{
  "id": "sami-joik",
  "title": "Joik",
  "type": "song",
  "summary": "The Sámi song-form that does not describe its subject but conjures it — you do not sing about someone, you joik them.",
  "body": "The joik (also yoik, or luohti) is the traditional song of the Sámi, the Indigenous people of Sápmi across northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Its most striking feature is as much grammatical as musical: a joik is not usually about a person, an animal or a place — it is that subject. To joik someone is to evoke and hold their essence in sound, a kind of sonic portrait, often without fixed words, built from vocables and a cyclical, open-ended melody.\n\nJoiks are intimate and relational. A person may have their own joik, given to them by others; joiks carry the memory of kin, of reindeer, of landscapes and moods across generations. There are joiks of tenderness, of teasing, of grief. The form is personal, improvisatory and tied to specific people and terrain — a way of remembering that is also a way of belonging.\n\nThe joik was long condemned as sinful and suppressed by missionaries and the assimilationist state, and much was lost; in recent decades it has become a proud emblem of Sámi identity and revival. As living Indigenous heritage, particular joiks belong to particular people and communities — what can be described here is only the shape of the tradition, never the songs themselves.",
  "culture": "Sámi",
  "region": "Sápmi — northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia",
  "language": "se",
  "transmission": "oral",
  "tags": [
    "song",
    "sami",
    "indigenous",
    "arctic",
    "identity"
  ],
  "sources": [],
  "confidence": "documented",
  "contributor": "seed",
  "added": "2026-07-12",
  "updated": "2026-07-12",
  "url": "https://crowdh.com/knowledge/sami-joik.html"
}