The natives of Sweden

Sami are the indigenous people of Sápmi, the land that stretches over the northern part of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia’s Kola Peninsula. The Sami are also one of Sweden’s five official national minorities. But Sweden and the Sami have had a long and complex history.

Sami are often associated with reindeer. The truth is that only about ten per cent of Swedish Sami earn a living from the reindeer industry, and they often supplement their income through tourism, fishing, crafts and other trades. Others have been forced to look for income elsewhere as a result of ongoing challenges to the reindeer trade, including disputes with the government over reindeer herders’ grazing rights versus landowners’ logging rights. Current clashes include wind power plants versus grazing reindeer.

Nomadic or not?

The town of Sorsele, Suorsán Tjeälddie in Sami, claims to have Sweden’s highest number of reindeer per person. It also has two living Sami ‘villages’, samebyar, that follow their reindeer herds in the traditional nomadic way, all the way from the mountains bordering on Norway to the Baltic Sea coast and back again. The nomadic life is not the modern norm. It’s more common to have a permanent home and a cabin in the mountains for the herding season.

Sami ‘villages’ are not traditional villages, but a complex economical and administrative union and a specific geographical area within which its members have the right to engage in reindeer husbandry, and sometimes also hunting and fishing.

The Sami are spread out in different countries but have their own flag, and 6 February is the Sami National Day.

Six Sami words

(Northern Sami dialect)

Ruo ŧŧa = Sweden Boazu = reindeer Muohta = snow Sihkkel = bike Ovdaskuvla = nursery school Dihtor = computer

Sami Blood

The film Sami Blood is set in the 1930s. In this scene Elle Marja, a 14-year-old Sami, is subjected to racial–biological examinations at her boarding school. She starts dreaming of a different life, a life that means breaking all ties with her family and culture.

The Sami year has eight different seasons, based on the movements of the nomadic reindeer. September and October are the autumn months, tjaktja, which is when any calves that were missed during the summer are marked.

Battle of rights

In 2011 the supreme court ruled in favour of the three Sami villages of Ran, Vapsten and Umbyn giving them common law rights to a specific area of land. This meant the Sami won the right to let their reindeer graze on the private land in question.

In certain areas Sami villages also have fishing and hunting rights, also the subject of a long legal battle. In 2020 another historic supreme court verdict gave back the Girjas Sami village the right over the state to manage fishing and small-game hunting on its land.

But courts far from always decide in favour of the Sami. After six years of court proceedings, in 1996, a court verdict shook the whole of Sápmi: The Sami villages in Härjedalen and Idre Sami village lost the right to graze with reindeer. An appeal had no impact on the verdict. The Sami have also for decades tried unsuccessfully to change Sweden’s mining laws, as mining has a negative impact on their livelihood and is seen as an intrusion on Sami land.