Sámi people

• 1. Introduction

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  A Sámi garment called a gákti can tell a stranger where its wearer comes from. Its colours, patterns and jewellery can also show whether the person is single or married, and sometimes which family they belong to. The people who wear it are the Sámi, the indigenous people of Sápmi, a homeland that stretches across the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, and across the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Outsiders once called that homeland Lapland. Few peoples have been known by so many names, and few have had their way of life reshaped so thoroughly by the governments that claimed their land. How did the Sámi come to be scattered across four countries? What happened when the kingdoms of the south finally turned their attention north? And what do the Sámi ask of those governments today?

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• 2. A People of Many Names

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  Around AD 98, the Roman writer Tacitus used the name Fenni for a people of the far north. This is the first probable mention of the Sámi in history. Variants of that name turn up in Roman and Greek works, including the Greek Phinnoi.

  Norse speakers later called the Sámi Finns, sometimes using forms such as skridfinn, which means skiing Finn. The word appears in the Icelandic Eddas and in Norse sagas written between the 11th and 14th centuries. Most scholars link it to an old verb meaning to find. The idea is that the Sámi, as hunter-gatherers, found their food instead of growing it.

  In Sweden, the word Finn drifted toward the inhabitants of what is now Finland, and the Sámi came to be called Lapps. Norway kept the older name. Place names such as Finnmark, Finnsnes, Finnfjord and Finnøy still carry it. Some northern Norwegians still use it, though the Sámi consider it inappropriate.

  The twelfth-century Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus wrote of two Lappias in his Gesta Danorum, which is one of the earliest written uses of the term. Yet he never explicitly connected those lands to the Sámi, whom he still called Finns. The word became standard through Lapponia, a work by Johannes Schefferus published in 1673. Many European languages borrowed it through Swedish. Today the Sámi regard Lapp and Laplander as offensive and use their own name instead.

  Speakers of Northern Sámi call themselves Sámit. As of around 2014, specialists generally traced the word to Proto-Baltic žēmē, meaning land. The same ancient word is thought to lie behind Häme, the Finnish name for the region of Tavastia.

  In Finland, saamelainen is now the word most often used for the Sámi, especially in official settings. Lappalainen, meanwhile, survives as a common Finnish family name.

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• 3. Roads From the Volga

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  Linguists believe the western Uralic languages began moving northwest from a homeland along the Volga in the second and third quarters of the 2nd millennium BC. The Volga is the longest river in Europe. These travellers followed ancient river routes across what is now northern Russia. Some groups stopped in the lands between Karelia, Lake Ladoga and Lake Ilmen.

  The groups that reached the Finnish Lakeland between 1600 and 1500 BC are the ones said to have later become the Sámi. The Sámi language first developed south of Lake Onega and Lake Ladoga and spread from there. In Finland, its speakers met peoples who spoke older languages, now extinct, called the Paleo-Laplandic languages. Those lost tongues left traces in Sámi, and as the language travelled farther it split into dialects.

  The Sámi reached their current homeland during the Bronze Age or early Iron Age. From the Bronze Age they occupied the coast of Finnmark and the Kola Peninsula. Much older settlements and petroglyphs, some dating to about 10,000 BC, have been found in Lapland and Finnmark. Researchers named those hunter-gatherers the Komsa, but no one has shown that they were Sámi.

  How far south the Sámi once lived remains contested. In 1889, the Norwegian government commissioned the historian Yngvar Nielsen to answer the question, because it bore on Sámi land rights. He concluded that they lived no farther south than Lierne Municipality in Trøndelag until about 1500. Then, he said, they moved south, reaching the area around Lake Femund in the 18th century.

  Many historians still accept his view, but recent archaeological finds challenge it. Discoveries in Lesja, Vang, Valdres, Hol and Ål suggest a mixed Norse and Sámi population in southern Norway during the Middle Ages. A 2022 study found Sámi habitation across all of continental Finland until at least the 14th century. Sámi-based names for the rivers Aurajoki and Nuuksio have been proposed.

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• 4. Sea and Mountain

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  In December 1349, bubonic plague reached northern Norway and split the Sámi world in two. Until then, Sámi and Norwegians had occupied separate economic niches. The Norwegians lived on the outer islands and near the fjord mouths, trading fish for goods from the south. That link to European trade routes carried the disease straight to them.

  Depending on the parish, 60 to 76 percent of northern Norwegian farms were abandoned. Land-rents fell to between 9 and 28 percent of their earlier levels. The plague-carrying fleas travelled in wooden barrels of wheat, rye or wool, where they could live and breed for months. The Sámi ate fish and reindeer meat, not grain, and lived apart from the trade routes. They fared far better.

