The memory of an entire people: The tale of the life of the Sámi. The testimony of an archaic way of life and its threat from modern civilization. Johan Turi was born in 1854, at a time when the persecution and displacement of his people from their ancestral hunting and grazing grounds in the far north of Finland and Norway began. His only - and unique - book was on his mind for decades before it was written down. Johan Turi presents the world of hunters and nomads: their survival techniques, their medicine, their understanding of nature, their beliefs, their history, their literature, which includes their myths, prayers, and songs. What does it mean, and how does it feel when an entire society depends on a symbiosis with an animal, the reindeer? How do you protect small children from the cold? How do you defend yourself against officials who are strangers?.