Conflicts Over the Repatriation of Sami Cultural Heritage in Sweden

Abstract

More than 400 years of colonization and assimilation policy by the Nordic states has created a new situation for Sami culture. Over this long period the Sami heritage has become thoroughly marginalized, but today the more overt conflicts that we find elsewhere in the world between colonizing states and indigenous peoples have diminished. Such conflicts are, perhaps, more characteristic of an earlier stage of the colonial frontier, and they have been replaced by post-colonial forms of consensus. Despite the shared experiences of the Sami in their recent history, some important differences have emerged between Nordic states in how the Sami heritage is perceived and how it is managed. Much more than in Norway, the dominant attitudes of the Swedish state continue to echo the discriminatory attitudes of the past, but in a more restrained way. This continuity of attitudes is demonstrated here using examples of current policies and practices. Particularly in Sweden, there are continuing conflicts between nationalism and the Sami world view, but I argue that these old conflicts are no longer the main problem in Scandinavia. Instead, scholars, Sami leaders, and others concerned with heritage in the north are finding common cause in opposing what we might call the ‘wilderness assumptions’ of policy makers in the south, especially within the neo-liberal Swedish state. These assumptions have been reinforced by the restructuring of state finances, and they are now leading towards neglect of northern cultural heritage and its associated institutions, particularly museums. These assertions are supported using examples from various museums and through case studies of the repatriation of Sami cultural objects such as drums and siejdde-stones, and the continuing problems with Sami skeletal remains.     

The Eastern Sámi: A short account of their history and identity

During the last decade there has been a growing interest in the history and culture of the Eastern Sami, but information on this subject is insufficient. In this article the author starts from the quite problematical question about the use of the term Eastern Sámi, and presents further data about the main historical milestones for the Eastern Sami from olden times up to the end of the 20^th century. Among other things, the author considers changes which happened in the structure of Eastern Sami social life, the cultural and linguistic environment and its influence on the Eastern Sami culture and languages, influence of the state borders and state policies, and the relationship between the Sami and the Orthodox Church. Based on this historical background, the author elucidates the issue of Eastern Sami identity and their sense of affinity. Is there still a future for their culture, language and identity? The author, who grew up on Sami land in Russia, has for more than a decade been studying the Eastern Sami culture, folklore and religion. In this presentation, the inner point of view, native Sami terms and place‐names are especially emphasized.     

Språkforsking og språkplanlegging i det samiske samfunnet

Sammendrag

Focusing on ?Linguistics and Language Planning in the Sami Community?, this paper gives an outline of the institutions involved in Sami language care, and inter alia poses the question of ?which institutions should be, and are capable of taking on the responsibility of the Sami Community, with regard to the supposed interaction between this community and Sami language care?? ‐ Sami language care is characterized as suffering from two main deficiencies: a) lack of resources, and b) lack of organisation.

Relating to the work and discussions of the ortographical reforms (Southern Sami 1976–78, Lule Sami, and Northern Sami 1983); the author enumerates various lines of reasoning, each emphazising various concerns and considerations, as: 1) Accuracy and system, 2) Tradition, 3) Due concern to own premises, 4) Due concern to different dialectical realisations, 5) The demand for ?naturalness? and ?simpleness?, 6) Pedagogical concerns, 7) Historical foundations and 8) Internationality and technical considerations. ‐ The author points out how these considerations are interconnected; partly contradicting each other and partly pointing in the same direction.

Finally the author emphazises the minority situation of the Sami language, and stresses the need for viewing language planning in light of its interconnections with the surrounding society.     

Den samiska handeln och dess roll som social differentieringsfaktor‐lule lappmark 1760–1860

English summary

During the beginning of the 17th Century, reindeer‐husbandry developed as the dominating economic form of the Sami in Swedish Lappland. Sami society was transformed from a hunting to a pastoralist society, with profound alterations in social and economic structures. In this paper the role of trade as an agent of change in reindeer‐pastoralist economies is studied with an emphasis on conditions in Lule lappmark during the period 1760–1860.

In the middle of the 18th Century, the Sami held a dominating position in the trade of Lule lappmark. Sami traded with the Swedish trading system on the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, and with the Norwegian trading system on the Atlantic coast. Through this trade, the Sami both disposed of their own reindeer products and conducted important middle‐man trade between the two national trading systems. In addition they carried out a large local trade in Lapland with their own products and with purchased goods.

