The earliest printed book in Northern Sámi

Luther, Martin / Lund, Morten (transl.). Doktor Marten Lutter Utza Katekismusaz / D. Mort. Luthers Liden eller mindre Cathechismus.

€ 15,000.00

A rare first edition of a bilingual Northern Sámi catechism, the first printed work to appear in the language, predating the first grammar of the language by twenty years. The work of Morten Lund, a Norwegian missionary amongst the Sámi who was a talented linguist, this volume is a major monument in the linguistic history of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic.

Together with Martin Luther's Small Catechism in a facing-page Dano-Norwegian and Northern Sámi edition, the volume contains quotations for the strengthening of the faith and useful answers to questions about the rudiments of Christianity. Published by the Royal Danish College of Missionaries in Copenhagen, this volume is small enough to be easily carried in the pocket of preacher in the field.

Morten Lund (1686-1757) was born in Snåsa in northern Norway and in 1718 he undertook his first mission to the far north of the Scandinavian peninsula. The expedition was led by Thomas von Westen, who had been appointed to lead the mission to the Sámi (then commonly known as "Lapps" or "Finns") on the establishment of the Royal Danish College of Missionaries in 1714. This activity among the peoples of the Arctic was not merely a religious endeavour, but went hand-in-hand with political expansion and the growth of colonialism. The Kingdoms of Denmark-Norway and Sweden both had little knowledge of the far north, and the first half of eighteenth century saw a scramble to establish firm power over the region, with a fixed border between the two not established until 1751.

This Sámi catechism was published the year after von Westen's death, and without his leadership, the Danish-Norwegian church began to impose a more aggressively assimilationist policy among the Sámi, insisting that teaching be conducted in Dano-Norwegian only. The first grammar of Northern Sámi appeared in 1748, and the first dictionaries in 1752 and 1768. In spite of this, the shift in missionary policy meant that it was not until over a hundred years later, in 1832, that the linguist Rasmus Rask laid the groundwork for what would ultimately evolve into the modern standardised Northern Sámi orthography. The only preceding printed testimony to the language is a word-list collected by the English navigator Stephen Burrough in 1557 and printed by Hakluyt in 1589. This catechism thus stands out as a remarkably early monument of the Sámi tongue.

Formerly commonly referred to as "Lapps" or "Finns" by their Norwegian and Swedish neighbours to the south, the Sámi are testified as living in the far north as far back as the accounts of Tacitus ("Fenni") and Ptolemy ("Phinnoi") in the first and second centuries AD. They traditionally lived a nomadic life based on herding in areas too far north for an agricultural existence to be sustainable. Although medieval Norwegians, such as the traveller Ohthere who visited the court of King Alfred the Great (871-899) in England, took tribute from the Sámi, it was not until the modern colonial period that the Scandinavian powers established full control over their lands. Colonialist and assimilationist policies led to the weakening of their languages and culture, but Northern Sámi today remains the most widely spoken of the Sámi languages, with around 25,000 speakers.

This volume is a considerable rarity, with a search of institutional holdings via OCLC, KvK and BIBSYS revealing only 11 other copies of the 1728 first printing, mostly in Norwegian institutions. Two further copies are known of a reprint from 1757.

A remarkable piece of the linguistic history of Europe's far north.