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Before the Fall of the Reindeer People

Environmental Graffiti ^ | 13 Dec 2009 | EG

Posted on by BGHater



A Sami (Lapp) family in Norway around 1900

Photo: Library of Congress

In the freezing far northern reaches of Europe live an indigenous, semi-nomadic people of fishermen, fur trappers and reindeer herders. Like a thin but stubborn sheet of ice, these people have inhabited Sápmi, a large but sparsely populated area covering parts of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russias Kola Peninsula for thousands of years. They remained closely tied to nature throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, as their clothes, dwellings and other trappings of culture bear witness  here beautifully frozen in film . These people are the Sámi.



Sami family in front of their home, 1870s



Photo: Unknown photographer

This singular race is divided into three different groups: mountain, forest, and fisher Lapps. The first two are nomadic and almost entirely dependent upon reindeer. Nearly all the needs of the Lapps are supplied by this useful creature, which closely resembles a stag. The flesh provides his food; from its milk he obtains cheese; from the hide, clothes, leather, foot and tent covering, while the antlers yield material for knife blades, vessels, etc. Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913, Lapland and Lapps



Two persons in Sami dresses outside Jokkmokk Old Church, Sweden, c. 1860

Photo: Swedish National Heritage Board



Nomadic Sami people in Sapmi in front of two Lavvu Tents, 1900-1920

Photo: Granbergs Nya Aktiebolag

Two hundred years ago, the Sámi people lived in more or less peaceable co-existence with the societies surrounding them. However, as modern industrialism cranked its wheel throughout the rest of Europe, the Sámi began to feel the strain in the relationship with their neighbours, and the accelerating changes in their culture that would hit high gear during the second half of the 20th century became apparent. Yet the Sámi way of life refused to be buried.



Nicolas Nilsen and Kristin Mikkelsdatter from Kvalsund, 1884

Photo: R. Bonaparte

A people without a sovereign state, the Sámis have made the Arctic Area of the Nordic countries the land of a nomadic culture unique to Europe; a culture so much more in tune with its natural environment as to be almost unrecognisable to eyes dulled by consumerism and the computer. As motley as the many colours of their costumes, this diverse group of people  a people with up to ten languages and more dialects spoken among them  yet share some common characteristics and customs.



Three Sami men are exchanging tobacco in Lyngen, Troms, Norway, early 1900

Photo: Anne Margrethe Giæver

After breakfasting, those Sámi men who practiced reindeer husbandry would have gone about their daily routines  feeding, milking and helping to tend their animals; driving them to fresh grazing lands; breeding and birthing when the season dictated. Their animals would provide them with many of the materials they needed: pelts to keep warm and for use as the walls in their dwellings; antlers to be employed alongside other bones and wood for crafting; and of course meat and milk for meals.



Photo, 1925: Richard Fleischhut

The Sámi are believed to be the first known culture to have herded animals, writes one scholar. To capture and train draft reindeer for pulling snow sleds, they lasso the wild reindeer, tie it to a tree, and slowly train it until it is domesticated. The reindeer sleds, as well as skis, are vital to Sámi life in the winter. The reindeer were cardinal, morning, noon and night.



Photo, 1925: Richard Fleischhut

A frugal lunch might have followed for a Sámi family  especially during the long, dark winter  while the mothers fed and cared for their young in cradles of wood and horn. Youths might have gathered berries or helped with repairs. Immaculately crafted tools would have hung from their waists, ready for everyday use or when needed in fishing and hunting. Sámi handicrafts, known as doudji, were born of a time when the Sámi people were isolated from the outside world and needed to be self-sufficient to survive.



Warm Hearts of the North, Sami mother, pre-1923



Photo: Borg Mesch

Made from wood, bone, horn, leather and roots, crafts ranged from knives and cases to womens bags and wooden cups, with the underlying belief that they should serve a purpose. That didnt mean objects couldnt be decorative; and while the Sámi women spent their afternoon making wares, embroidery with beads, tin thread, weaving and textiles would have been the treasures of their toil. By the 19th century, items could have been exchanged as well as used, and certainly there was an art to it all.



Photo, 1925: Richard Fleischhut

The traditional clothing worn by the Sámi is called gakti, a patchwork type of attire typified by a main colour adorned with contrasting bands , plaits and metal embroidery, often with a high collar to keep out the cold. The various different patterns and jewellery spoke of the persons marital status, where they hailed from, and other cultural variations of the different regions. Traditionally, gákti was made from reindeer leather, sinews and perhaps wool, with cotton and silk introduced later.



