Paper short abstract:

This is a debate on crafts and art, and in which ways apprenticeship is developed within a craft institute in the Sámi Land in Norway. Duodji and Dáidda, craft and art in the Sami language, are ways of learning a comprehension of one's surroundings through reinvention, making, and making mistakes.

Paper long abstract:

Duodji and Dáidda, craft and art, are ways of learning, living, and developing a comprehension of one's surroundings through making and making mistakes. Duodji is not simply craft, as well as Dáidda is not to be simply understood as art. The aim of this reflection is to notice that artistry is not intrinsically linked to the labels and functions of objects, but are part of the conversation that makes things in the world, and that mistakes are processes of making, of learning, and of inventing a world of significance. This paper wishes to address the concepts and methods of learning, and how it is connected to the intrinsic relationship between humans and their surroundings. Learning by doing is the way the Sámi passes on knowledge. It is the way one should learn Duodji, I have been told. There is no course guide, no master structure on how one should learn given subject, or the time frame certain subject should be transmitted. Duodji, and its processes, provide the sense that, indeed, we as craftspeople, are not simply learning a technique, or making a product, but strolling into a forest, a familiar, but living and moving forest. In doing so, learning is not simply acquired knowledge, but is the plethora of internalised conversations with the materials and movements of the world.