The Sámi Museum Siida is the national museum of the Finnish Sámi population and a national specialised museum in Finland. We store the spiritual and material culture of the Finnish Sámi in our collections and display it in exhibitions and publications. Our main purpose is to support the identity and the cultural self-esteem of the Sámi. The Sámi Museum has partnering museums that store Sámi culture in the Nordic countries and in Russia. We are also a member of the world’s indigenous peoples museum network.
The Ájtte Museum is the main museum for Sámi culture in Sweden and a special museum for the nature and culture of the mountain range. It is situated in Jåhkåmåhkke/Jokkmokk, just north of the Arctic Circle and was opened to the public in June 1989. The name Ájtte is the Lule Sámi word for a storehouse. In a storehouse you keep your valuables and thus Ájtte is meant to be a place where Sámi valuables are maintained to serve as sources for research, development and education associated of the Sámi culture. According to the statutes, the purpose is to conduct main museum activities in Sweden for Sámi culture, to conduct special museum activities for the mountain region in Sweden and run an information center for tourism in the fell area.
Saemien Sijte is a South Sámi Museum and Cultural Center in Snåsa, located in the heart of the southern Sámi area. In the museum you can get better acquainted with the South Sámi culture and history – past and present. The museum guides give you a guided tour around the exhibitions and Sámi courtyard. Oral storytelling is very important in the Sami culture, so a guided tour of the museum is highly recommended. There are permanent and temporary exhibitions throughout the year.
University of Lapland is located at the Arctic Circle in Rovaniemi, Finland, and is the northernmost University in the EU. It was founded in 1979 and has four faculties and three multidisciplinary research institutes. The University has 5,000 under- and postgraduate students and 6,400 students in adult education. Faculty of Art and Design is one of the four faculties, Arctic Art and Design being one of the strategic spearheads of the university. The University of Lapland also focuses on Arctic and Northern research, approached from the perspectives of people, society and the environment, as well as art, design and media. The University has been awarded the national-level responsibility to promote expertise on Sámi law and social scientific research relating to the Sámi.
Luleå University of Technology (LTU) is renowned for applied research in close collaboration with national and international companies and stakeholders. The university has 1,600 employees and 15,000 students distributed over four campuses. The LTU sees the project as a highly interesting opportunity to utilise and advance its competence and expertise in research and development of interactive, game-based and multisensory technologies and software architectures to solve an important challenge of presenting and disseminating the Sámi cultural heritage to wider audiences across borders of the Arctic region. LTU researchers have particularly a strong track record in developing interactive cultural heritage technologies and serious games using storytelling, personalisation, and augmented and virtual reality. Thus,the LTU will contribute to the concept design of the technology pilots, as well as their overall technical design and implementation. The LTU seeks to make the technological pilots to be sustainable by utilising a cross-platform and open source components and by providing content editing tools so that the solution’s content can be maintained and updated by museum staff for years to come.