Photo, 1925: Richard Fleischhut

When the dogs had returned home and the reindeer shuffled together for warmth, when the day  if it had even dawned  began to darken, the Sámi families would return to their shelters  the focal points around which their lives turned, even if their location was only temporary. Similar in design to the Native American tipi, but less vertical and more stable in high winds, the lavvu could be set up and taken down quickly, allowing the Sámi to follow their reindeer herds or otherwise move from place to place.



Sámi Lavvu tent, late 1800s Photo via Friman

Supported by evenly spaced, forked or notched poles arranged into a tripod, with other straight poles to give structure to the form, the lavvu were then covered in reindeer hides  until inexpensive textiles were made available. Inside, a fireplace in the middle would have been used for heating and to keep mosquitoes at bay, the smoke escaping through a hole in the top. The goahti was a slightly larger construction, similar to a Sámi lavvu or a peat-covered version using the same base structure.



Nomad Sami settlement near Hävlingskällorna in Dalarne, Sweden, pre-1926



Photo: Svensk Turistforening

The handiwork of the Sámi people was supremely functional, but when the evenings and winters had closed in, their music and song was less practical in principle. The traditional Yoik is one of several modes of Sámi song listeners would have heard  slow, chant-like, emotive singing expressive of personal attempts to touch on the spiritual essence of a subject, say an animal or bird in nature. Other styles may not have contained words, or might have told a story about a special person or event.



Photo, 1925: Richard Fleischhut

In truth, there were as many differences as similarities among the Sámi of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Different cultures that have been identified include the Forest Sámi, Fjeld or Mountain Sámi, Sea Sámi and Eastern Sámi. Yet such classifications were further complicated by other differences of language, livelihood and history that riddled the system of small, sometimes migratory groups of families  or siidas  like beautiful cracks in the ice.





Sámi girls from Telemark County in Southern Norway, late 1880

Photo: M. M. Lohne

The Sámi have lived in northern Europe since the last glacial ice sheets melted away, following herds of reindeer, living off the land, and adapting to the harsh winter winds and climate. However, they only became recognisable as their own distinct culture in the last few millennia. When the Black Death sank its teeth into Europe in 1349, it did not impact so heavily on the Sámis, who were less connected to the European trade routes and so were not infected and killed at nearly as high a rate as their neighbours.



Ivar Samuelsen, Sea Saami man from Finnmark in Norwegian Sapmi, 1884

Photo: Prins Roland Bonaparte

In the wake of the pandemic, those Sámi driven to fish off the north Norwegian coast became the Sea Sámi who, as they migrated and multiplied, settled Norways fjords and inland waterways, combining cattle raising with trapping and fishing. Meanwhile, a smaller minority of Mountain Sámi continued to hunt reindeer, and around the 1500s began taming the overhunted animals into herds, becoming the famed reindeer nomads  a lifestyle portrayed as archetypically Sámi but in fact only pursued by about 10% of the people.



Storehouse and Sami women at Slugufjäll Settlement, Dalarne, Sweden, pre-1926



Photo: C. Fries

The Sámi felt the pressure of interest shown in their areas by the surrounding states of Denmark-Norway, Sweden-Finland and Russia  not to mention instances of forced labour and the fact that all claimed the right to tax them. Yet for a long time, the Sámi way of life thrived in the north because of it was so supremely adapted to the harsh Arctic environment  and was fit to survive independent of crises like the low fish prices and resulting depopulation Norwegians living up north suffered during the 18th century.



Photo: Svensk Turistforening

However, the fortunes of the Sámi people began to waver in the 19th century when the Norwegian authorities began taking away Sámi rights in a bid to make the Norwegian language and culture universal. Although on the Swedish and Finnish sides the authorities were less militant in their efforts to assimilate the Sámi culture, in all three Scandinavian countries a strong drive towards settlement in the north led to a weakening of the Sámi peoples economic and cultural status.



Accommodation for nomad Sami visiting church, Västerbotten, Sweden, pre-1926

Photo: G. Bergstedt

Worse was still to come. The tightest grip exerted on the Sámi occurred in the years between 1900 and 1940, when Norwegian nationalism intensified to the point where the government invested considerable money and effort into wiping out their culture. Anyone who wanted to claim new land for agriculture had to prove they could speak good Norwegian. The earlier myths of the Sámi as somehow innocently primitive and poor had reached a new and frightening level under the banner of a dominant, civilising culture.



