MISS MARIA NORDVALL

Biography

Nordvall is a third-year PhD researcher at University of Aberdeen and part of the international project Arctic Heritage: Commodification, Identity, and Revitalisation in the Anthropocene ArcHeritage. 

She originates from Jiellevárre Váhtjer (SaL), Gällivare, in northern Sweden. Her research is grounded in intergenerational, place-based relationships with land and Sámi dwelling practices. With her roots in Forest Sámi culture, autoethnography functions as a central methodological, epistemological, and ethical orientation in her research practice.

Her ongoing doctoral research, with the working title “Inside the Circle, Outside the Frame: Conceptualising Sámi Dwellings as Relational and Epistemic Worlds,” seeks to investigate the artistic and cultural expressions of Sámi dwellings, examining both their materiality and their conceptualisation within historical and contemporary contexts. With a primary focus on the Swedish side of Sápmi, the study explores how Sámi dwellings from the late nineteenth century, operate as sites of making, meeting places, worlds of home, belonging, and cosmology. The overarching framework emphasises Sámi dwellings as powerful epistemic, ontological, and axiological formations, rather than merely architectural structures. The project argues that dwellings actively participate in negotiations over landscape, meaning, use, and understanding, with the capacity to reshape, challenge, and indigenise dominant spatial and heritage paradigms.

The research draws on the analysis of museum collections, physical dwellings across Sápmi, exhibitions, archival materials, storytelling practices, and conversations with community members, artists, and duojárs. By integrating methodologies from anthropology, Indigenous studies, and art history, the project illuminates how both material and immaterial dimensions of Sámi dwellings articulate complex conceptualisations.