From suicide attempts to happiness and Sámi Pride

Dan Eriksson, who is a proud gay Sámi today, knows what it is all about. He has lived most of his life in denial about his true self, and he had to go through years of mental ill-being and two suicide attempts before he found the courage to talk.

Today, he wants to help others understand how important it is to be the one you are, to talk and to live.

«I didn’t grow up or go to school in a Sámi community. I can’t speak Sámi, and I still don’t feel completely comfortable wearing the Sámi dress. But today, I’m proud of being Sámi, I’m a proud gay Sámi.», thebarentsobserver.com reports.

Wikipedia about Sámi people

The Sámi people (also spelled Saami) are a Finno-Ugric people inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses large parts of Norway and Sweden, northern parts of Finland, and the Murmansk Oblast of Russia. The Sámi have historically been known in English as Lapps or Laplanders, which have a derogatory implication in Scandinavia, but not elsewhere. Sámi ancestral lands are not well-defined. Their traditional languages are the Sámi languages and are classified as a branch of the Uralic language family.