We visited Zoya a few times on the Russian side of the border that runs between Norway, Finland and Russia. She is one of around 200 people from the indigenous Skolt Sàmi culture living in Russia. She has an amazing memory that some elderly people have: she recalls every detail and she can talk for days and days – about how she travels across the borders to visit relatives, how they came and took her father in 1937. He was with the reindeers. She talks about the deportation. They waited for her father for three days. This was one month before Zoya was born. He was accused of stealing 124 reindeer. She received a document in 1987, stating that she was no longer a “child of an enemy of the people”.

Zoya tells us about the village flooding, because of the power plant that the Finns built in 1963. She loves to perform at festivals. She tells about the war, and about her work in the Sàmi Language Council. We like to listen to her when she speaks one of the two Skolt Sàmi dialects she knows – the “Motovsky” dialect – because she speaks every word so tenderly and carefully. She used to speak that dialect with her mother and a few aunts, but they have all passed away now.

“They say my language sounds like a song,” she says.

	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sàmi_languages At present there are nine living Sami languages: 1. Southern Sàmi. 2. Ume Sàmi. 3. Pite Sàmi. 4. Lule Sàmi. 5. Northern Sàmi. 6. Skolt Sàmi. 7. Inari Sàmi. 8. Kildin Sàmi. 9. Ter Sàmi. Darkened area represents municipalities that recognise Sàmi as an official language.

Sàmi history is quite well documented, as for instance in the Sàmi Encyclopedia at http://www.helsinki.fi/~sugl_smi/senc/en/index.htm