The Sámi people (also Saami) are a native people of northern Europe inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses northern parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. The traditional Sámi lifestyle, dominated by hunting, fishing and trading, was preserved until the Late Middle Ages, when the modern structures of the Nordic countries were established.

The Sámi have co-existed with their neighbors for centuries, but for the last two hundred years, especially during the second half of the 20th century, there have been many dramatic changes in Sámi culture, politics, economics and their relations with their neighboring societies. During the late 20th century, conflicts broke out over the use of natural resources, the reaction to which created a reawakening and defense of Sámi culture in recent years. Of the eleven different historically attested Sámi languages (traditionally known as "dialects"), only nine have survived to the present day but with most in danger of disappearing too.

It is possible that the Sámi people's existence was documented by such writers as Tacitus. They have on uncertain grounds, but for a very long time, been associated with the Fenni. However, the first Nordic sources date from the introductions of runes and include specifically the Account of the Viking Othere to King Alfred of England.

Prehistory

The area traditionally inhabited by the Sámi people is known in Northern Sámi as Sápmi, and typically includes the northern parts of Fennoscandia. Previously, the Sámi have probably inhabited areas further south in Fennoscandia.Samenes Historie fram til 1750. Lars Ivar Hansen and Bjornar Olsen. Cappelen Akademiske Forlag. 2004 A few Stone Age cultures in the area had been speculated, especially in the 18th and early 19th centuries, to be associated with the ancestors of the Sámi, though this has been dismissed by modern scholars and extensive DNA testing.

Stone Age

The commonly held view today is that the earliest settlement of the Norwegian coast belongs to one cultural continuum comprising the Fosna culture in southern and central Norway and what used to be called the Komsa culture in the north. The cultural complex derived from the final Palaeolithic Ahrensburg culture of northwestern Europe, spreading first to southern Norway and then very rapidly following the Norwegian coastline when receding glaciation at the end of the last ice age opened up new areas for settlement. The rapidity of this expansion is underlined by the fact that some of the earliest radiocarbon dates are actually from the north.

The term "Fosna" is an umbrella term for the oldest settlements along the Norwegian coast, from Hordaland to Nordland. The distinction made with the "Komsa" type of stone-tool culture north of the Arctic Circle was rendered obsolete in the 1970s. "Komsa" itself originally referred to the whole North Norwegian Mesolithic, but the term has since been abandoned by Norwegian archaeologists who now divide the northern Mesolithic into three parts, referred to simply as phases 1, 2, and 3."Norway" Britannica onlineOlsen, B. 1994. Bosetning og samfunn i Finnmarks forhistorie. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget The oldest Fosna settlements in Eastern Norway are found at Høgnipen in Østfold. A Neolithic individual from Steigen and other Scandinavian individuals revealed admixture from Eastern Hunter-Gatherers and Western Hunter-Gatherers, suggesting migrations from the core regions of both populations into Northern Norway and Scandinavia as a whole. This mixed ancestry prevailed all the way to the Late Neolithic as evidenced by an individual from Tromsø.

Origin

The genetic origin of the Sámi is still unknown, though recent genetic research may be providing some clues. Lamnidis et al. 2018 discovered the earliest recorded introgression of Nganasan related Siberian ancestry and Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup N1c into northeastern Europe. Saami people's Siberian ancestry varies between 20%-25%, while the bronze age individuals from Bolshoy Oleny Island by the Kola Peninsula had around 40% of similar ancestry, accompanied with roughly 50% Mesolithic Eastern Hunter-Gatherer ancestry. This admixture event was estimated to have occurred around 2000 BCE by ALDER dating. Sarkissian et al. 2013 reporting on a larger array of individuals from Bolshoy Oleny Island showed the prevalence of the mtDNA haplogroup U5a1 and other subclades of U and C typical to the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of the time, but also atypical D, T and Z.

Archeological evidence suggests that people along the southern shores of Lake Onega and around Lake Ladoga reached the River Utsjoki in Northern Finnish Lapland before 8100 BC.Uncovering the secrets of the Sámi, a February 2006 Helsingin Sanomat article However, it is not likely that Sami languages are so old. According to the comparative linguist Ante Aikio, the Sami proto-language developed in South Finland or in Karelia around 2000–2500 years ago, spreading then to northern Fennoscandia.

The genetic lineage of the Sami is unique, and may reflect an early history of geographic isolation, genetic drift, and genetic bottle-necking. The uniqueness of the Sami gene pool has made it one of the most extensively studied genetic populations in the world. The most frequent Sami MtDNA (female) haplotype is U5b1b1 comprising nearly half of all haplotypes, with type V in around the same quantities, with some minor D, H and Z.

Before the 15th century Historically, the Sámi inhabited all of Finland and Eastern Karelia for a long time, though the Eastern Sámi became assimilated into the Finnish and Karelian populations after settlers from Häme, Savo, and Karelia migrated into the region. Place names, such as Nuuksio on the south coast of Finland, have been claimed to prove former Sámi settlement.Etymologies of the names of the districts of Espoo . However, the Sámi people increasingly mixed with Finnish and Scandinavian settlers, losing their culture and language.

