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A life worth living:

A documentary film project by Ingrid Jonsson Wallin, Hållbus Totte Mattsson and Árni Sverrisson

The Saami are the aboriginal peoples of the Scandinavian mountains and their destinies took a radical turn, like everyone else’s, with the advent of industrialization and colonialism. The film relates the story of three young Saami families at the beginning of the twentieth century.  Each found their own path into modern society and exploited the new opportunities that emerged. They could continue as nomads or integrate themselves in settled Swedish society or find ways of combining these alternatives. One family continues with the herding but on a large scale, another pursues different “middle-class” jobs, as photographers, tailors, teachers and mailmen and the third family builds up a business based on tourism, music and photography.  Through archival photographs and film as well as interviews with descendants we follow their struggle for a new kind of life. The soundtrack of the film is based on musicological research (yoik, dances, popular songs, etc.), but it also includes the music suggested by instruments and other artefacts in the photographs. The houses of these families still stand and images old and new of these durable artefacts tie together the time frame of the film. In this way, we connect diverse worlds, theirs and ours, with visual methods and bring the result to different publics for further reflection.  

Ingrid Jonsson-Wallin is Senior Lecturer in Film Editing at Dalarna University College in Falun, Sweden.

Hållbus Totte Mattsson is Senior Lecturer in Sound and Music Production at the College and part of the experimental music ensembles “Hedningarna” and “Hurdy-Gurdy”.

Árni Sverrisson is Professor of Sociology at Stockholm University and Professor of Visual Culture at the College.