Dear audience,

With Tungrodd – Rahčamuš – Raataminen, a new chapter is added to our ballet repertoire. For the first time, we present a dance work rooted in both Kven and Sámi experience – a work that makes space for voices and stories that have long been carried in silence.

Kven history is not a narrowly defined minority narrative. It is part of our shared history: a history of belonging, loss, resilience, and of living side by side in the north over generations. For hundreds of years, communities in Finnmark and Northern Troms were home to both Kvens and Sámi. From the mid-19th century onwards, however, the Norwegianization policy left deep scars. Languages were lost, identities fractured, and the ties between Sámi and Kven culture were weakened.

The Second World War intensified these experiences. The forced evacuation of the population and the scorched-earth destruction of Finnmark and Northern Troms in 1944–45 led to the loss of homes, memories and material culture. This made it even harder to pass on language, traditions and identity.

In many families, it took only three generations to lose two languages – both Kven and Sámi. Choreographer Simone Grøtte knows this history in her own body. In Tungrodd – Rahčamuš – Raataminen, she gives form to what she heard whispered about as a child, to words spoken in languages she did not understand – and to everything that remained unspoken.

This history is, sadly, not unique. It speaks to experiences shared by many in regions shaped by systematic assimilation: of shame, silence and grief – but also of strength and survival. Drawing on her Sámi and Kven heritage, Grøtte has created a powerful, sensuous work about generations grappling with resistance, memory, and the question of belonging.

The performance invites us into a kitchen in the north, close to an everyday life where Norwegian, Sámi and Kven are spoken side by side. The work unfolds in a set designed by Mari Lotherington, with costumes by Tonje Plur and Grøtte herself. Herman Rundberg has composed new music for the occasion, drawing on his own Sea Sámi and Kven background, with contributions from Mari Boine, Ragnhild Hemsing, Inger Márjá Eira, Tromsø Sámi Children’s Choir, and the Arctic Philharmonic.

Elsewhere this season, we explore how “the other” is constructed and perceived in different ways. On the Main Stage, the classic La Bayadère presents a distant tableau of another world – offering, as 19th-century operas and ballets often did, an escape from everyday life: a journey to a faraway, seemingly magical place, shaped by external fantasies and projections.

In Tungrodd – Rahčamuš – Raataminen, we encounter a very different space. Here, too, there is distance – but on an intimate level: a child beneath a kitchen table, listening to conversations that suddenly shift into languages she does not understand. When the words slip away, she must fill in the gaps herself, imagine, continue the story. In this way, another kind of displacement emerges – not as exotic escape, but as a quiet space where meaning, memory and identity take shape in the in-between.

To present these works side by side is to point to two contrasting ways in which “the other” comes into being: one created at a distance, through imagination and projection; the other experienced from within, through fragments, silence, and what remains unsaid. Both remind us that our gaze is never neutral. The way we look also reveals who we are, which stories we choose to elevate, and which we have chosen to overlook.

There is something deeply moving about seeing dancers from both the Norwegian National Ballet and the independent dance field bring a story to life that is so personal, and yet so widely recognisable. For us, it is both a responsibility and a privilege to give space to such stories on our stage. In encountering “the other”, we also encounter ourselves – and are reminded of how the voices of the past often speak most clearly about what is unfolding in the present.

We hope that Tungrodd – Rahčamuš – Raataminen will touch, challenge and inspire reflection. We need to be reminded of who we are, and where we come from.

Welcome into the kitchen.