Contribution short abstract:

Sámi narratives were for long time represented as collective, anonymous, and generalized. I have studied how three men In Jokkmokk, Sweden challenged this by performing at the annual fair from the mid-1960s until the 2010s, wanting people to hear stories from their home environment.

Contribution long abstract:

Sámi narratives were for long time represented as collective, anonymous, and generalized. In recent times, Sámi storytellers have performed in public, showing otherwise. The social force in the storytelling and especially in the yoik has primordial forces that survived centuries of oppression from the dominant powers in the north. The purpose of this paper is to highlight a generation of male yoikers I call the three tenors, from the Jokkmokk area in northern Sweden, and see their significance for the revitalization of yoik. In the narrative there is the language and it follows you throughout your life and is part of your story, you can also call it a future narrative, that is, you have the future in your story. Events and stories are, following Julie Cruikshank, something the narrator has been part of and experienced, which must then be interpreted to a listener, who in turn makes his interpretation. The narrator is himself, he usually talks about himself in the first person. Perspectives can shift quickly, also between performers. All stories have a moral point, but the narrator rarely speaks about it explicitly. The reader or listener must make that interpretation themselves. The stories create a world for the listener, provide an entrance to the narrator's inner framework and invite the listener to feel the meaning of morality. The three tenors have contributed to revitalizing yoik when it was not obvious to perform yoik from a stage. They did it because they wanted to present their stories.