  The empty farms were an opportunity. Fisheries around Lofoten and Vesterålen had been a major source of income for the Norwegian monarchy, and the plague had shrunk the tax revenue. Local authorities therefore offered incentives to Sámi to settle the vacant land. That created the divide between the Sea Sámi, who fished the coast, and the Mountain Sámi, who kept hunting reindeer and small game. Some Sámi were still settling on farms abandoned in the 1350s as late as the early 18th century. In time, the Sea Sámi far outnumbered the reindeer herders, who today make up about 10 percent of all Sámi.

  The Mountain Sámi stayed semi-nomadic. Around 1500, their practices began to look like the traditional Sámi life known today. Following the herds across borders could mean paying taxes to Norway, Sweden and Russia, which bred resentment. Between 1635 and 1659, the Swedish crown forced Sámi cart drivers and conscripts to work in the Nasa silver mine. Many Sámi left the area to escape, and the Pite- and Lule-speaking populations shrank sharply.

  Fishing knowledge on the coast was handed down through generations. Fishers named their private spots by coastal landmarks and the shape of the seafloor, and they predicted tides and fish by the season. Much of this knowledge was lost under stigma against Sámi languages, the replacement of Sámi place names and the compulsory adoption of Norwegian and European fishing methods.

  A later rule change hit coastal communities again. In the late 1980s, fishing quotas were tied to vessels instead of fishers, and were handed to larger boats based on past catches. Many small vessels in Sámi districts fell outside the system.

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• 5. The Long Pressure

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  For centuries, the Norwegian and Swedish authorities largely ignored the Sámi. Norwegians settled the coasts of Troms and Finnmark for an export fishery but showed little interest in the harsh, non-arable inland where reindeer herders lived. During the 18th century, Northern Norwegians suffered from low fish prices and falling population. The Sámi, who needed few supplies from the south, saw their culture grow stronger.

  In the 19th century, officials began to describe the Sámi as backward and primitive, in need of being civilised. Scandinavian languages were imposed, and Sámi language and culture were banned in many settings, especially schools. In 1889, Norway introduced seven compulsory years of schooling, and Sámi life came under heavy pressure. Sweden and Finland were less militant, but Sámi was forbidden in their schools too, and economic growth in the north weakened Sámi standing.

  Some of the policies were openly racial. From 1913 to 1920, a Swedish movement built a race-based biological institute that collected material from living people and from graves. Settlers were lured north with land and water rights, tax allowances and exemption from military service.

  Norway's effort peaked from about 1900 to 1940. Anyone wanting to buy or lease state land for farming in Finnmark had to prove they knew Norwegian and register a Norwegian name. This helped uproot Sámi people in the 1920s and deepened divisions between local Sámi groups that remain today. Another forced displacement took place across Norway and Sweden in 1919 and 1920. The Sámi author Elin Anna Labba wrote about it in a work of journalism, published in English in 2023 as The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow.

  Then came the war. In 1944-45, the German army's scorched earth policy devastated northern Finland and northern Norway, destroying every existing house and the visible traces of Sámi culture. Pressure eased after 1945, but the legacy lingered. As late as the 1970s, a law limited the size of any house a Sámi person could build.

  In 1979, plans for a hydro-electric power station in Alta Municipality triggered a protest movement that finally placed Sámi rights on the political agenda.

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• 6. Drums and Sermons

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  Many Sámi kept their own religion until the 18th century. It is a form of polytheism tied closely to the land, with animist beliefs in souls within animals, plants and rocks. The noaidi, or Sámi shaman, communicated with the supernatural using drums, joik, chants, sacred objects and fly agaric. Sacred sites included mountains, springs and stones called sieidi.

  Sámi cosmology divided the universe into three worlds. The upper world was linked to the south, warmth, life and the colour white, and was home to the gods. The middle world, like the Norse Midgard, belonged to humans and was associated with red. The underworld stood for the north, cold and black, and was inhabited by otters, loons, seals and mythical animals. The Sámi may have shared elements with Norse mythology through early contact with trading Vikings. Contemporary ethnographers recorded that they were the last worshippers of Thor, as late as the 18th century.

  Roman Catholic missionaries arrived as early as the 13th century. Pressure grew after the Protestant Reformation, and rune drums were burned or shipped to museums abroad. In the 16th century, the Russian monk Trifon converted Sámi in the far east, and St. George's chapel in Neiden, Norway, built in 1565, stands as evidence. Many Sámi attended church on Sundays while keeping their old practices at home. In the 17th century, they were accused of sorcery, and some faced witchcraft trials and burnings.

