Who are the Sami?

This map shows the traditional lands of Sápmi, and features cities that had a large Sámi population as of 2014.

One people among four nations.  The majority of Sámi live in Norway (40,000–50,000), in Sweden (20,000–35,000), in Finland (5,000–6,500), and in Russia (about 2,000). Sámiland, called Sápmi, stretches over northern Scandinavia to the Kola Peninsula. The Sámi are an Indigenous people whose culture is directly connected to the land they have lived on and used since time immemorial.

The Sámi languages are part of the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic language family and are distantly related to Finnish and Estonian. There are nine living Sámi languages, and several more that have died out under pressure from colonization and from increasing numbers of non-Sámi settlers living in Sápmi. While many Sámi continue to speak a Sámi language, at least half do not.

For most of history the Sámi lived in small hunting and gathering communities known as siidat (singular: siida). Each siida consisted of members of several family groups, and was associated with a specific geographical area. A council of elders made decisions for the siida, and resources were shared among siida members. About 400 years ago, however, this siida system began to give way to large-scale reindeer herding due to increasing pressures from outsiders on the wild reindeer herds on which the Sámi depended for food, leather, and other products. Large-scale reindeer herding meant that herding Sámi had to follow the migration routes of the reindeer across the old siidat boundaries, which led to significant changes in society. The states made laws determining who was “real” Sámi and discriminated against any who had, for example, cows, or who fished and hunted rather than herded. The forced assimilation, displacement, and erasure had repercussions that continue today in living rooms and courtrooms. Less than 10 percent of Sámi are currently involved in reindeer herding.

That is the tiniest tip of the iceberg, however. Learn more below:

Samer.se A rich resource from the Sametinget (Swedish Sámi Parliament)
Say it in Saami Quick Quide to Sami Culture

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