The Sámi Narrative Tradition

Cosmopolitans on the Arctic Tundra

Jens-Ivar Nergård

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000472707
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Social Sciences
• Thema: Anthropology

This book sets out to document and analyse the Sámi narrative tradition. It considers the worldviews inherent in the narratives and links them to traditional cosmology and other cultural expressions (such as joik and duodji). The chapters address a variety of issues, including care for children, the perception of nature, disputes over land and natural resources, local justice, the spiritual world of everyday life, and Læstadianism. Sketching Sámi history and the cultural context of storytelling, Nergård also considers the modern challenge for the narrative tradition. Drawing on long-term fieldwork and research, the volume is valuable reading for Indigenous studies and disciplines such as anthropology.

1 Nature, animals and people

DOI: 10.4324/9781003201601-1

Sápmi is the name of the territories the Sámi people inhabit in four nations: Russia, Finland, Sweden and Norway. Their population officially numbers more than 50,000, but these figures are almost certainly an underestimate. The Sámi are scattered over a huge area, ranging from the Kola Peninsula in Russia throughout huge parts of northern Scandinavia, Finland. In Norway, the Sámi are recognized as an indigenous people following Norway’s ratification of ILO Convention §169 in 1990. To date, Sweden, Finland and Russia have yet to sign the convention.

The origin of the Sámi is not fully known, but their presence in their traditional settlements can be traced back hundreds and, in some areas, thousands of years (Hætta, 2002). Sámi ancestral land is not well defined in the historical sources, but their history can be traced in the regions of the different Sámi dialects in the areas they inhabit. Sámi language belongs to the Fenno-Ugric family and is divided into ten dialects, some of them mutually incomprehensible (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Map of Sámi settlements based on the Sámi dialects. Source: Marit Sofie Holmestrand

The traditional ways of living in the Sámi settlements varied greatly. All of them were based on the natural resources to be found in each region. The history of the Sámi from the 17^th and 18^th centuries are particularly important since from that time they were colonized and divided by the four national states, who each took an interest in their land and resources. New national borders were established within their settlements and the colonization process was carried out at two levels: By the appropriation and invading of their land and the inner colonization of their language and cultural tradition. The border between Sweden and Norway, which was then in a union with Denmark, was established in 1752 (Pedersen, 2008) and between Russia and Norway, then in a union with Sweden, in 1826 (Nilsen, 2014).

The Sámi community became ruled completely by the states who governed different areas they inhabited. The national borders effected the settlements dramatically and ever since they have had dramatic consequences, which last up to the present day (Nilsen, 2014; Hansen and Olsen, 2004; Pedersen, 2008; Andersen, Evjen, Ryymin, 2021). The national borders dividing the settlements and the land they lived on gradually shrank. The expanding national fisheries, mineral industry, farming, forestry, tourism, road building and leisure activities in each of the national states expanded continuously and the colonization of Sámi land and resources greatly demolished the traditional Sámi livelihood, as we know from colonial stories across the world.

The tradition of reindeer herding changed after the establishment of the Norwegian–Swedish border dividing the two nations. The new border restricted herding activities and the annual migration crossing the new national borders caused conflicts between herding families, herding and farming communities and the national states. According to Sámi tradition, the herding families were organized into working and migration units, something which in Sámi is named a siida. According to the treaty from 1751, which was known as Lappecodicillen, and also known as the Sámi Magna Carta, regulating herding migration across the border. Some siidas now belonging to Sweden had, according to the treaty, access to their old grazing land across the border and some siidas, now belonging to Norway, were to be allowed to use grazing land in Sweden. The dispute about the treaty started early and would soon become a target for the expansion of national interest in the Sámi settlements. These expansions gradually decreased the area of grazing land and some areas were blocked off in 1919 (Pedersen, 2008). In the aftermath, these conflicts are still ongoing. Some of them have been settled in the juridical system and some of them are not yet decided. They are targeted in numerous public debates on both sides of the Norwegian–Swedish border. Today, they also cause conflicts between herding communities on both sides of the border and, in some districts, within each of them.

