Riddu Riđđu is an annual Sami

Sami people

The Sami people, also spelled Sámi, or Saami, are the arctic indigenous people inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Kola Peninsula of Russia, and the border area between south and middle Sweden and Norway. The Sámi are Europe’s northernmost...

 music and culture festival held in Olmmáivággi (Manndalen) in the Gáivuotna (Kåfjord) municipality in Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

. The goal of the festival is to bring forward both Sami culture and that of other indigenous

Indigenous peoples

Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....

peoples. Translated to English, the name of the festival is "small storm at the coast". The festival has permanent support from the Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs, the Sami parliament, Troms county and Kåfjord municipality.

Riddu Riđđu includes concerts, seminars, performances, youth camp, stage art, literature, children's program, Northern People's program, youth camp, film program, courses (workshops), art exhibition, market (bazaar), indigenous houses and much more.
The festival had its 20th anniversary in 2011.

The 20th festival was to be held between July 20 and July 24, 2011.

History

The festival was launched by a group of young Sami on New Year's Eve 1991 at Olmmáivággi . This was a decade after the Sami cultural revitalization started. Before that time, the Norwegian government attempted to assimilate the indigenous Sami into the Norwegian majority population. In Olmmáivággi almost all of the previously majority Sami population now considered themselves as Norwegian. During the 1990s, the anti-Sami movement was especially strong in the area with Sami road-signs being shot to pieces and families being split. A group of youth started to ask questions such as: "Why did they [the Norwegian government] take away from us the Sami language? Why do we hide our sea-Sami identity and culture? Why are we ashamed [of being Sami]?" This started a Sami youth organization that among other things organized the Riddu Riđđu festival.

The first festival was arranged in 1991 and has since been arranged annually. In 1998, the Riddu Riđđu Searvi organization was established and has since been responsible for arranging the festival.

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