It’s almost two years ago now that Mari Boine last featured in these pages, with a song, ‘Lean dás’, which we described as “sort of metal meets baroque meets medieval meets psych meets pagan ritual”, and which wasn’t that much dissimilar from The KLF’s ‘Justified and Ancient’, adding that “you won’t hear or see anything like it outside of this corner of the world.”
She’s from Sápmi, the Sámi people’s own name for their traditional territory, which covers the northern parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland and even Russia and sings in the language of the region, which is actually a family of about 10 distinct, often mutually unintelligible languages and which is as strange and mysterious as you’ll find anywhere. Like you you’d expect a Martian to sound like when they finally visit us.
The previous song concerned the difficulty of maintaining hope in these dark times, but with the realisation that to surrender hope is to lose our will to (take) action, to render ourselves powerless. I guess they’re thinking much the same thing in Greenland tonight.
The focus this time around in ‘Dolla’ (‘The Flame’) is much more specific. The song featured in the documentary Døden på Vidda (A Death in the Arctic), a film exploring the life and mysterious death of the Sámi political activist John-Reier Martinsen. Mari Boine shared a close friendship with John-Reier in their youth. Both carried a strong belief in a more peaceful and just world during a time of cultural and political awakening.
It was the audience’s response to the film that inspired Mari and her band to record and release the song as a single.
‘Dolla’ captures a quiet night-time moment between two lovers, filled with warmth, tenderness, and the recognition that such moments cannot last forever. Beneath its intimacy lies a reflection on love’s fragility, the passing of time, and the human desire to hold onto connection before the embers fade.
It is the same song she sang at John-Reier’s funeral decades ago, following a snowmobile accident.
So you will quite reasonably expect a degree of poignancy here but ‘Dolla’ hugely transcends that; lying somewhere between a paean and a love letter.
It is evident from the opening bars that while the body may be mortal the spirit is eternal.
The pathos is extended in the video, taken from Death in the Arctic, which begins with flowers being laid presumably at the spot where John-Reier perished, the aurora borealis symbolically present as allegory (it returns at the end), after which it focuses on a young Mari and John-Reier in the throes of what presumably might have led to a relationship under other circumstances and remembrance fired by the exchange of personal items.
You know there is always the possibility that songs and videos like this can be too cloying for some people but I reckon even the hardest heart will melt watching and listening to this one.
That flame will never die.
Music & Lyrics: Isak Samuel Heatta
Mari Boine: Vocals
Kristian Svalestad Olstad: Guitar
Stein Austrud: Strings & Synths
Find her on:
Website: https://www.mariboine.no/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MBoine
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mariboine/