Along with these conflicts the Sámi community has put considerable effort into the process of restoration after more than 100 years of territorial, cultural and mental colonization. The national assimilation policy had dramatic consequences for the Sámi language, and for cultural life in general. In the majority of communities, the Sámi language disappeared completely. The total of the Sámi population at this point is estimated to be approximately 100,000. Of these, between 20 and 30% of the population speaks one of the 10 dialects and less than 15% can write in the Sámi language (Regjeringen, 2018). In Norway, the most intensive assimilation of the Sámi happened between 1850 and the late 1970s. In some respect they proceed.

As far back as we can trace Sámi life it has been formed by the nature and resources in the areas they inhabited. They surely qualify for the old ethnographic term ‘natural people’. Their close companionship with nature was the fundamental basis for their beliefs, knowledge and thinking. The ways of living asked for sophisticated knowledge about nature and an organized way of harvesting it. The Swedish ethnographer and scholar Gustav von Düben studied how the different Sámi locations related to the resources and landscape they harvested. The people living close to a river he named ‘Sami at a riverside’(“elv-samar”), the Sámi of the woods (“skog-samar”), and the Sea Sámi (“sjø-samar”) (Von Düben, 1977). Another way of naming the different settlements is according to the dialect spoken. Today, this is the usual way, as illustrated in the map of Sápmi above. But the different dialects are not a precise criteria for recognizing Sámi life and may even be misleading in the contemporary situation in modern Sápmi. Many have left behind the traditional lifestyles and the original settlements. Modern ways of living, according to some anti-Sámi activists, are claimed to have weakened the Sámi cultural identity. The opposite is in fact the case as the old lifestyles are still at hand, both in terms of practical living and cultural awareness and in terms of Sámi life flourishing in the big cities.

From the early 16^th century reindeer herding was developed by the Sámi as a new way of living. Instead of hunting the wild reindeer along their annual migration tracks, the Sámi domesticated them and started to keep them in herds. Herding gradually became the backbone of Sámi living in many inland settlements in all of the regions in the four states they inhabited (Vorren and Manker, 1958). With this huge change, caused by the domestication of herding, Sámi families became nomads keeping reindeer in herds and following them along the tracks which had earlier been their hunting grounds. As nomads, the herders and families moved with the animals from the inland in the winter to the summer grazing land at the coastline in spring. They returned by the same tracks to the winter grazing land in late autumn. The domestication invented a new lifestyle for herding families (Vorren and Manker, 1958; Hansen and Olsen, 2004). Reindeer herding has had a substantial impact on the general Sámi community. Today, most outsiders associate the Sámi with reindeer herding, even if less than 10% of the entire population is currently involved. Nevertheless everybody acknowledges the importance which reindeer herding has for the Sámi culture, language and traditions and its overall importance for a common cultural awareness. Symbolically, herding life is still a stronghold for Sámi identity.

During recent decades, the general process of urbanization has also invented Sápmi and changed the traditional settlements. Increasingly, young people moves to cities outside the original settlements in order to get a proper education. Many are trained for new ways of living and a lot of them settle down in the cities and live a conventional urban life (Stordal, 1996). In a period the girls left home for education and some never returned, a phenomenon that caused severe problems in the traditional settlements. A new Sámi education system had to be developed and by that a ‘modern life’ invented the old settlements. Urban lifestyles appeared in the whole of the Sámi community and some of the traditional ways of living appeared, albeit in new shapes. They were influenced by new ways of seeing life and the future of Sámi living. Life in the old settlements was inspired by modern living outside. This change contributed to a bridging of the gap between old lifestyles and new worldviews, but also the other way round: The long line in Sámi cultural tradition in old settlements formed important parts of modern Sámi life in the cities as for the cultural commuters both living in cities and at home.

Since the 1970s the whole of the Sámi community has experienced a continuous period of transition. The struggle with restoration and rebuilding what had been ruined in most communities during more than 100 years of intensive colonization, inspired the renaissance of a strong Sámi self-consciousness. The colonial invention of language, cultural institutions and traditional religious beliefs contributed to a strong healing force which was developed as a part of modern life. A growing awareness about the damaging past became a driving force in the restoration process. The colonists’ attempts to demolish Sámi tradition also targeted their traditional spiritual ideas and values. What was ruined in the late 19^th and throughout the greater part of the 20^th century is still a dark cloud hanging over modern Sápmi. The collective memory of this colonization continues to be a trauma in many families and communities. However, the generation of politicians, artists and intellectuals who attended universities in the 1970s have been fighting for a new cultural and political epoch. The rebirth of a culturally conscious Sámi mind invented a process of reconciliation and focused on planning in the Sámi community.

