The collection of essays Sami Culture in a New Era: The Norwegian Sami Experience, for its part, contributes vitally to the study of contemporary Nordic society and its handling of issues involving the region's indigenous people. Here, Gaski has followed a different set of selection criteria, limiting the study to the Norwegian situation alone and surveying a broad array of topics ranging from language over healthcare to mass media. While several articles--notably Gaski's own introduction on Sami views of Sami culture and Nils Jernsletten's examination of Sami terminology for salmon, reindeer, and snow--underscore the strong cultural continuities within contemporary Sami life, the bulk of the articles examine new developments of the last several decades. Harald Eidheim's study of post-war Sami "ethno-political development" offers a nuanced and invaluable overview of the genesis of the Sami movement in Norway, the self-conscious espousal of a specifically Saimi political agenda among leaders of a polity once conspicuous for its seeming resignation to assimilative policies. Subtitled "The Invention of Selfhood," Eidheim's essay will hold much interest for the researcher wishing to compare the political aspirations of indigenous peoples in different parts of the modern world.

Other essays in the collection build on Eidheim's overall framework. Einar Niemi examines the historical evolution of recognition for Sami land rights, especially as related to interstate borders. Johan Klemet Haetta Kalstad surveys issues of renewable resource management in northern Norway, particularly as related to reindeer husbandry and compares Norwegian policy to "co-management" strategies developed in Canada during the last two decades. Siv Kvernmo presents an insightful overview of Sami healthcare, with attention to issues of mobility, cultural understanding, and recruitment of Sami personnel. Jan Henry Keskitalo compares recent efforts in the area of Sami higher education and examines the ideals and realities of such aspirations. Johan T. Solbakk's essay on Sami mass media provides a personal view of one of the most striking developments in recent Sami political activism: the emergence of a strong journalistic and broadcast presence in Northern Sami language. Harald Gaski's "Voice in the Margin" interrelates recent Sami literature and that emerging from indigenous communities elsewhere in the world, particularly the United States and Australia. In her "Sami Generations" Vigdis Stordahl discusses many of the intergenerational issues alluded to in the other essays of the collection and emphasizes the difficult process of cultural negotiation involved in the transformation of a once retreating Sami polity and a newly assertive Sami Movement.

Sami Culture in a New Era will prove to be of great interest to researchers interested in Nordic society in general as well as those studying indigenous peoples' (Fourth World) issues. In a course focusing particularly on Sami culture, however, it will be important to supplement this work with examinations devoted to the situation of Sami in other Nordic states. The Norwegian situation differs in many ways from that of Sweden and Finland, and it should not be taken as representative of current trends in either of these other countries or in the European Union as a whole. Useful supplementary texts in English include Kvist (1992), Beach (1994), Seurujarvi-Kari and Kulonen (1996), and Wheelersburg (1996). In an overview course on Sami culture taught in English, it would also be useful to combine this collection with Karl Nickul's (1977) now classic survey of Sami culture The Lappish Nation: Citizens of Four Countries.