By the middle of the 19th Centuy. the picture is completely different. The dominating Sami position had been lost and trade with Norway all but disappeared. The initiative in the local trade had gone over to the settlers. All this had occured without any changes in the assortment of goods, trading‐patterns, the volume of trade or prices. The reasons where manifold. The most important ones, however, are to be found in the population development of Lapland and the increase in population and production on the coast of Bothnia.

In Lapland a strong population movement occured with the change from a traditional Sami way of life towards a more settled one based on agriculture. At the same time, the number of settlers with a Swedish ethnic background vigourosly increased. On the coast of Bothnia the population tripled between 1750 and 1850. During this period an important proto‐industrial development also took place based on wood and iron, wind‐ and water‐power. All this meant that the relative importance of traditional Sami goods received from reindeer‐husbandry diminished, even if actual supply and demand remained stable.

The great volume of trade with reindeer‐products and the many important goods received in return demonstrates the importance of trade for the reindeer‐pastoralist economy. The trading‐goods were to a large extent technically superior to the products produced within the frames of the reindeer‐pastoralist economy. The most important factor was, however, the fact that the surplus production left in exchange for these goods, only demanded a small increase in labor input.

Within the reindeer‐pastoralist society, trade has a role as promotor of property‐differentiation and social stratification. Through hoarding of silver the rich reindeer‐owner could withdraw a substantial part of his property from the eternal plague of reindeer‐pastoralism ‐ the ever occuring bad years with heavy losses of reindeer. After such a year, he could use the silver to buy food, saving his diminished herd from slaughter and quickly building it up again. The owner of a small herd, without any silver, had to slaughter the few reindeer that survived in order to live; hence social differences could be conserved over generations.     

Sami Rights and Sami Challenges

In this article the authors analyse the conflict in contemporary Sami politics in Sweden. To understand this conflict a historical perspective is necessary, and the authors reconstruct the ideas and beliefs in the public debate that has legitimized a system of Sami rights over more than a century, and analyze the challenges to these by the Sami movement. Two parallel themes are discussed: the first deals with the continuity and change of the Swedish Sami policy, where the authors show how ideas and beliefs concerning the Sami have limited the possibilities of political action. The second theme focuses on the political mobilization of the Sami in Sweden and their challenges of the established view of the Sami in official policy. One of the conclusions made is that it is of importance to grant indigenous peoples, like the Sami, some kind of secure political platform from which they could participate in the democratic procedure and legitimately counter‐act the power of the nation states in which they live.     

Sami Fisheries in the Pre-modern Era: Household Sustenance and Market Relations

Abstract

This article tries to assess the importance of fisheries within the traditional Sami household economy, where market orientation and participation in commercial fishing activities directed at selling stockfish to external partners formed an integral, strategic factor. After an introductory overview of the traditional fishing methods of the Sami, their most common types of fishing gear and the most preferred species, the article focuses on the sources that might highlight Sami fisheries from the Middle Ages and on through Early Modern times. Accounts and tax registers from the late sixteenth century show that the groups of coastal and inland Sami displayed highly different trading profiles. The coastal Sami were heavily dependent on institutionalized forms of trade, not only connected to the Hanseatic trade network with its regional centre in Bergen, but also to other merchant groups, in a way that made them able to take advantage of competition among the merchants. However, in comparison with their Norwegian cohabitants, the Sami showed a greater adaptability and capability of switching between various resource niches, and were not so fundamentally dependent on provisions from outside as the Norwegians.     

Estonian Swedish Ethnic Survival – Examples from Nuckö in the Interwar Period

Abstract

A long-term perspective is important in studies of ethnic groups and their opportunities for survival. This case study deals with the Swedish population in Nuckö (Noarootsi), Estonia, during the interwar period. Even though the Swedish population declined as a whole, some villages succeeded in maintaining their Swedish affiliation. Settlement patterns and varying opportunities to own land are important factors behind these differences. The Estonian–Swedish cultural awakening in the interwar period made it easier for people to show their Swedish ethnic identity more openly. Inhabitants in villages that already at the end of the nineteenth century had a large proportion of Estonians in their population, reacted more positively to the state's request that people change their surname as part of the assimilation policy of the 1930s. Even though people in some villages chose to register a change in ethnic status, a change of surname, and even changed their use of language, they may nonetheless have remained committed to their former Swedish ethnicity on a private level. It is crucial to combine different kinds of data, such as church records, censuses and interviews, in order to illustrate the complexities of ethnic identity from a variety of different angles.     

