Published in 1991, ‘The Sun, My Father’ (Northern Sámi: Beaivi, áhcázan) is a poetry collection by Finnish Sámi author Nils-Aslak Valkeapää that won the ‘Nordic Council Literature Prize‘ in 1991. Nils Aslak Valkeapää was an internationally active Sámi cultural personality who grew up in a family of reindeer herders and was trained as a schoolteacher. His interest in spreading the Sámi culture prevailed little by little: joiks, poems, songs, visual art, film music, political written works he produced a lot of materials on many different artistic disciplines. His home was in Beahttet, a town on the Swedish-Finnish border: he often felt lonely in big cities, but never on his farm in the open spaces among the winds, the river and the birds. ‘The Sun, My father’ is an epic about the Sámi people: using images and poetry, he tells the story from the earliest known rock engravings until today’s Sápmi. Moreover, the book can also be read as an internal voyage in Sami cultural consciousness with its intimate associations with nature and tradition. The book breathes justified pride in the strange ancient heritage but, at the same time, it wants to be understood in a modern, urbanised world. It is common knowledge that ‘The Sun, My Father’ has represented a great source of inspiration for many young artistically active Sámi. According to the Adjudicating Committee “the author has created a work which links the past and the present, documentation and fiction in an untried and innovative form. The book gives expression to Sámi cultural history and shows the readers the riches of the Sámi language. The double and multiple substances of the words inspire the reader to reflect, give the Sámi faith and pride on behalf of the language and have a ground-breaking effect on all one dimensional use of language
