SAAMI
The Saami are an ethnic minority living in the arctic and subarctic regions comprising contemporary Norway, Sweden, and Finland as well as Russia's Kola Peninsula. Formerly their settlement area extended farther south to include the western White Sea area of Russia and larger parts of Finland as well as the interior of central and southern parts of Norway and Sweden. Saami language belongs to the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic family, most closely (although still distantly) related to Finnish in the Baltic-Finnish language group. According to historical linguists, Saami or Proto-Saami originated due to a linguistic differentiation of a Proto-Finnish language during the Bronze Age or even earlier.
Until the sixteenth century the Saami were predominantly hunters with a subsistence economy based on terrestrial and maritime hunting as well as fishing. The largest sociopolitical unit was the siida, the local hunting band composed of five to ten nuclear families. Each siida occupied a clearly defined territory where families lived dispersed at various seasonal camps most of the year, aggregating for a longer period only at the common winter site. Exogamy was practiced, forming affinal ties between contiguous groups. Kinship was recognized bilaterally, as by most other circumpolar peoples. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the hunting economy was gradually replaced or supplemented by reindeer pastoralism, commercial fishing, and small-scale cattle husbandry. According to some scholars, however, the transition to reindeer pastoralism had already taken place among the western Saami during the Viking period.
"Saami" (Scandinavian samer) is the term properly used to denote the people who have been referred to popularly in the English-speaking West as "Lapps" or "Laplanders." It is a derivative of the self-designating terms sámit, sáme, or saemieh, reflecting an etymological root that probably means "land." In historical records, however, a number of ethnonyms have been applied to the Saami by outsiders. In Norse sources from the Viking Age and the medieval period, "Finns" (finner) is the common term, whereas "Lapps" prevails in Swedish, Finnish (lappalaiset), and Russian (lop') sources. It is commonly held that the first written sources mentioning the Saami are descriptions by Tacitus (A.D. 98) and Ptolemy (A.D. c. 100–170) of the "Finns" (Latin fenni and Greek Φιννοι /finnoi). According to Tacitus the fenni live in "astonishing barbarism and disgusting misery" without arms, horses, or houses—their only shelter against wild beasts and rain being a few intertwined branches. For want of iron they tipped their arrows with sharp bone. Even more astonishing to these authors is that the women took part in the hunt on equal footing with men. It is uncertain, however, if these early descriptions of "Finns" actually refer specifically to the Saami or more generally to Finno-Ugric speaking hunters of northeasternmost Europe. A more certain ascription is established by sixth-century Greek and Roman writers adding the term scrithi or scere/cre to the term fenni/finnoi, most notably in the writings of Procopius (scrithiphinoi) and Jordanes (scerefennae, crefennae, rerefennae). The first term must have been adopted from Norse language, where skríða means "to ski"—that is, the combined term means the "skiing Finns." In the Norse culture skriðfinner was a common term to designate the mobile Saami hunters due to their skiing skills. This stereotypical ascription is reflected in the Old Norse oath that the enemy shall have peace as long as "falcon flies, pine grows, rivers flow to the sea, and Saami are skiing."
The ethnic origin of the Saami has long puzzled Nordic and European scholars and opinions have changed considerably. Until the mid-nineteenth century it was commonly believed that the Saami were the descendants of the aboriginal Stone Age populations of Scandinavia (and even larger parts of northern Europe). However, as political and scientific currents turned the "noble savage" into the "ignoble," different readings of the archaeological and historical record soon emerged. By the early twentieth century the Saami were almost univocally depicted as an "alien" people who had migrated to Scandinavia from Russia or Siberia during the Iron Age or even as late as the fourteenth or fifteenth century. This doctrine of the Saami as an "eastern other" prevailed in Nordic research well into the post–World War II era.