Sami subsistence activities—spatial aspects and Structuration

In the social sciences, spatial aspects of reality have been rediscovered. I will use certain concepts to describe and clarify the spatial organization of Sami subsistence activities. In this paper, ptarmigan trapping is taken as an example of “situated activities” which, according to Anthony Giddens, characterizes social systems. The siida as old hunting territory is also discussed. I will show that the Sami notions of place are not fixed in temporal and spatial terms. Moreover, I want to emphasize the dynamics of Sami subsistence activities. My claim is that they act as re/producers of Sami traditional ways. These traditions are undermined by the overall mission of the state and its agents of power. Still, the perdurability of the Sami subsistence hunters and their activities help to maintain and develop the old Sami ways in terms of spatiality and social organization.     

“Culture alone will not put bread on the table.” The many facets of the debate on the preservation of Sami culture

The idea of preserving minority cultures is widely shared in Western nation‐states. Concrete application of this idea is, however, surprisingly difficult, and sophisticated rhetoric is used in discussions related to the issue. In the 1980s and 1990s three laws dealing with the rights of the Sami people were proposed in Finland. Three discourses related to denning the concept of Sami culture in this context are identified here: first, diminishing differences, with an emphasis on equality; second, emphasis on national obligations and the cultural wealth of the majority society; and third, the rhetorical tool of dividing principle and application. The definition of Sami culture varies in different contexts, and in some cases there is even a danger of treating it as a substitute for the concept of race.     

“We are Reindeer People,We Come from Reindeer.” Reindeer Herding in Representations of the Sami in Russia

Abstract

Reindeer herding, a tourism emblem of the European North, is also part of a long-lasting tradition of objectification of Sami culture in Russia. Sustained in the popular imagination by Russian ethnography, the dominant order's agent for legitimization of Soviet ethnic policies, in the 1990s the tradition of exoticization and “othering” was strengthened by Western anthropological and political engagement with the indigenous debate in Russia, transposing on the Sami the imagery and ideals of the global indigenous movement. Business aspirations to utilize the persistent imagery of exotic otherness gave birth to ethnographic tourism in the Kola Peninsula, Northwest Russia, which markets indigenous culture as an attraction. In this paper, I analyze how these diverse discourses equally reify and exploit the concept of Sami reindeer herding and the effects that such representational economy has on the community.     

The disappearance of the ≪Västersjøfinner≫ from ringvassøy

The present article focuses on the epistemology of one of the leading lappologists of this country, the late J. Qvigstad (1853–1957). It is not surprising to find a preoccupation with the presence or absence of ?cultural traits? in his studies of the Sami of his time. A closer look at the micro demography of his informants does however suggest a misinterpretation on the part of Qvigstad, of the situation of the Sami and their local communities.     

Confrontation and conciliation: the sami,the crown and the court in seventeenth-century swedish lapland1

This article aims to discover in what kind of legal cases conflicts may be traced between the Sami and representatives of the Crown, and in which situations conciliation is apparent; and it also answers the questions of how and why this happened. It is evident, from the court rolls from the court district of Jukkasjärvi (one of the two northernmost lappmarker in Sweden at this time), that the Crown prosecuted the Sami for sexual offences and crimes against religion. This was due to the prevailing ideology of the seventeenth century, in which Lutheran Christianity prevailed, and because the court was the arena for a power discourse: there was a “right” way to live and behave. This came into conflict with Sami tradition. The Sami themselves pursued a desire and need for conciliation, which becomes apparent in cases of crimes such as murder, manslaughter and grand theft, but also in civil cases, e.g. inheritance. This was due to the fact that the population was quite small, bound together in different relations, and because large-scale conflicts were not beneficial to Sami communities. Even though the Crown Court was an arena of power, it was also used by the Sami for their own ends, and thus we can see an interactive Sami society, independent of the prevailing political Lutheran Christian ideology and its discourse.     

Recent Norwegian archaeological publications

The part of the Helg?y Project presented here deals with the Norwegian and Sami populations in Helg?y from their supposed immigration to the Region about 13/1400 AD to approximately 1700. Some findings and the methods developed by the project to establish them will be presented, the question of how to distinguish Sami from Norwegian settlements in historical and pre‐historical times being central in the study of North Norway.     