Placename evidence suggesting a former Sámi presence in northwestern Russia (Arkhangelsk Region and the Vologda Region) has also been identified. However, this may alternatively indicate a former population speaking a language related to but distinct from Sami proper.

How far south the area of Sámi population in Norway extended in the past is an uncertain topic, and is currently debated among historians and archeologists. The Norwegian historian Yngvar Nielsen was commissioned by the Norwegian government in 1889 to determine this question in order to settle the contemporary question of Sámi land rights. He concluded that the Sámi had lived no further south than Lierne Municipality in Nord-Trøndelag county until around 1500, when they had started moving south, reaching the area around Lake Femunden in the 18th century. This hypothesis is still accepted among many historians, but has been the subject of scholarly debate in the 21st century. In favour of Nielsen's view, it is pointed out that no Sámi settlement to the south of Lierne in medieval times has left any traces in written sources. This argument is countered by pointing out that the Sámi culture was nomadic and non-literary, and as such would not be expected to leave written sources. In recent years, the number of archaeological finds that are interpreted as indicating a Sámi presence in Southern Norway in the Middle Ages has increased. These include foundations in Lesja and Vang in Valdres and in Hol and Ål in Hallingdal. Proponents of the Sámi interpretations of these finds assume a mixed population of Norse and Sámi people in the mountainous areas of Southern Norway in the Middle Ages.

Up to around 1500, the Sámi were mainly fishermen and trappers, usually in a combination, leading a nomadic lifestyle decided by the migrations of the reindeer. Around 1500, due to excessive hunting, again provoked by the Sámi needing to pay taxes to Norway, Sweden and Russia, the number of reindeer started to decrease. Most Sámi then settled along the fjords, on the coast and along the inland waterways to pursue a combination of cattle raising, trapping and fishing. A small minority of the Sámi then started to tame the reindeer, becoming the well-known reindeer nomads, who, although often portrayed by outsiders as following the archetypical Sami lifestyle, only represent around 10% of the Sami people.

It is believed that since the Viking Age, Sámi culture has been driven further and further north, perhaps mostly by assimilation since no findings yet support battles. However, there is some folklore called stalo or 'tales', about non-trading relations with a cruel warrior people, interpreted by Læstadius to be histories of Vikings interactions. Besides these considerations, there were also foreign trading relations. Animal hides and furs were the most common commodities and exchanged with salt, metal blades and different kinds of coins. (The latter were used as ornaments).

Along the Northern Norwegian coast, the Sámi culture came under pressure during the Iron Age by expanding Norse settlements and taxation from powerful Norse chieftains. The nature of the Norse-Sami relationship along the North-Norwegian coast in the Iron Age is still hotly debated, but possibly the Sámi were quite happy to ally themselves with the Norse chieftains, as they could provide protection against Finno-Ugric enemies from the area around the White Sea.

However, in the early Middle Ages, this is partly reversed, as the power of the chieftains is broken by the centralized Norwegian state. Another wave of Norse settlement along the coast of Finnmark province is triggered by the fish trade in the 14th century. However, these highly specialized fishing communities made little impact on the Sámi lifestyle, and in the late Middle Ages, the two communities could exist alongside each other with little contact except occasional trading.

Sámi art

Traditionally, Sámi art has been distinguished by its combination of functional appropriateness and vibrant, decorative beauty. Both qualities grew out of a deep respect for nature, embodied in the Sámi's animism. Sámi religion found its most complete expression in Shamanism, evident in their worship of the seite, an unusually shaped rock or tree stump that was assumed to be the home of a deity. Pictorial and sculptural art in the Western sense is a 20th-century innovation in Sámi culture used to preserve and develop key aspects of a pantheistic culture, dependent on the rhythms of the seasons.Grove Dictionary of Art,

An economic shift

From the 15th century on, the Sámi came under increased pressure. The surrounding states, Denmark-Norway, Sweden and Russia showed increased interest in the Sámi areas. Sweden, at the time blocked from the North Sea by Dano-Norwegian territory, was interested in a port at the Atlantic coast, and Russian expansion also reached the coasts of the Barents Sea. All claimed the right to tax the Sámi people, and Finnish-speaking tax collectors from the northern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia reached the northern coasts, their Russian colleagues collected taxes as far west as the Harstad area of Norway and the Norwegian tax collectors collected riches from the inland of the Kola Peninsula.

Hence the hunting intensified, and the number of wild reindeer declined. The Sámi were forced to do something else. Reindeer husbandry started in a limited way. These tamed reindeer were trained to divert wild reindeer over a cliff or into hunting ditches. Reindeer husbandry intensified.

The majority of Sámi settled along the inland rivers, fjords or coast. They started augmenting their diet and income by fishing, either sea or freshwater, hunting other game and keeping cows, sheep and goats.