a song from Utsjoki, from Otto Donner, Lappalaisia lauluja (1876)
A joik is the Sámi way of singing a person, a beast or a place by calling it up in sound. This one, for the wolf, comes from Utsjoki at the northern tip of Finland; A. Laiti gave it to Otto Donner, who printed it in his 1876 book of Sámi songs. In three lines it names the wolf, sets nine valleys beside a tail held between the legs, and calls him a rascal.
Translation
Wolf tē jō, wolf ī i!
Nine valleys, tail between the legs
Rascal tē jo, tē jo ā ā!
Colophon
Translated from the North Sámi of Otto Donner, Lappalaisia lauluja (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1876), no. 16, a song from Utsjoki that A. Laiti communicated to Donner. Donner printed a Finnish translation after each song; it was not consulted. The text used is the Project Gutenberg transcription of Donner's book, with the Sámi lines proofed against the Sámi of his German edition, Lieder der Lappen, 1876. Words were checked in the Sámi–Norwegian glossary that J. A. Friis printed in his Lappiske Sprogprøver (1856) and in his larger Ordbog over det lappiske Sprog (1887): kumppi is Friis's gumpe, a wolf (1856); ovtsi is ovce, nine (1887); vụömi is from vuobme, which Friis gives as a broad valley with a river running through it, and also as a tract of forest (1887); säipi is sæjbe, a tail (1856), and Friis notes that a word made from it, sæibag, "long-tail", is said of the wolf (1887). Ǟtsi is read as Friis's acce or hacce (1887), the space between an animal's hind legs, whose own example is accai sæibes rottit, to tuck the tail between the legs; A similar change of a to ǟ is seen in the halibut's name in no. 25 (Palda in its title, Pǟltīs in its first line). So ǟtsi säipi is read as a tail between the legs; the reading rests on that one entry. The middle line sets its words side by side with no verb to join them, and the English leaves them side by side. Skalkku is read as Friis's skalkka, a rogue or rascal (1887); the ending -u is not explained by either dictionary, so "rascal" is a reading, not a certainty. Tē jō, ī i and ā ā are joik syllables and are kept as sung; tē jo sounds like the small words de "then" and jo "already", but it is treated here as part of the refrain.
No English translation of this song is known to us.
© 2026 Tianmu Anglican Church. This English translation is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: you may share and adapt it for non-commercial use with credit to the Good Works Library, tianmu.org. The source text keeps its own terms. For other uses, see Rights and Reuse.
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Source Text: Kumppi
The Sámi text as printed by Donner (1876), no. 16, from the Project Gutenberg transcription, proofed against his German edition.
Kumppi tē jō, kumppi ī i!
Ovtsi vụömi ǟtsi säipi
Skalkku tē jo, tē jo ā ā!
Source Colophon
Otto Donner, Lappalaisia lauluja (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1876), no. 16, from Utsjoki, communicated by A. Laiti. Public domain. Text from the Project Gutenberg transcription of the book (PG #73262, 2024), with the Sámi lines proofed against the Sámi of Donner's German edition, Lieder der Lappen (1876; Internet Archive identifier liederderlappen00unkngoog). Donner numbers every tenth line in his longer songs; no number falls within a song of three lines, so none is left out here. Donner's phonetic letters are kept as printed, including ǟ, ā, ē, ī, ō and the dotted ụ.
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