Jokkmokk

The place was a winter gathering point long before it was a town. The Sámi name Dálvvadis means winter settlement, and Jokkmokk appears in 16th-century tax rolls as Jochmochs by, a fiscal unit of Lule Lappmark where traders from the coast came to deal with the Sámi. In 1602 Duke Karl, later King Charles IX, decided that fixed market places should be established in the Lapland territories, and Jokkmokk was chosen for Lule Lappmark. A simple vicarage, a customs house and market booths were built, and in 1605 the first market was held. Its purpose was to strengthen the state's hold on the north: to collect taxes, spread the Christian faith and hold courts, with the Sámi also required to attend church during the market days.

For a long time there was hardly any permanent population outside market time. A state school for Sámi children was founded in 1732, the year Carl Linnaeus passed through on his Lapland journey and was unimpressed by both chaplain and schoolmaster. A new church was consecrated in 1753, and it stood until it burned down in 1972 and was rebuilt; it is now known as the old church. Settlement and forestry grew through the 19th century, a second church was consecrated in 1889, and the village was laid out with straight streets and blocks.

In the early 20th century the population reached about 1,000. The power station at nearby Porjus was built in 1910–15, the railway station opened in 1927, and the Inland Line was completed in 1937. During the Second World War, Jokkmokk was a transit centre for Sámi refugees from Norway.

Jokkmokk is one of the main centres of Sámi life in Sweden. Ájtte, the Swedish Mountain and Sami Museum, opened in 1989 as the main museum and archive of Sámi culture in the country and was set up by a foundation that includes the two national Sámi organisations. The town also has the Sámi education centre, the Sámi Duodji handicraft foundation, a Sámi school for younger children and an office of the Sámi Parliament. Its Lule Sámi name, Jåhkåmåhkke, is usually explained as "river's curve", though the scholar Olavi Korhonen has suggested it may instead refer to an overland passage between two waterways.

The winter market, held every February since 1605 and celebrating its 400th anniversary in 2005, remains the high point of the year. Over the first Thursday to Saturday of the month thousands of people come for concerts, exhibitions and trade, and it is one of the most important social events for the Sámi across Sápmi, as well as a market for handicraft, Sámi produce and ordinary market goods.

Skiing has deep roots: the local ski club was founded in 1893, and since 2016 it has organised the Nordenskiöldsloppet, a 220-kilometre classic-style race described as the longest ski race in the world. Swedish is the dominant language in official life, as elsewhere in Lapland, while Lule and Northern Sámi names remain part of everyday geography.

About 2,800 people lived in the town in 2010. It is the seat of Jokkmokk Municipality, the second largest in Sweden by area at about 19,500 square kilometres, much of it mountain and national park.

The town is a service centre for this huge, thinly populated area: it has an upper secondary school, Lapplands Gymnasium, and three compulsory schools, including the Sámi school for pupils up to year six, alongside the Sámi institutions that give Jokkmokk a role far beyond its size. Hydropower is important in the wider municipality: the Porjus power station also supplied power for the trains of the Iron Ore Line, six of Sweden's ten largest hydroelectric plants lie in the municipality, the Laponia area holds three major hydropower stations, and Laponia's national parks draw hikers.

Life is shaped by the climate. Jokkmokk has the coldest winters of any municipal seat in Sweden, made colder by its inland position and by temperature inversions at night, and the sun barely clears the horizon at midwinter. Summer brings the midnight sun and a short season of trains on the Inland Line. The town lies on the Lilla Luleälven and is divided in two by the E45 and the railway.

The food of Jokkmokk is the food of Sápmi, built above all on reindeer. The best-known traditional dish is sautéed reindeer, renskav in Swedish and báistebiđus in Northern Sami: steak or the back of the reindeer, sliced thinly while still frozen so that it cuts easily, fried in fat — traditionally reindeer fat, more often butter or oil today — and seasoned with salt and black pepper. It comes with mashed potatoes and lingonberry preserve, or more traditionally with raw lingonberries mashed with sugar.

Sámi cooking has also produced new dishes from older ones. The best known is the suovaskebab: sliced suovasbierggo served in pita bread with cucumber, salad and garlic dressing, found at festivals and fairs across northern Scandinavia.

Palt, the meat-filled potato dumplings of northern Sweden, belong to the wider cooking of the north; in the very north a version called blodpalt is made with reindeer blood mixed with flour, boiled and served with fried pork. Cloudberries, which grow on bogs and tundra, are eaten in Sweden as a topping for ice cream, pancakes and waffles. The market is also where much Sámi produce changes hands each year, alongside handicraft and ordinary market fare.