A Nordic Sami family in traditional costumes and a dog from Finland, pre-1936

Photo: Kortcentralen Helsingfors

In Sweden, Sámi areas were increasingly exploited by the burgeoning mining industry and the building of the Luleå-Narvik railway, and later some Sámis were subjected to a compulsory sterilisation project. Meanwhile, in Russia the nomadic Sámi way of life was brutally interrupted by the collectivisation of reindeer herding and farming in general, with most of the people rounded up in a kolkhoz in the middle of the Kola Peninsula and forced to accept this radical new ideology or face the concentration camp.



Soldier with Sámi buying a fox skin, Norway, 1940

Photo: Schwarz

Matters didnt improve any with the onset of WWII, when the eastern Sámi in north-eastern Finland and Russia found themselves fighting on opposing sides. When the Germans withdrew from the north of Finland and Russia, homes and other visible traces of history were laid to waste in a scorched earth policy. Many families were forced to evacuate, though some Sámi ended up in German prison camps. Areas like Finnmark county in Norway and all northern areas of Finland were left in smoking ruins.



Federal German Archive Photo, 1943: Rymas

After the War grew a renewed interest in the Sámi culture, the seeds of which had been sown in the late 1800s when the first Sámi newspapers were founded; the news spoken in Sámi on Norwegian national radio started in 1946. The construction of a hydro-electric dam on important grazing and calving areas in the Finnmark town of Alta in 1979 brought Sámi rights onto the political agenda. And since 1992, the Sámi have their own national day, which takes place on February 6.



Sami reindeer herder in Sweden, 2005

Photo: Mats Andersson

Today, the Sámi people remain among the largest indigenous ethnic groups in Europe. Only around 2,800 Sámi are actively involved with full-time reindeer herding, but its continued existence is the legacy of a beautiful culture founded on seasonal migrations and the cycles of life.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12



TOPICS:

History

KEYWORDS:

colonial

finland

godsgravesglyphs

helixmakemineadouble

lapp

norway

reindeer

saami

sami





To: SunkenCiv

Sámi, great photos.



by 2 posted onby BGHater (America is a Kakistocracy.)

To: archy

Finnish bump



To: archy

Finnish bump



To: BGHater

We must get these poor people cell phones so we can warn them...about liberals.



To: BGHater

During this joyous Christmas season, I’d like you to know.... A reindeer bit my sister once.



by 6 posted onby Responsibility2nd (During this joyous Christmas season, I'd like you to know....A reindeer bit my sister once.)

To: BGHater

Awesome pics - what a demanding life - none of them look too old.



To: blackminorca

A glimpse of our future under international climate change

regs such as cap and trade?



To: Responsibility2nd

One would hope so, but not too hard of course. Whenever I go over that collection ~ and this is just part of a far larger collection accessible on the net, I look for family faces and always find a new one. Now not all those faces are family ~ Worth nothing ~ there may be as many as 105,000 Sa'ami in the Fenno-Scandinavian peninsula but there are at least 9,000,000 Sa'ami descendants in the United States. One aspect of Sa'ami life not covered in those pictures was the forced relocation of most of the population to America in the mid 1600s through the early 1700s.



To: BGHater

Great post!



by 10 posted onby JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet)

To: BGHater

"The Sámi are believed to be the first known culture to have herded animals, writes one scholar."



"Meanwhile, a smaller minority of Mountain Sámi continued to hunt reindeer, and around the 1500s began taming the overhunted animals into herds, becoming the famed reindeer nomads"



Uh...something doesn't compute. Is it the author's contention that no one else on Earth "herded animals" until the 16th century? Ok...no wonder the "scholar" chose to remain nameless.



The pictures seem contrived and poised to me. Natives ginning it up for a naive, or not so naive photographer out looking for his romantic preconceptions of a stone age existence...much like the highly stylized and arranged 19th century American Indian pictures that the media used to introduce the idea of the noble savage. To believe that most of these pictures are genuine seems similar to believing that if a photographer decided to come by my house to document a rapidly vanishing breed, the Southernus Redneckus, he'd just happen to find me in the front yard wearing a Budweiser cap, wife beater and cut offs...and I conveniently have my dogs, Camaro, truck, guns, tools, and family arranged around me. Ready for the glamor shot.



To: muawiyah

One aspect of Sa'ami life not covered in those pictures was the forced relocation of most of the population to America in the mid 1600s through the early 1700s. Can you elaborate a bit, this is fascinating? Where did they locate in America? Why would there be pressure brought on them to emigrate? Great post here.



