It is tricky to write a book about Sami history if you don't know how many Sami people there are. There is both a lack of reliable registers, but also a lack of an accepted definition of who is Sami and who is not. In order to tell their story, the book tries to estimate the evolution of the Sami population in modern Norway. Sami have been slowly assimilating into the general Scandinavian population since before 1750. The degree of assimilation varies significantly from one geographic area to another. In some regions intermarriage was extensive and occurred quite fast, in such a way that most of the population has Sami ancestors, but Sami culture is completely lost. It is only in more remote northern areas that Sami language and culture are maintained. In the end, the discussion of Sami-hood is a discussion about individual identity. Not what I expected in a history book, but it made me reflect about my own identity as a Catalan born in Spain and living in Norway.
Although I was not able to finish this book, it sparked enough interesting questions about identity and nationalism that I decided to write about it. This is a history book aimed at historians, not the general public. The book is the second part of a two-part series, where the first volume deals with a period starting in prehistory and ending in 1750. There is no need to read the first volume to understand the second.
Nowadays, traditional Sami culture is associated with nomadic reindeer herders. But historically, not all Sami were nomadic nor herders. All of the half northern-most part of Norway was populated by Sami people, and their way of life was varied. Some were semi-nomadic, but others were not. Some Sami lived by the coast and had fishing as their main occupation. In more recent times, but still before the modern Norwegian state, there were Sami people that took up agriculture and settled as farmers, often in close proximity or together with Scandinavian people.
Semi-nomadic reindeer herder Sami had a relatively high status. They traded with Scandinavians and sold reindeer meat. Meat was expensive and valued, so Sami people who were herders were respected. Reindeer herding was deemed important enough that Norway (under Danish administration) and Sweden (which included today's Finland) signed a treaty to guarantee Sami peoples' freedom to roam between the two countries following the seasonal migration of their herds.
As Scandinavian peoples moved north and started cultivating more marginal lands, conflict ensued. The Sami had used the land as pasture grounds, and this provoked tension with the farmers. There were some violent episodes. When Norway was administered by the Danish, the state might have intervened in favor of the farmers. The Samis' right to the land was precarious, but for the most part unchallenged, and the state had no concern for the way of life and organization of the Sami, as long as it did not interfere with the rest of the population.
Nationalism changed the situation. With the advent of nationalism and the concept of the nation-state, the conflict between the Scandinavian and Sami people evolved from a conflict on land use to a conflict of forced assimilation. Where the state had not intervened before, or had done so through policing and adjudicating land to farmers, with the advent of the nation-state, the state took an active role in erasing the culture, language, religion, and way of life of the Sami people. The creation of a nation-state meant that the state represented one nation, the Norwegian nation formed by Scandinavian people, and there was no place in the state for a Sami nation. The concept of a multi-national state was not considered.
The story went from bad to worse for the Sami. In 1919, a new treaty restricted their right to cross the border from Sweden to Norway. There was forced displacement until 1940. A turning point was the construction of the Alta dam in 1987. The dam was built on traditional Sami land, against Sami opposition. The protests were not able to stop construction of the dam, but were the start of the recognition of Sami rights by law and the creation of the Sami parliament.
One of my takeaways from the book is that the concept of the nation-state was a bad idea. It was a bad idea in Norway and it is a bad idea elsewhere. It was a bad idea in the past and it carries bad consequences to this day. Both Norway and Spain, the two countries where I have lived, still are understood by many of their citizens under the paradigm of the nation-state. I think this is bad. It makes me envious of those who can write "my country isn't a nation".
Last updated: 2024-12-06