end of summer I was, however, rather surprised as she suddenly opened up and spoke of some memories from her teenage years. Her recollection was prompted by the confession of May-Britt, a woman of the same age, who now had decided she wanted to wear the gáppte for the first time. May-Britt said that she had never been allowed to wear the gáppte by her parents as they had worried she might be bullied by her non-Sámi peers in school. May-Britt uttered a short and rather sad laugh and said that she instead had been teased by some of the Lulesámi children who had worn the gáppte. “They shouted at me a few times that I wasn’t an ekte same (N) (real Sámi) because I never wore the gáppte and couldn’t speak the Lulesámi language,” May-Britt recounted49. She went on to describe how she had felt uncomfortable with the thought of wearing the garment even as an adult as she

49 _{A connection can be drawn from May-Britt’s story of the complexity of the relation between clothing and} identity to Mulk-Raj Anand’s literary novel Untouchable (1940 [1935]). Anand describes the life of Bakha, a low caste sweeper, living in an Indian outcaste colony during the time of the Raj (British empire). Bakha is well aware that higher castes look at him as an inferior human being and his wish is to become like the British in order to be met with equality. One day Bakha is told that he can become like the British by wearing the same clothes as them. However, when Bakha dresses in ’British clothing’ he is mocked by his father and Indian friends for pretending to be someone that he is not.

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still wanted to live up to the wishes of her parents, who until they died only a few years back had not wanted her to wear it. On the other hand, she also felt uneasy about not wearing the gáppte as she felt that some Lulesámi villagers expected that she should wear it.

However, now, May-Britt felt that she wanted to wear the garment at her son’s confirmation ceremony the following year to manifest a tie between him and herself. Inger, who seemed to identify with May-Britt’s story, said:

It was the same for me and my sister. We were not allowed to wear the gáppte by our parents. I remember that we used to sneak in to the neighbour’s house to look at the gáppte that hung in her wardrobe. She was a very kind woman and sometimes she let us try it on. The dress was much too big for us of course, but we stood in front of the mirror and thought that we looked so beautiful! I can’t remember that we ever thought about if the garment was Sámi or not, or why we weren’t allowed to wear it… for us it was just a beautiful dress. Then as we got older we decided to attend a course in making the gáppte. At first my parents were not so happy about it, but they accepted our decision and after a while my mother became interested as well. Today she and I sit and make the garment together!

Once, in winter, when I asked Inger’s mother if her children had worn the gáppte when they were small she said:

No, they didn’t. At that time everyone wore ‘Western’ clothes. They also didn’t learn how to make handicraft. There wasn’t any need for them to learn. My children were busy, when they finished school in the afternoon they had to do their homework and after they graduated all of them went into further education. Today they all have good jobs! I learnt to make handicraft when I grew up because I had to for running the family and my children had to learn other things so they got jobs. It’s as simple as that!

She stopped and looked out the window on the light snowfall. Then she turned to me and said, with a somewhat saddened voice:

Sometimes my children have been angry and questioned me why they didn’t learn to make the gáppte or speak the Lulesámi language. I tell them that the times were different then. We Sámi thought that we had to become Norwegians to come up and forwards in the world.

A moment of silence passed and we both looked out at the snow. Then, she said, with a sense of pride, “But when my children became adults they learnt the Lulesámi language. Both my daughters have also learnt to make the gáppte and all my children wear the garment nowadays on special occasions. Who would have thought that thirty or forty years ago?”

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