Allemann, L. The sami of the Kola Peninsula : about the life of an ethnic minority in the Soviet Union / Lukas Allemann ; [transl. by Michael Lomax]. - Rovaniemi : University of Lapland Printing Centre, 2013. - 151 p. : ill., map, portr. ; 25 см. - (Senter for samiske studier, Skriftserie ; 19).

The Sami of the Kola Peninsula determine the way he reflects back on the past. [...] In this way narrated life sto­ ries so always refer both to present life with its past and to the way these past events were experienced at the time. [...] The first question that needs to be put to the text is not: 'What was experienced then [...]?'. First we need rather to re­ construct the narrative situation, the current perspective of the biographees and hence the mechanisms that control the selection of the stories told. The reverse applies correspondingly: if I want to make statements about the overall bio­ graphical vision [...], I first need knowledge about this particular life. "50 These statements, that are generally valid for any life story, are especially to be heed­ ed for biographies that have been accompanied by major ideological fractures. It is to be assumed that the end of the Soviet Union and the resurgence of ethnic self­ awareness among the Sami have triggered revisions by informants of their own views, which are not always explicitly stated. "This confirms that the 'social context' of memory, the interaction and commu­ nication of a person with his environment, has to be taken into consideration. Over long periods of time a myth, a certain image can be constructed, that en­ ters into the common memory of a society, takes root and shapes the way this society sees itself. "5 1 In this way the in-depth examination of narrated life stories - which must always in­ clude an analysis of the un-narrated - also serves a certain "generalization about the mechanisms of experienced and narrated realities. "52 The distinction between experience and narration is an extremely important epistemological paradigm of Rosenthal's research (Rosenthal 1995, 1997). Neverthe­ less the attempt to achieve a separate reconstruction of experienced life history - as 50 Fischer-Rosenthal/Rosenthal 1997, 148 f. 51 Haumann 2006, 46. 52 Rosenthal 1994, 136. Senterfor samiske studier, Skriftserie nr. 19 19