OBITUARY

Professor Emeritus Ørnulv Vorren 12 March 1916 – 17 January 2007

Ørnulv Vorren. Photograph by Olga Kvalheim, Tromsø University Museum.

To summarize in a few words the vast amount of work Ørnulv Vorren put into Sami research and the development of the Department of Sami Ethnography at Tromsø University Museum is difficult.

Ørnulv Hermod Torgrim Vorren was born in Harstad, but was brought up in Neiden, Sør-Varanger, where his father was the headmaster of the local boarding school. Here Ørnulv gained impressions, experience and knowledge that moulded the basis of his later life and the ways he solved problems. For Ørnulv, problems were there to be solved. Through a systematic analysis of the tasks he had set himself, he worked steadfastly towards his final goal.

He took a masters degree in geography/ethnography at the University of Oslo, with a thesis on animal traps and reindeer fencing in Varanger. Through his education and work he gained experience directed towards schools and museums. Upon graduation he moved north again with his wife, Gerd Kjos Vorren. They started in Alta, where Ørnulv helped to establish Alta State High School and where he was the first fully qualified teacher to teach at the secondary school.

In the summer of 1949 he was employed in shared positions at Tromsø Museum and at the Teacher's Training College in Tromsø, where his wife was also employed as a music teacher. In the same year, the Department of Sami Ethnography was established at the museum, and in 1952 his position as curator became full-time, such that Ørnulv could plan his future at the museum. He was appointed head curator in 1959, and Professor of Sami Ethnography on 1 October 1971 in connection with the establishment of Tromsø University.

In the years after the Second World War, the museum spent time unpacking and reorganizing the collections that had been kept in store. Ørnulv used this period to get to grips with the tasks ahead, and sought help and advice from Just Knud Qvigstad (1853–1957). Qvigstad had given priority to collecting and publishing elements of the Sami spiritual culture, and this meant that the material culture now needed to be addressed. Ørnulv Vorren spent the first years travelling widely and developing a research plan. At the same time he established contacts with researchers at similar institutions in Sweden and Finland. This early phase was financed by the Norwegian Research Council, and a work plan for the Department of Sami Ethnography was finalized in 1950. Ørnulv followed this plan for the rest of his career and it is still an important basis for our work today. It included regional, thematic and specific research tasks, and filled 34 pages plus maps. Alf Isak Keskitalo (1996) later reviewed this plan as a research programme and its content from a perspective of permanent dwellings and nomadic life. He showed how the choice of perspective influences the form of expression.

While taking his masters degree in geography/ethnography, Ørnulv had Ole Solberg as his supervisor. Ole Solberg (1879–1946) was Professor and Director of the Ethnographic Museum, Oslo from 1917 to 1946. His knowledge and Sami research in North Norway led to the recruitment of students in geography and ethnography who gave priority to Sami research. Among Ørnulv's contemporaries were Johannes Falkenberg and Marie Krekling Johannessen, who both worked at Oslo Ethnographic Museum, and Knut Kolsrud who became professor at the newly established Institute of Ethnology at Oslo University.

Animal traps and reindeer fences (1944) and his study of trapping fences at Ucca Vuorjasj (1953), an enclosure fence where milking of the reindeer took place from the period of intensive reindeer herding, were the thematic start of Ørnulv Vorren's life-long research. As Keskitalo mentions in his review, Ørnulv developed further his research plan along the lines discussed at the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture in the 1920s, addressing the timespan from the origins of reindeer husbandry to a contemporary documentation (in the 1950s), as well as studies of the hunting and trapping society and sacrificial sites. His early studies of trapping reindeer were in collaboration with the ethnographer Ernst Manker, who had been working in Sweden. Manker (1893–1971) was, since 1939, Director of the Department of Sami Studies at the Nordic Museum in Stockholm. Their work concerning reindeer trapping at Gollevarre (1953) was the start of a close collaboration in both research and museum work. Vorren's work addressed different facets of reindeer trapping right through to his final years. The mapping and documentation of reindeer husbandry and the Sami nomadic way of life, first in Finnmark and later in Nordland south of Saltfjellet, laid the foundations of an understanding of reindeer husbandry as a way of living and cultural form.

Apart from his museum work, Vorren gave priority to expounding a new, general understanding of Sami culture. He published the book Sami Culture with Ernst Manker in 1957, and a new edition appeared in 1976. This was carried forward as a visual presentation in the form of an exhibition of Sami culture, which opened in Tromsø Museum in 1973. Both the book and the exhibition broke new ground in the presentation of Sami history and cultural traditions, and contributed to giving Sami culture an official status in Norwegian society. His priority for mediation was also expressed in a long series of lectures and broadcasts in Sami fora and in the daily press, Ottar, journals and exhibitions.

In connection with the establishment of the University of Tromsø in the early 1970s, Vorren had a special obligation in his position as professor. This involved teaching connected to the establishment of Sami subjects within social and ethnic relationships at the new Institute of Sami Studies, and gradually expanded to include teaching the Sami language at the Institute of Languages and Literature for many years.