To: BGHater

Gramma got run over by a reindeer “bump”.



by 13 posted onby BerryDingle (I know how to deal with communists, I still wear their scars on my back from Hollywood-Ronald Reagan)

To: nathanbedford

It's actually very simple. The New Sweden colony was established in territory claimed by UK about 1638. The first ship with colonists was called the Kalmar Nyckel (and there's a lot of history tied up in those two names BTW ~ so no discussion here this time). There were 5 "official" colonial military crew members ~ all Swedes. All spoke Swedish. The rest of the passengers consisted mostly of "family groups" and we know the names of most the heads of household ~ and, best of all we know they were identified as speaking FINN, and not Swedish. For most modern purposes FINN means "Finnish" but at that time it did not. That word denotes an individual from the Finnmark ~ that is, a Sa'ami. As you know reindeer easily range 3000 miles. The Sa'ami followed reindeer wherever they went ~ full domestication came later, but it was common for the reindeer to range much further South in winter. The Swedes regularly rounded up Sa'ami (and even Swedes without papers) who got too close to Stockholm. In this case they took their Sa'ami winter-time prisoners and shipped them to America ~ to what is now Delaware. Within a few years of starting the colony there were thousands more Sa'ami present, the officers engaged the Dutch in a little war, the Dutch won, the colony then moved across the isthmus to Elkton Maryland, the officers were hired by the Dutch to run Nieuwe Amsterdam, and the Sa'ami were left on their own. The Swedes continued to dispatch Sa'ami they caught too close to civilized spots to America, to the same place. The last shipments appear to have happened in the mid 1700s. The Sa'ami settlements expanded. By 1700 the settlements to the North in Lancaster PA relocated to York (yoik?) PA to get away from Quaker harrassment. (All these people were nominally Lutheran ~ and in reality many still maintained older religious beliefs ~ SEE: Santa Claus, Reindeer, Dwarves, Chimneys, etc. ~ I know you know this stuff.) By the early 1700s there were 5 Sa'ami colonies in Pennsylvania ~ and 2 Sa'ami colonies in Maryland. Best I can determine these colonies were identified with a "deer" or "elk" in their names, or in later colonies with the word "union" (for Kalmar Union). Remember George Washington in the boat crossing the Delaware? See those guys doing the rowing? Remember the Maryland 400? There are numerous family genealogies on the net that detail in some manner the Sa'ami experience in America. The fellows walking barefoot at Valley Forge might well have been quite comfortable in fact. Today there are millions of Americans of Sa'ami origin ~ some with a lot, some with not so much. I've been fairly successful in finding a remnant. Maybe we will be able to get together on a compendium of documentation someday. Maybe you'd like to help. To get started read what there is on the internet. One more thing. Science has determined that the division between the Sa'ami and other white folk took place right at the end of the Ice Age 15,000 years ago. There've been some additions since that time ~ a handful of Yakuts with tame reindeer, some Eastern Slavs 7,000 years ago, and maybe even some folks from America back before the end of the Ice Age. Having Sa'ami ancestors makes you almost a race apart ~ where the differences between the vast majority and your group are mediated by genes, and not just culture and language.



To: Spike Knotts

Some of the photos date from the late 1800s where it was still very common to have folks stand in poses for minutes at a time ~ that was a function of the technology available in those days. Regarding wearing their Sunday best, used to be everybody dressed up for a photo ~ women in their skirts, broad sleeved blouses, pointed hats/bonnets and the men in their best leather brogalis. We have a number of family pictures where the photographer set up quite a long way from his subjects because you had many adults only 4' tall mixed in with others that were well over 7' tall. Fortunately they stood very still so we can do blow-ups of individuals that are very good likenesses. You'll notice the photographers in FennoScandinavia had similar problems due to the height differentials.



To: muawiyah

muawiyah, Do you know of any websites that list the last names of known Saami settlers to the U.S.?



by 16 posted onby BerryDingle (I know how to deal with communists, I still wear their scars on my back from Hollywood-Ronald Reagan)

To: BerryDingle

Sami, my apologies :).



by 17 posted onby BerryDingle (I know how to deal with communists, I still wear their scars on my back from Hollywood-Ronald Reagan)

To: BGHater



My mother was 'V' and my grandmother (Father's mother, Mrs Smith) was U5a. The Sami are mostly mtDNA haplogroups 'V' and U5.My mother was 'V' and my grandmother (Father's mother, Mrs Smith) was U5a. My yDNA is R1b1b2, an Irishman with roots in Denmark.



To: BGHater; blam; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 1ofmanyfree; 21twelve; 24Karet; ...

by 19 posted onby SunkenCiv (My Sunday Feeling is that Nothing is easy. Goes for the rest of the week too.)

To: SunkenCiv

How I love ya, How I love ya, my dear auld Sami....



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