Most historians and archaeologists have since rejected the migration hypothesis in favor of models claiming local origin. According to the most influential, the formation of Saami ethnicity (and even the introduction of "Germanic" and Norse identity in the north) was related to processes of social and economic differentiation among the hunting societies in northern Fennoscandinavia during the first millennium B.C., processes concurring with increased interaction with the outside world. Regional differences in cultural interfaces and exchange networks promoted different cultural trajectories. The coastal societies along the northwestern coast of Norway and parts of the Gulf of Bothnia, relating to the South Scandinavian Bronze Age culture, adopted farming and developed chieftain-like systems with a redistributive socioeconomy. Subsequent processes of "Germanization" in the Roman period have been interpreted as a conscious (although imperative) choice among these societies to obtain access to European exchange networks and social alliances. The hunting population in the interior and the far north, however, became involved in exchange networks extending eastward to metal-producing societies in Karelia and central Russia. Relating to these long-distance networks, supplying bronze and iron, as well as to the new socioeconomic and cultural interface caused by the "transformed" coastal groups, ethnic boundaries and symbolic systems of categorization emerged based on a conscious distinction between "hunters" versus "farmers." Thus, according to this model, Saami ethnicity emerged as a social process of identity formation among the "remaining" hunters of the north.
Different suggestions about Saami origin are provided by studies of genetic patterns in modern Saami populations. Based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA it is claimed (although not uncontested) that the Saami hold a unique position in the genetic landscape of Europe. If so, the question remains as to whether this uniqueness is due to their ancient origin (and consequently isolation) or to a foreign origin (and consequently migration)—or if the distinctive Saami genetic makeup even relates to modern social processes of kinship formation.
The Saami's persistence as an ethnic group over time can hardly be ascribed to their isolation. To the contrary, for more than two millennia they have been involved in close interaction with structurally different neighboring societies. During the Iron Age and the medieval period the Saami provided highly valued hunting products such as exotic furs, seal oil, walrus tusks, and probably falcons in return for iron, textiles, and farming products. The character of this early interaction is, however, disputed. According to the "standard view" long held, the Saami were the subject of exploitation and suppression from Norse chieftains and kings: the militarily superior Norse gained access to Saami products through taxation and fierce plundering raids. More recent studies, however, claim that the Saami for the most part interacted in a peaceful and mutually beneficial way with their neighboring societies until the medieval period. Indicative of this is the frequent accounts in the Norse sagas of cooperation and close relations. The sagas emphasize the Saami as good hunters, as helpers, and as skilled boatbuilders, as well as healers, fortune-tellers, and teachers of magic and seid (shamanistic practices). Many scholars argue that ample evidence suggests that the Saami and their Germanic or Norse neighbors shared fundamental religious conceptions and values (based in a common shamanistic worldview), which may well have promoted tolerance and smoothed coexistence. As bonds of interethnic dependencies developed during the Iron Age the Saami achieved considerable economic and ideological power. Saami hunting products were crucial to the Norse chieftains' ability to participate in the European prestige-goods economy, and their "magical" knowledge and ritual skills were desired and respected. Studies have argued that during the Viking period these bonds of dependencies were reinforced by ritual gift exchange and interethnic marriages.
Such strategies for strengthening inter-ethnic bonds may partly be seen as a response to the new cultural and socioeconomic conditions that emerged from the tenth century onward. The Saami, who during the Iron Age related more or less exclusively to the redistributive system of neighboring chieftains, now encountered the power politics of surrounding state societies competing for control over their resources. The emergence of the city-state of Novgorod in the east involved the Saami in extensive networks of fur trade. In Norway the northern chieftains were defeated by the emerging all-Norwegian kingdom that simultaneously converted the Norse to Christianity.
The economic, social, and religious changes both in the west and the east had a deep impact on interethnic relations and exposed the Saami to new economical and cultural pressures. The fur trade enforced increased production and pressure on resources while political and religious changes in the Norse society caused severe changes in their long-term social and ideologically embedded relations with the Saami. The archaeological record from the Viking Age and the early medieval period provides some indication of how this "stress" was negotiated within Saami societies. Most notable is the rapid intensification and spread of certain ritual practices, such as burial customs (including bear burials) and metal sacrifices. The formalization and unification of material expressions is also exemplified in dwelling design and spatial arrangements of settlements. This ritual and symbolic mobilization may be read as an attempt to overcome or neutralize the threats from outside. However, archaeological and historical data clearly indicate that Saami societies did change during this phase, and at least in some areas the changes led to more complex social configurations.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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