Johan Turi

{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2024}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Johan Turi

| image = Porträtt av Johan Turi - SSME031007.jpg

| image_size =

| caption = Johan Turi

| birth_date = 12 March 1854

| birth_place = Kautokeino, Norway

| death_date = {{d-da|30 November 1936|12 March 1854}}

| death_place = Jukkasjärvi, Sweden

| occupation = Sami author, reindeer herder

}}

Johan Turi, born Johannes Olsen Thuri also spelt Johan Tuuri or Johan Thuri or Johan Thuuri (12 March 1854 – 30 November 1936) was the first Sami author to publish a secular work in a Sami language.{{cite web |url=http://www.eng.samer.se/1273 |title=www.eng.samer.se - Johan Turi |website=www.eng.samer.se |access-date=17 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100820193506/http://www.eng.samer.se/1273 |archive-date=20 August 2010 |url-status=dead}} His first book was called Muitalus sámiid birra (An Account of the Sami) and tells about the life of people herding reindeer in the Jukkasjärvi region of northern Sweden at the beginning of the 20th century. An eclectic and nuanced text, Muitalus includes details on Sami traditions of child rearing, hunting, healing, yoik, and folklore.{{cite book|last1=Cocq|first1=Coppélie|title=Revoicing Sámi Narratives. North Sámi Storytelling at the Turn of the 20th Century|date=2008|publisher=Sámi dutkan|location=Umeå}} At its heart the text aims to draw outsiders' attention to the intrinsic value of Sami culture.

Turi was born in Kautokeino, Norway, but moved with his family to the Talma Sámi community near Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, in the 1880s.{{cite journal |last1=Svonni |first1=Mikael |title=Johan Turi: First Author of the Sámi |journal=Scandinavian Studies |date=2011 |volume=83 |issue=4 |pages=483–490 |jstor=23343096 |doi=10.1353/scd.2011.0018 |s2cid=161737016 }} In 1904, he met the art student Emilie Demant Hatt on a train in northern Scandinavia. Through an interpreter, he told her he wanted to write a book about Lapps, while she told him she wanted to be a nomad. Three years later, having learned the Sami language, Demant-Hatt returned to northern Scandinavia and lived with Turi's family. In 1908, Turi and Demant-Hatt lived in a mountain cabin where she assisted him with his manuscript.{{cite web|url=http://www.barbarasjoholm.com/travels/hatt.html|title=Emilie Demant Hatt|work=barbarasjoholm.com|access-date=24 July 2010|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110707211838/http://www.barbarasjoholm.com/travels/hatt.html|archive-date=7 July 2011}} Turi died in Jukkasjärvi.

The book has been translated into some ten languages, including Swedish, Danish, Finnish, English, Norwegian, German, French, Italian, Hungarian and Japanese.

In 2011, Nordic Studies Press published an English edition of Turi's An Account of the Sami, translated by folklorist and professor of Scandinavian Studies Thomas A. DuBois.{{Cite web|url=https://nordicstudiespress.myshopify.com/products/an-account-of-the-sami|title=An Account of the Sámi|website=Nordic Studies Press|accessdate=3 September 2024}}