This is my first drawing in my 9th Grade Art Portofolio! I'm Carly, and I'm making a portofolio of all my Scandinavian-themed art through high school so I could send it to my dream colleges <3

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I drew a man and a woman in traditional Tornedalian clothes. The Tornedalians are a minority group in Northern Sweden. The Tornedalians live in an area known as the Torne Valley (also known as Tornedalen in Swedish and Meanmä in Meänkieli), located between the Swedish and Finnish borders.

Some main facts about Tornedalians

Population : 40,000-150,000

Language : Meänkieli

Recognization Year : 2000- Tornedalians are recognized as a minority

Traditional Homeland : Torne Valley (Also known as Meanmä and Tornedalen

Main Religions : Laestadian Lutheranism, Standard Lutheranism

Flag: Since there isn't a Tornedalian flag emoji, here is the flag colors 💛🤍🩵

Known Literature: Popular Music from Vittula, Our Worth, You will come to nothing

Also, Epic fact, but the first movie in Meänkieli was released earlier this year! I haven't watched it because it isn't in Texas, but I may when it arrives in streaming where I live :D

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Because of Swedenfication, many Tornedalian traditional clothes are lost to history. I did find some references on Wikimedia and an article online about the clothes, so I tried my best to replicate the clothes by drawing them on characters in my style.

The references that I used were both black-and-white photos from the early 1900s and therefore, I had to also research the COLORS of the clothes.

Most commonly, colors like blue, red, gray, green and black appeared on clothes. Women and girls wore long dresses and headscarves. While researching and studying clothes for the drawing, I used two references for the woman in the drawing. Both references were in black-and-white, which didn't help with colors. I ended up going with a gray, white and red color scheme for her clothes.

For the man, I found ONE reference in color from the early 1800s that was a drawing on Wikimedia of crossbowman from the Tornedalen area (The image was labeled as "Finn, Not Sámi") as Tornedalians are a kind of Finn. The image came from the Finnish Heritage Agency, so I used it as a reference.

Since the drawing didn't exactly say the man in the image was a Tornedalian and rather just as a "Finn", I used another reference from the late 1800s, as well as the same reference I used to draw the woman. Tornedalian men and boys wear long gákti (Sámi) style clothes. They also wear caps in darker colors and beak-shoes, which are made out of reindeer.

Google was actually a pretty unreliable source this time. I ended up getting an AI generated image of a girl and a boy to celebrate Tornedalian National Day (The girl just had generic bunad-style clothes, which is funny considering Tornedalians mainly live in the Swedish-Finnish borders.) and the Sámi gákti. I'm actually thankful that I actually could find a reference, and while I had very limited references (and even less in color), I worked with what I got and with my research on colors

In 1912, a Tornedalian traditional dress was made for the Tornedalen region, known as Tornedalsdräkt. However, the dress is more similar to Swedish Folkdräkt than Tornedalian traditional clothes. Yes, it was beautiful, but also it reminded me a little of Swedenfication, which a lot of Tornedalians, especially children, faced. I also didn't included it because 10 years before the Tornedalsdräkt was made, the 1902 Norrbotten famine occured, and it affected a lot of Tornedalians. The Swedish government and the Svenska Kyrkan (Church of Sweden) forced children in to a boarding school system, in which they had to go to state-run schools, that while gave Tornedalian children shelter and food, they would get punished for their culture.

I'm not Tornedalian, but I did do my research. If any Tornedalians are reading this, I hope you enjoyed this article and the drawing >:3 It was really fun to make the drawing and to research this, and I have literally been listening to all of Norrlåtar's discography while I made this drawing.

• Carly