SÁMIS or Lapps

They call themselves saam´ or saam´lja (on the Kola Peninsula), sabme, sabmelas^ (pl. sabmela at). Other nations have called them Fenn (Finn) and since the 12th century, Lapp (e.g. the form Lop’ appears in Old Russian Chronicles at about 1000 AD). The use of the name Saam has been propagated in Russia since the 1920s and in Scandinavia within the last decades. The Sámis themselves consider the name Lapp pejorative. Sámis have six literary languages: Southern Sámi (Norway), Lule Sámi (Sweden), Northern Sámi (Sweden, Finland and Norway), Inari and Skolt Sámi (Finland), Kildin Sámi (Russia).

Location

The native territory of the Sámis is situated in the northern part of Fennoscandia, stretching in a semicircle from Dalarna, Sweden, along the coast of the Arctic Ocean over Norway and Finland to the central part of the Kola Peninsula in Russia. This tract of land, extending over four countries, is 2000 km long, covering almost 400,000 sq. km. In the past the Sami territory used to reach farther South, but under the pressure of other peoples they have been forced to move northwards. For example, the Sámis of Kola lived all over the Kola Peninsula (approximately 100,000 sq. km.) as late as 1917, but in 1926 they were located mainly in only four municipalities: Kolsko-Loparskaya, Aleksandrovo, Ponoj and Lujavr (Lovozero). By 1989 the majority of the Sámis had been assembled into the Lujavr (Lovozero) area (37% of the Murmansk Province).

Population

Broadly speaking, the population figures in different countries and all told have been as follows:

There are different data about the Sámi population, depending on the criteria of determining one’s ethnicity. For example, ever since 1962 the basic criterion in Finland has been language. There those are considered Sámis whose grandparent(s) (at least one of them) acquired Sámi as the primary language, or who speak Sámi as their primary language. In Norway and Sweden the basic criterion is the relation to reindeer-herding. In these countries citizenship is not separated from nationality, and therefore the number of Sámis cannot be determined unambiguously. According to the Sami Council there are 30,000-70,000 Sámis in Scandinavia.

Of the Sámis living in Finland and Russia there are more exact data. In 1984 there were 11,475 inhabitants in the Sámi region of Finland (Lapin lääni), 3,892 of them were Sámis, which makes 32.9% of the total population. In the Sámi region of Russia (Murmansk Province) there were 1,115,000 inhabitants in 1989, the 1,890 Sámis constituting 0.15% of them. Within 63 years the Kola Sámis’ command of their mother tongue has decreased drastically (55.8%).

Turning Points in the History of the Sámis

In the whole, the history of the Sámis is the history of their centuries-long withdrawal from other peoples towards the Arctic Ocean.

9th c – a massive northward migration of the Sámis begins, as the Vikings occupy the area around Lake Ladoga. In Norway and Sweden the taxing and trading rights on the territory of the Sámis are granted to the lords; the inhabitants of Häme and Karelia also practise taxation by robbery;

13th c – the Kola Peninsula comes under the Russian influence;

16th c – the Sámis of Kola are baptised into Russian Orthodoxy;

17th c – Lutheran mission reaches the Western Sámis;

1673 – King Karl XI of Sweden begins to consciously direct Swedish and Finnish colonists to the Sámi areas; Sámis become a minority in their native territory;

1868 – beginning of the colonisation of the Kola Peninsula with resident settlers, mostly Russians. The promotion of resident Russian life-style has Russified entire Sámi villages by the turn of the century;

1930s – formation of collective farms, severe measures of conversion of the nomadic Sámis to resident settlers, expropriation of large tracts of land for industrial and military use, stopping of all educational activities and abolition of the literary language in 1937, destruction of all Sámi printed texts;

ca. 1940-60 – the policy of “transforming” Sámis into Norwegians, Swedes, Finns; in boarding schools Sámi children are alienated from their people and mother tongue.

Danger Signs

The main problem of the Sámis is their dispersion in four different countries, which has been unfavourable for their consolidation and for the formation of a national administrative unit. The vast territory has contributed to the development of dialects into separate languages. Owing to the rapid modernisation of their way of life in the 20th century, Sámis have problems of adaptation into their new environment (e.g. national industrialisation projects); backed by the high status of the official languages of the respective states, officials have inhibited the functioning of the Sámi languages as languages of school instruction and official management. On the Kola Peninsula the reproduction of the Sámi population is seriously impaired. Between 1979 and 1987 there were 110 mixed marriages for each 16 marriages of the same nationality in the Lujavr (Lovozero) Region. Of 208 Sámi men eligible for marriage, 119 or nearly 60% were single.

Signs of Hope

Within the past few decades there has been a notable upsurge of national feelings and self-confidence of the Sámis. Very important is the growing importance of Sámi as the language of instruction at schools. For example, after the Finnish Schools Act of 1985 the curriculum provides up to 240 classes of the Sámi language per year. The unified system of orthography of Northern Sámi (introduced 1978) enables to link the educational and cultural life of Sámis in Norway, Sweden and Finland. Today there are laws of the Sámi language in Norway, Finland and Sweden, which help regulate the functioning of Sámi as the language of education and management. The literary Kildin Sámi language has been revived on the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet (1982). The Sámi language is taught at Lujavr (Lovozero) School on the Kola Peninsula. Linguistic research and regulation of the usage of Sámi have intensified; Sámi fiction and film have emerged.

The expanding of the rights of Sámis and their language has taken place as a result of their active and organised efforts during the past few decades. Sami Parliaments are convened in Norway, Finland and Sweden as advisory assemblies. The Sami Council (Sámirašši), which earlier represented the Sámis of the Nordic countries, and now represents all Sámis, participated in the formation of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples and and is still an active member of the Council.

ENDANGERED URALIC PEOPLES