From “Spitsbergen” to “Svalbard”. Norwegianization in Norway and in the “Norwegian Sea”, 1820–1925

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to enhance our understanding of the Norwegian acquisition of Spitsbergen/Svalbard by using the concept of Norwegianization as a tool for analyzing the political and diplomatic background for the Spitsbergen treaty of 1920, and comparing the Norwegianization polar politics with the Norwegianization concept used to analyze the internal colonization in the Sami districts of northern Norway during the same period. The paper concludes that the politics of Norwegianization on the main islands in the North Ocean – renamed the Norwegian Sea by Norwegian oceanographers in the 1870s – was an offensive policy of expansionism, motivated by historical and geographical considerations and alleged rights to re-establish the Medieval Norse empire.     

Mobilising non-participant youth: using sport and culture in local government policy to target social exclusion

ABSTRACT

The role of sport and cultural practices in policy initiatives tends to be assessed in both cases in terms of their assumed social benefits. However, the areas of sport and culture are often understood separately in research. Through an analysis of interviews with key local policy-makers and civil servants in two Swedish municipalities, the aim of this article is to explore how sport and culture are formed as means to promote social policy objectives regarding young people. In addition, we reflect on the political significance of this in relation to the development of local policy. The analysis demonstrates how a discourse of urban segregation and unequal opportunities underpins actions to mobilise non-participant and at-risk youth. This is achieved by establishing centres for sport and culture, and by enabling an educational approach which focuses on participation, empowerment and good citizenship. Reasons for mobilising practices involving culture and sport overlap, though each area of policy appears to be differently underpinned by discourses of enlightenment and conformity. Differences in emphasis between the discourses on sport and culture are discussed in relation to scientific discourse on the social utility of each policy area.     

Research on and by ‘the Other’. Focusing on the Researcher's Encounter with the Lule Sami in a Historically Changing Context

Abstract

A century and half ago, the encounter between the researcher and those (s)he researched were described and seen from the vantage point of the researcher. ‘The others’ participated in the encounters, but were seldom asked for advice regarding the approach or to provide their own perspectives. But this has changed. Originally playing the passive role of the objects of research, today the Sami and Kven of northern Norway have taken on the role of the active participant. These changes are apparent when examining research on the Lule Sami in Norway over the last 150 years. Several dimensions must be considered. First, the researcher and their research must be placed and understood within the contemporary ideological context, implying that the situation of the researcher will reflect the social and political conditions of the time. Analysis of research from the Lule Sami area demonstrates how the researcher's perspective on the Sami people and culture has changed over time, how the Sami role in history, and thus cultural diversity, has been revealed in greater detail, and how the Sami part of the population has increasingly participated by taking on the role of the researcher. Finally, the encounter is analysed in an international context, which shows how the local and national changes are also part of an international development.     

From ‘Traditional’ to Collectivized Reindeer Herding on the Kola Peninsula: Continuity or Disruption?1

Abstract

The article turns critical attention to the process of Kola Sami land-use changes that had occurred in the century immediately preceding Soviet collectivization drives of the mid-1930s. Particular attention is turned to influences brought by Izhma Komi settlers at the end of the 19th century. The overall argument is that Kola Sami land-use adaptive patterns had shown signs of orienting towards reindeer-driven, market-oriented form of husbandry well before collectivization. In this sense, there are grounds to see collectivization – in its expansive strategy for ever-rising production of reindeer meat – as part of a sufficiently long period of continuous changes, rather than an abrupt disruption of ‘traditional’ patterns – the latter reading occurring as a popular theme in Kola Sami related literature. Attention is turned also to post-Soviet forms of re-orientation in land-use. Here the problematic point of intra-community tendencies for ‘hidden privatization’ of extant collective assets is discussed in its current local controversy with foreign-supported experiments in private, clan community (obshchina) reindeer-husbandry.     

Rethinking the representation of Gustavus Adolphus: the case of William Watts and The Swedish Intelligencer, 1630–33

ABSTRACT

Between 1630 and 1633, English newsbooks resounded with tales of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden’s victories against the “popish” armies of Emperor Ferdinand II. Such literary praise has been widely associated with Calvinist disapprobation of Charles I’s pacific foreign policy. This article throws new light on the alternative, non-Calvinist sources of enthusiasm for Gustavus Adolphus in the newsbook, The Swedish Intelligencer, which portrayed the Swedish king as the figurehead of a broad, confessionally flexible, pan-Protestant cause. This has important implications for our understanding of the relationship between English and European Protestant nations in the context of the Thirty Years’ Wars. News from the military camp of the Lutheran King of Sweden offered a subtle way of promoting and normalising non-Calvinist forms of worship in England, and thus provides evidence that a range of Protestants were utilising the London news presses to advance their religious agenda in the early 1630s.