a song from Vilhelmina in Swedish Lapland, from Otto Donner, Lappalaisia lauluja (1876)
Vilhelmina lies in the South Sámi country of Swedish Lapland. In the late 1840s a Stockholm councillor named Grönlund wrote this short song down there from a fifteen-year-old Sámi girl, in a Swedish-style spelling and in a Sámi already mixed with Swedish words, and Otto Donner printed it in his book of Sámi songs in 1876. In four lines a poor, wandering Sámi sings of the roads of the earth and of a life that must come to an end.
Translation
I, a poor and wandering Sámi person,
on the toilsome roads of this earth,
who must wander all around the earth,
and so my time must come to its end.
Colophon
Translated from the Sámi of Otto Donner, Lappalaisia lauluja (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1876), no. 18. Donner had the song from Councillor Grönlund of Stockholm, who wrote it down in the late 1840s from the recitation of a fifteen-year-old Sámi girl in Vilhelmina Lapland, the same source as no. 17; Donner kept Grönlund's Swedish-style spelling. 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.
The language is the South Sámi of Vilhelmina, written much like the old Sámi book language of the Swedish Lapp districts, with Swedish words in it. Vandertekes "wandering" and vandertit "to wander" are Swedish vandra with Sámi endings; they are words of the song and are translated as such. Words were checked in E. Lindahl and J. Öhrling, Lexicon Lapponicum (Stockholm 1780), and in I. Halász, Déli-lapp szótár (Budapest 1891), which marks each South Sámi form with the district it was heard in. Samen is Sámi (Lindahl same, the Sámi people); vaivan is a poor wretch (Lindahl waiwan, Swedish stackare), and vaives is wretched, toilsome (Lindahl waiwes); ålmah is a person (Halász alämaj, Stensele); kaidnoi is the plural of kaidno, a road (Lindahl kaino, Halász keinoq, Frostviken); pir is around, about (Lindahl pir, pira); låptet is to end, finish (Lindahl). Jukko is Lindahl's relative pronoun "who, which", so the third line hangs on the first: "I ... who must wander". Every word of this song was found in the dictionaries or is Swedish, and none is left in Sámi; but some endings are read from their shape and are not in Lindahl's grammar: kalkam, taken as "I must" (Lindahl's first person is kalkab), and the Sámi endings of the Swedish vandertekes and vandertit.
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: Samin jelem
The Sámi text as printed by Donner (1876), no. 18, from the Project Gutenberg transcription, proofed against his German edition.
Mon samen vaivan ja vandertekes ålmah
Tan ädnam vaives kaidnoi nal,
Jukko kalkam vandertit kaik ädnamen pir,
Ja nau kalka mo aike låptet.
Source Colophon
Otto Donner, Lappalaisia lauluja (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1876), no. 18, in the spelling of Grönlund's manuscript. Public domain. Text from the Project Gutenberg transcription of Donner's book (PG #73262, 2024), proofed against the Sámi lines of his German edition, Lieder der Lappen (1876; Internet Archive identifier liederderlappen00unkngoog). In the second stanza the German edition prints nan where the Gutenberg text has nau; nau "so" (Lindahl, nau) is the word, and it is kept. The list of corrections at the end of the German edition changes nan to nau on its p. 128; that page could not be matched to this text, so the correction is not applied or relied on here: nau stands on the Gutenberg text. Donner's verse numbers, which mark every tenth verse in his longest songs, do not occur in this one.
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