Photo: Sigga-Marja Magga
Kielipankki – The Language Bank of Finland offers a comprehensive set of resources, tools and services in a high-performance environment. Marko Jouste tells us about his research on Sámi culture and about his work with the Giellagas Corpus of Spoken Sámi languages.
I am Marko Jouste, a university lecturer and associate professor (Title of docent) specializing in Sámi culture at the Giellagas Institute for Sámi Studies, University of Oulu. Since the early 2010s, I have been an active member of the Giellagas Institute, where my research focuses on various aspects of Sámi culture, including music, history, and heritage. Additionally, I serve as the main developer of the Sámi Cultural Archive, located within the institute. Beyond my academic duties, I also work as a musician, performing with music groups such as Ulla Pirttijärvi & Ulda and Suõmmkar.
My research focuses primarily on Sámi music, culture and history, with a particular emphasis on historical audio recordings. Currently, I am leading several active research projects, including The Northern Sámi Fairy Tale Book 1956 – Returning Historical Archive Material to the Community and Developing Ethical and Legal Practices for Open Access (funded by the Kone Foundation), and Skolt Sámi Dance: The Transformative Journey of Tradition, Resilience, and the Arctic Quadrille, a collaborative project with dance researcher Petri Hoppu (funded by the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation). Another project is Jaakko Sverloff’s Life Story – From Suonikylä in Petsamo Through the World Wars to a Leader of the Skolt Sámi (also supported by the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation).
Additionally, I have contributed to the Research Council of Finland’s key project, the Skolt Sámi Memory Bank. This pilot project, operational between 2016 and 2018, focused on the management and cultural revitalization of Skolt Sámi music, language, and cultural materials preserved in sound archives in Finland. Through these projects, I aim to promote community engagement, advance ethical practices in archival work, and contribute to the revitalization and preservation of Sámi cultural heritage.
Kielipankki – The Language Bank of Finland is closely connected to my research through its integration with archival work. Since the 2010s, the Sámi Cultural Archive has collaborated with the Language Bank to develop Sámi language materials for broader use in both academic research and Sámi language communities. The Giellagas Institute’s Corpus of Spoken Sámi Languages currently includes three Sámi languages spoken in Finland: Northern Sámi, Aanaar (Inari) Saami, and Skolt Saami. Notably, the first sub corpus added to the Language Bank was the Northern Sámi sample corpus. In spring 2025, this collection will be expanded with the inclusion of the Aanaar Saami spoken language corpus.
The FIN-CLARIN consortium, which is the organization behind the Language Bank of Finland, has also provided funding for corpus development work at the Sámi Cultural Archive in 2014, 2019, and 2022. This collaboration significantly enhances the accessibility, preservation, and usability of Sámi language materials, aligning with my broader focus on Sámi culture and heritage. In my research, I extensively use language technology tools such as the Korp service, which facilitates the analysis and exploration of linguistic data, particularly in the context of Sámi languages.
Petri Hoppu & Marko Jouste (2025). Skolt Saami Dance: The Transformative Journey of Tradition, Resilience, and the Arctic Quadrille. London: Bloomsbury. [Painossa]
Jouste, Marko (2022) ”Skolt Saami Leuʹdd. Tradition as a medium of individual and collective remembrance”. The Sámi World. Edited by Sanna Valkonen, Áile Aikio, Saara Alakorva and Sigga-Marja Magga. London: Routledge, pp. 53–71.
Jouste, Marko & Mettovaara, Jukka & Morottaja, Petter & Partanen, Niko (2022). Archive Infrastructure and Spoken Language Corpora for Saami Languages in Finland. The 6th Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries 2022 Conference (DHNB 2022), Uppsala, Sweden, March 15-18, 2022. CEUR Workshop Proceedings. Aachen: RWTH Aachen University, pp. 269–278. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3232/paper25.pdf
Jouste, Marko & Lehtola, Veli-Pekka & Juutinen, Markus & Tanhua, Sonja (2022). ”Jääkk Sverloff johtajana ja kulttuuritulkkina – Kolttasaamelaisten historian käänteitä 1900-luvulla”. [Jääkk Sverloff as a Leader and a Cultural Interpreter – Turning points of Skolt Saami history in 20th century]. Suomen rajaseutujen kolonialismi. [Colonialism of Finnish Borderlands]. Toim. Rinna Kullaa, Janne Lahti ja Sami Lakomäki. Helsinki: Gaudeamus.