In this process of restoration the traditional ways of living became extremely important, not least because of the cultural position which it holds. Reindeer herding, known to most outsiders, was one of them. It marked the Sámi presence in the huge areas of grazing land and was naturally put on the political agenda. The fight known as the ‘Alta battle’, which occurred between 1968 and 1982, was a controversy about the plan to build a hydroelectric power plant in the Alta-Kautokeino watercourse. This conflict became well known not just in Scandinavia, but was also recognized on the international political scene. From the beginning of the plan the core of the conflict was to build a power plant that would submerge the Sámi village of Máze. The plant would also block off reindeer migration tracks in the area and disrupt the wild salmon and the fishing activities in the Alta river. On January 14 1981, 600 police removed more than 1000 protesters who had chained themselves together on the site, when the work on the dam was due to start. Many participants in the battle who participated and supported Sámi interests contributed to the attention the protest received in the press, both within Norway and outside the country. Two Sámi women even went to Rome to discuss the conflict with the Pope. In other activities, a group of women occupied the office of the Norwegian prime minister and a group of young Sámi carried out a hunger strike almost on the doorstep of the Norwegian parliament. This battle went on for a long time and ended in the Norwegian Supreme Court, who ruled against the Sámi interests in 1982. The Sámi had lost the battle over the dam, but they had secured a moral and political victory. The battle started a long process, making the Norwegian people gradually aware of the whole colonization process targeting the Sámi and their situation. The political wind had turned in favor of the Sámi and the Norwegian state embarked on a gradual restoration process. In 1989, two new institutions were established, the Sámi Parliament and the Sámi University College, which proved of the greatest importance for the restoration and further development of Sápmi, were established. Important political processes were launched, but the complexity of restoring a colonized nation nobody could foresee. In spite of all good intentions and goodhearted willingness from the Norwegian king and prime ministers to support the process the Sámi themselves had to take the heavy burden to force the process ahead. In this struggle, the Sámi Parliament and the new institutions were dependent on a collectively working community linking history and tradition together with the present challenges.

In this struggle reindeer herding played a more important role than ever. Its presence in the huge land area it disposed became a driving force in the process, both practically and symbolically. It was a modern business offering a respectable life and a decent income for most herding families. The traditional use of land in huge areas marked the presence just not of herding life, but also for political recognition outside the Sámi community. This contributed to a growing tension about Sámi interests in general, but also to a national awareness of the Sámi as a community to be recognized.

Herding life is a political and cultural stronghold for the Sámi community and makes visible the history and contemporary problems in a practical manner, even if much has changed in herding during the latest decades. The technology now used by the community is modern, containing snow shooters and small four-wheel vehicles (ATWs) as a part of everyday herding activities. Still the basic patterns and practices have their original form. The winter pastures and the summer grazing land are the same as in previous generations. The migration routes, the tracks and the weather condition along them remain the same. Declining winter temperatures caused by climate change make trouble for the herds and the herding families (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 The herd move twice a year between the summer and winter grazing areas. (Photo: Anne Káre Anti)

Before the 1950s many herding families did not have permanent dwellings. Their nomadic life asked for transportable housing and the lavvo, the traditional tent, served as their house at the winter and the summer camps. It is still used on the overnight rest during the moves between the two locations, easy to transport and perfect for resting and cooking. Herding families stay in the inland of the region from early December to early April and at the coastline from May to October. Up to the 1950s, many herding families did not live in permanent houses. Women and children lived with their extended families during the coldest winter season, when it was possible for the temperature to drop below minus 40 degrees Celsius.

From the early 1900s the Norwegian administration built permanent residential schools for Sámi children. Most of them were boarding schools, where children lived for months at the time separated from their parents and family. This experience with the school system had a bad impact on many of the children and parents. For many families, the boarding s...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Nature, animals and people
• 2 The narrative tradition
• 3 The messenger
• 4 Leaving a child behind
• 5 The voice of common properties
• 6 The narratives about the noaide
• 7 The spiritual aftermath
• 8 The spiritual conversion into Læstadianism
• 9 A local system of justice
• 10 The glance of future in the past
• Bibliography
• Index