Speech at Northern People Day

Dear friends,

I am very glad to be here on Northern People Day at the Riddu Riđđu Festival, and would like to give a special welcome to the Vepsians, who are this year’s Northern People.

I look on this day as a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the Vepsians and their culture. And I feel sure that the Vepsians themselves will enjoy meeting the Sami and all the other peoples represented at this festival.

I believe the Vepsians’ visit to the Riddu Riđđu Festival will promote and strengthen contact, not only between the indigenous peoples, but between all peoples in the Barents Region. Such contact allows us to learn more about each other and to benefit from each others’ ideas and experience. The more we know about each other, the closer our ties of friendship.

This people-to-people contact is one of the fundamental ideas behind the Barents Cooperation and forms an important element in the Government’s High North Strategy. The great value the Government attaches to the Festival is shown by the fact that in 2009 it was given cultural node status.

The Vepsians and the Sami have a good deal in common – their history and relationship to the majority culture, and their position in society at large. This also applies to the way these factors have influenced their sense of belonging and identity, and their language. The Vepsians, who come from the Karelian Republic in Russia, are regarded as one of the indigenous peoples in the Barents Region, together with the Sami and the Nenets.

The Veps and Sami languages are on the UN’s list of endangered languages, and I imagine that the strong influence of Russian and Norwegian have affected these peoples’ relationship with their own identity.

Both groups are experiencing changes in their traditional way of life as their communities adjust to the modern world. Their culture is no exception, as the Festival clearly shows, and as we will see for ourselves in the performances by the Vepsian bands Noid and Jousnen Jarved today.

We can regret these changes or we can see them as one of the strengths of these indigenous cultures. The process shows our great capacity to adapt to a changing world – whether it is to nature’s many differents moods or to changes in other conditions that shape our lives. This is why we have survived, and why we will continue to survive.

Our languages and our cultural expressions are a source of pleasure and enable us to develop further, as peoples and as neighbours – as long as we preserve our cultures and our languages. This is why it is so important for us to meet together, to share experience and cultural enjoyment.

The enthusiasm and engagement of young people is vital for preserving and developing the Vepsian and Sami cultures. I am very glad to see that the organisers have given children and young people such a large place in the Festival. I hope the Vepsians’ visit will form and strengthen netwroks between the indigenous youth – they represent our future!

I would like to conclude by again welcoming our Vepsian guests, and to say that I am very much looking forward to having a taste of Vepsian culture. I hope you will all get much pleasure from the Festival, and that it will give you inspiration and new ideas to take home.

Thank you for your attention.