Jouste, Marko (2020). ”Suonikylän kolttasaamelainen itkuperinne 1900-luvulla”. [The Skolt Saami Lament Tradition of Suonikylä in the 20th Century]. Etnomusikologian vuosikirja Vol 32. Toim. Janne Mäkelä, Kaj Ahlsved, Viliina Silvonen. Helsinki: Suomen etnomusikologinen seura, pp. 10–45. https://doi.org/10.23985/evk.90118
Marko Jouste, Markus Juutinen, Eino Koponen (2020). ”Kolttasaamelaisen Näskk Moshnikoffin leuʹdd-kielen idiolekti ”. [The Idiolect of leuʹdd Language of Skolt Saami Näskk Moshnikoff]. Kulttuurintutkimus Vol 37, 1–2, pp. 32–56. Toim. Janne Saarikivi, Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen. Joensuu: Kulttuurintutkimuksen seura ry. https://journal.fi/kulttuurintutkimus/article/view/98099
Taarna Valtonen, Kati Kallio, Marko Jouste (2019). ”Olaus Sirman runojen vertailevaa luentaa -runojen poetiikka suhteessa suullisiin ja kirjallisiin lähikulttuureihin”. [Comparative Reading of Poems by Olaus Sirma. The Poetics of Poems in Relation to Oral and Literal Cultures Nearby]. Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seuran Aikakauskirja 97. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura, pp. 109–152. https://doi.org/10.33340/susa.75266
Marko Jouste, Markus Juutinen, Miika Lehtinen (2019): ”Isak Saba ja Paččjogas 1919:s čohkejuvvon nuortalaš leuʹddat. Isak Saba og de skoltesamiske leuʹddene som ble samlet inn i Paččjokk i 1919”. [Isak Saba and the Skolt Saami Leuʹdds Collected in Paččjogg in 1919]. Optegnelser. Isak Sabas folkeminnesamling. Čállosat. Isak Saba álbmotmuitočoakkáldat, Norsk Folkeminnelags skrifter 173 Oslo: Skandinavian Academic Press, pp. 283–301.
Jouste, Marko (2017). ”Áillohaš ja uuden joiun synty”. [Nils-Aslak Valkeapää and the Birth of the New Yoik]. Minä soin. Mun čuojan: Kirjoituksia Nils-Aslak Valkeapään elämäntyöstä. Toim. Valtonen, Taarna; Valkeapää, Leena. Rovaniemi: Lapland university press, pp. 233–258.
Marko Jouste (2011). Tullâčalmaaš kirdâččij ’tulisilmill lenteli’ – Inarinsaamelainen 1900-luvun alun musiikkikulttuuri paikallisen perinteen ja ympäröivien kulttuurien vuorovaikutuksessa. [The One Who Flew with the Fire eyes – The Musical Culture of the Aanar Sámi People in the Interaction of the Local Tradition and the Neighbouring Cultures]. Acta Universitatis Tamperensis 1650. Tampere: Tampere University Press. http://urn.fi/urn:isbn:978-951-44-8551-0
The FIN-CLARIN consortium consists of a group of Finnish universities along with CSC – IT Center for Science and the Institute for the Languages of Finland (Kotus). FIN-CLARIN helps the researchers of Social Sciences and Humanities to use, refine, preserve and share their language resources. The Language Bank of Finland is the collection of services that provides the language materials and tools for the research community.
All previously published Language Bank researcher interviews are stored in the Researcher of the Month archive. This article is also published on the website of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Helsinki.
