Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

SAMI

Jokkmokk celebrates world sausage record

A record breaking sausage was the star of the show at the start of the annual autumn fair in Jokkmokk, northern Sweden, on Friday.

Published: 27 August 2011 09:38 CEST
Jokkmokk celebrates world sausage record

The sausage, measuring over one hundred metres broke the previous world record, of 80 metres, also made for the same festival back in 1992. Jokkmokk has put itself on the map for its feat, during the annual fair which is now taking place for the 32nd time.

Making the giant sausage was no mean feat according to those involved in its preparation. Apparently it took four people some 150 hours to put it together.

Magnus Kvickström managing director of Jokkmokk’s Korv told reporters, “The only problem we had was that we had to make a special order for the sausage skin.”

The sausage proved to be the star attraction at a show which has guaranteed itself publicity over the years and brought increasing tourism to the town which lies in the northernmost part of the country, some 170 kilometres north west of Luleå.

The town is perhaps best known for being a central hub for Sweden’s Sami population. Each year, in celebration of its culture another annual market, which is held every February, is a longstanding tradition that goes back over 400 years.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

SAMI

Swedish museum to return Sami remains to village

Uppsala's university museum is to return a Sami skeleton to ethnic Sami living in Arctic Lapland, following a campaign by the Sami parliament, Amnesty, and the Bishop of Luleå.

Published: 17 June 2022 08:26 CEST
Swedish museum to return Sami remains to village

The skeleton came from a Sami from the village of Arjeplog in Sweden’s northernmost Norrbotten county, who was serving a life sentence at Stockholm’s Långholmen prison when he died. The skeleton had been on display at Gustavianum, Uppsala University’s Museum. 

“The government has today decided that Uppsala University should be able to return human remains, in the form of a mounted skeleton, to the Arjeplog Sami association,” the government said in a press release.

“The university’s request has been prompted by a request from the Arjeplog Sami association requesting the repatriation of the remains. Uppsala University has determined that Arjeplog’s Sami association has a legitimate claim on the remains and that the association will be able to ensure a dignified reception.” 

Sweden’s universities and museums have been gradually returning the Sami remains and artefacts collected in the 19th and early 20th century when research institutes such as Uppsala’s State Institute for Race Biology, sought to place Sami below ethnic Swedes through studying eugenics and human genetics. 

Lund University returned Sami remains earlier this year, and in 2019, the remains of more than 25 individuals were returned by Västerbotten Museum to Gammplatsen, an old Sami meeting place on the Umeå River in southern Lapland. 

Mikael Ahlund, chief of the Uppsala University Museum, said that the skeleton was one of “about 20 to 25” that the museum had been given responsibility for in about 2010, when the university’s medical faculty was clearing out its old collections, and had never been put on display. 

He said it was “a bit unclear how these remains were collected and how they were used”. 

“It’s a complex history at the end of the 19th century, with teaching anatomy. They also had a connection to the ideology of the period, the idea of races and the different anatomy of races, so that’s the dark shadow of that period.” 

In a press release last November, Margaretha Andersson, the head of Uppsala’s Museums, said that in 1892, when the man died, there was nothing strange about prisons donating the bodies of dead prisoners to university medical departments.

“In the old days, it was not unusual that the bodies from people who died in prison were passed to the university’s medical and research departments,” she said. 

Ahlund said that the museum had always been willing to return the skeleton to the Sami association, but that there had been bureaucratic hurdles to doing so. 

“What you need to know is that we are Swedish government institution, so we can’t just repatriate them as we would like ourselves, it needs to be a decision from the government, which is what happened today.” 

He said that the skeleton would be delivered to Arjeplog “as soon as possible”. “We expect it to happen early autumn, or something like that.”

SHOW COMMENTS