  Around 1720, Thomas von Westen, known as the Apostle of the Sámi, led a major conversion effort in Norway. He burned drums and sacred objects. Of the thousands of drums estimated to have existed before then, about 70 survive in museums across Europe.

  Around 1840, the Swedish Sámi Lutheran pastor Lars Levi Laestadius started a puritanical pietist movement that demanded complete abstinence from alcohol. He preached in Finnish and Northern Sámi, as well as Southern Sámi and Swedish. His parishioners had been forced to give up shamanism, and alcoholism was causing misery. His sermons used images from Sámi daily life, and one Sámi account recalls a new desire to read and a drop in reindeer theft. The movement is still very strong in Sámi-speaking areas.

  In 2012, the County Governor of Troms approved the Shamanic Association of Tromsø as a new religion.

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• 7. Land Under Pressure

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  After the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, the lichens that reindeer depend on soaked up airborne radiation. Lichens take in nutrients and toxins through their leaves, since many have no roots. In Sweden alone, 73,000 reindeer had to be killed as unfit for human consumption. The government promised the Sámi compensation but has not delivered it.

  Mining is a constant pressure, because Sápmi holds precious metals, oil and natural gas. Mines interfere with grazing and calving areas, and some sit inside protected areas such as the Vindelfjällen Nature Reserve. At Kallak, which the Sámi call Gállok, activists protested drilling by the UK-based company Beowulf on winter reindeer pasture. In Sweden, mineral taxes are deliberately low to encourage exploration. On the Kola Peninsula, mining and smelting have already destroyed vast areas, and a gas pipeline and power lines cut off calving grounds and sacred sites.

  In northern Finland, logging destroyed the old forests where lichen grows, the reindeer's only winter food when the snow is deep. Greenpeace, herders and Sámi organisations ran a joint campaign, and in 2010 the herders won some time in court. Industrial logging has since been pushed back from the most important forests, though plans for holiday resorts on the shores of Lake Inari remain a threat.

  In Sweden, a wind farm in Piteå, billed as the largest onshore wind farm in the world, will have more than 1,000 turbines. It sits in the winter pastures of the Eastern Kikkejaure village, which makes winter grazing there practically impossible. Sweden has drawn criticism from the UN Racial Discrimination Committee and the Human Rights Committee.

  In October 2024, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ruled that Finland had violated Sámi land and cultural rights. Seventeen members of the Sámi community had petitioned over prospective mining. The committee found that Finland failed to consult them properly. It was the first time European Indigenous peoples defended land rights through cultural rights and living standards instead of conventional property definitions.

  Some pressures are quieter. Finnish tourism sells supposedly authentic Sámi ceremonies, with non-Sámi in inaccurate costumes. Crossing the Arctic Circle, a popular ritual, has no meaning in Sámi spirituality.

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• 8. Symbols and Repair

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  On the 15th of August 1986, the Sámi flag was inaugurated at the Sámi Conference in Åre, Sweden. The winning design in a competition came from Astrid Båhl of Skibotn, Norway. Its motif draws on the shaman's drum and on a poem by the South Sámi Anders Fjellner that calls the Sámi sons and daughters of the sun. A red circle stands for the sun and a blue one for the moon.

  The anthem began as a poem by Isak Saba, first published in the newspaper Saǥai Muittalægje on the 1st of April 1906. Arne Sørli set it to music, and it was approved at the 15th Sámi Conference in Helsinki in 1992. The national day, the 6th of February, marks the first Sámi congress, held in Trondheim in 1917. That meeting was the first time Norwegian and Swedish Sámi worked together across their border.

  Political bodies followed. The Sámi Parliaments were founded in Finland in 1973, Norway in 1989 and Sweden in 1993. They are public authorities with elected members and little real power. Russia recognises no Sámi parliament, though Sámi there formed an unrecognised one. In 2005, Norway passed the Finnmark Act. It shifted administration of areas covering 96 percent of the county to a joint body of the Sámi Parliament and the county council.

  Apologies and truth-seeking have come slowly. Sweden formally apologised in 1998. Norway's parliament commissioned a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2018, and Sweden funded an independent truth commission in 2020. In 2021, the Church of Sweden apologised for its role in forced conversions and a multiyear reconciliation plan followed.

  In 1997, after several refusals, the skulls of two decapitated leaders of a Sámi uprising in 1852 were reburied. In 2019-25 skulls were reburied in the Swedish municipality of Lycksele. Two more skulls were returned to the Gammelstad cemetery in Swedish Lapland in May 2025.

  On the 16th of November 2005 in Helsinki, experts led by Professor Carsten Smith proposed a Nordic Sámi Convention. It would treat the Sámi as one Indigenous people across all three Nordic countries. It has still not been ratified.

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