Vorren was bursar at Tromsø Museum 1955–1965, when he also represented the collegiate in the Museum Council, and a member of the Planning and Building Committee for a new museum building, which was opened in 1961. He was Acting Director in 1962 and Director in 1966–1970. In this position he was also a member of the Provisional Council of the University of Tromsø in 1969–1971. As part of the museum's 100th anniversary, Vorren edited the publication Museum and University.

Apart from his roles within the Department of Sami Ethnography, Vorren had a series of posts within the museum and within the establishment of the university. He was on the board of the Norwegian Research Council in 1955–1966 and 1970–1974, and a member of the National Broadcasting Board in 1955–1964. In the latter he moved for an extension of air time for Sami radio, which later led to an increase in broadcasting in Sami by the Norwegian Broadcasting Company.

Internationally, Vorren was a member of the Nordic Ministerial Council's Advisory Committee for General Culture between 1972–1977, and the Nordic Council of Anthropological Research from 1945, foreign member of the Finno-Ugrian Society, Helsinki from 1953, foreign member of Föreningen för Lapska kulturvård/Lapin Čuvgetussearvi, Helsinki from 1953, foreign member of the Finnish Antiquarian Society, Helsinki from 1970 and corresponding member of the Kungliga Skytteanska Samfundet, Umeå from 1970. Ørnulv Vorren was appointed an honorary doctorate at the University of Umeå in 1973.

His efforts in the establishment of new Sami museums, revision of the law protecting ancient and historical sites and his contribution to the understanding of the protection of Sami relics in relation to the Cultural Heritage Act of 1978, where Sami relics were included and a new management system was established, should also be mentioned.

Although his daily work at Tromsø Museum ended officially in 1986, when he turned 70, he continued to work there for many years. On being asked, at his retirement, what kind of honour he would like to receive, he replied, a memorial volume. This was written with the aim to show how Ørnulv contributed to new thinking, and was presented to him in 1994, 8 years after his official retirement. Even then he was still in full production, but was now concentrating on completing items of research that had been postponed due to other obligations at the museum. In this book, a friend and colleague, Bjørn Aarseth, wrote about Vorren's role as a researcher and a mediator, and Tor Sveum (then University Librarian at Tromsø Museum) put together, as then, a complete bibliography of Ørnulv's publications. This bibliography has since expanded.

When we look back, Vorren's achievements and his focus on the tasks he set in the very beginning are impressive. Once his official obligations as professor had ended, Vorren settled down both in the museum and at home to publish material collected during a long career. After the publication of the memorial volume in 1994, he published four large works concerning emigration, skiing, reindeer trapping and reindeer husbandry, plus several smaller publications. He was working on a concluding publication right up to the end.

My last meeting with Ørnulv was in connection with a visit from Hattfjelldalen, where a great-niece of Thomas Renberg, her teacher and Thomas Renberg himself came to study the turf hut from Fagervollan, which is in our Sami exhibition (Figure 1). This was a meeting that was so typical of Vorren's collaboration with the local people. With them, he had an everlasting relationship concerning the knowledge of reindeer husbandry, the knowledge of the Sami way of life and culture, and its presentation both to his peers and to the public.

Figure 1. Thomas Renberg, Ørnulv Vorren and Laila Renberg visit the Sami exhibition at Tromsø University Museum. Photograph by Dikka Storm, Tromsø University Museum.

We commemorate Ørnulv Vorren with our deepest respect and gratitude.

Dikka Storm

Department of Sami Ethnography

Tromsø University Museum

Tromsø

Norway

Translated by Rob Barrett

Bibliography of Titles of Ørnulv Vorren after 1994

1994

Saami, Reindeer, and Gold in Alaska: the Emigration of Saami from Norway to Alaska [Samer, rein og gull i Alaska] (Prospect Heights: Waveland Press).

1995

Samiske oldski: skifunn i Nord-Norge fra 300 f.kr. til 1500 e.kr. i Nord-Norge (Stonglandseidet: Nordkalott-Forlaget).

1996

Geving, Bente, Schubert, Regina, Vorren, Ørnulv; Jakt Bente Geving; tekst av Regina Schubert og Ørnulv Vorren; [oversettelse til norsk: Liv Mette Larsen, til samisk: Synnøve Persen, til tysk: Christopher Petereit]

[Katalog utgitt i sammenheng med utstillingen Jakt, vist på følgende steder i 1996: Savio-musea, Kirkenes-Bodø kunstforening, Bodø-Troms fylkeskultursenter, Tromsø-Stabbursnes naturhus og museum, Lakselv-Várjjat sámi musea, Varangerbotn-Severomorsk, Russland]

1998

Villreinfangst i Varanger fram til 1600–1700 årene. Tromsø Museum skrifter XXVIII, Nordkalott-Forlaget, Finnsnes. Sammendrag på samisk og engelsk ved Alf Isak Keskitalo.

Om intensiv reindrift på Helgeland, Åarjel-saemieh, Årbok nr. 6, Snåsa. pp. 63–72

Old-samiske ski fra Sapmi Sameland i det nordlige Norge, Snø & ski (Yearbook). pp. 91–100

2002

Reindrift og nomadisme i Helgeland, Om intensiv reindrift på Helgeland, Tromsø Museums skrifter XXI, bind 3, Tromsø museum-Universitetsmuseet, Universitetet i Tromsø, Tromsø.