Sami Blood

Along with her son Olle and granddaughter Sanna, elderly Christina returns to her Lapland homeland for the funeral of her next younger sister, Njenna. Attending the funeral is despite Christina long having put her Sami roots, when she was still known by her real Sami given name of Elle Marja, behind her. No longer being in touch with those roots means that Olle and Sanna are unfamiliar with all the Sami rituals that now surround them. In a moment of solitude, Christina can't help but remember back to a time in her youth in the 1930s when she and Njenna took a break from their duties in the family's business of raising reindeer to attend boarding school, one specifically to teach Sami children the ways of mainstream Sweden. She felt caught in the middle of Sami and Swedish life, where she, with all the visual trappings of being Sami, faced racism in many forms, and although the school outwardly was to integrate the Sami into Swedish life, they were not given any opportunities available to ethnic Swedes purely for being Sami. Complicating the situation was her coming of age and her first romance with a young man named Niklas, who did not know of her ethnic background in she becoming "Christina" in these non-Sami settings.