Abstract

Nils-Aslak Valkeapää (1943–2001), or Áillohaš (his Sámi artist name), was arguably the most recognized Sámi-artist and activist of his time. He was a multidisciplinary artist who expressed his vision through various media and modes: sounds, words, and images. His musical career included both traditional yoik and modern, experimental sound art; his career as a poet led him to publish several books, where words, images, and graphic design formed multimodal art works. In visual arts, he used ancient Sámi symbols to find a new visual language. In this article, we argue that his work in different artistic fields formed a unified, transmedial whole, with transmediality understood as a sub-genre of intermediality where works realized in different media refer to a common, non-media specific content. His transmedial artistic activities were tied to his political activism as a member of Sámi community, but at the same time they expressed a global, holistic, and ecological world view.