WHAT AND WHERE IS SÁPMI

Sápmi is located where the Scandinavian and the kola-peninsula meet. Most of the area is situated north of the arctic circle. The land of the northern lights, the midnight sun, high mountains, vast forests, tundra, clean water, biting cold and tons of mosquitoes.  

Sápmi= the land where the Sami people live.

The indigenous people in this area – us Samis, were nomads following the wild reindeers, living on hunting and fishing. We also had domesticated reindeers for transport, milk and to lure wild reindeers. Nomads don’t have a concept of owning land. Landowning is a concept developed by farming cultures.  Around 500 years ago, when the neighboring countries started to colonize us, it happened without our ancestors understanding what was going on. Taking ownership of land was an absurd thought to them.

Today Sápmi is currently occupied by four countries – Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Each of the countries consider a part of Sápmi belonging to them. However the Sami population has never made an agreement to the current political situation.

This can sometimes make it hard to explain where we come from.

About 400-500 years ago reindeerhearding started to become common because of taxation from the colonizing countries. This is the tradition that we nowadays are most known for, although a small percentage of Samis actually work with reindeerhearding. It has become common to describe sami people in different groups:

-reindeerhearders – the nomads,

-sea- samis – that live by and from the sea,

-forrest- samis who are more stationary reindeerhearders,  and

-“house-sami” that live in houses farming.  But hunting is important to all of the Samis.   

The old traditional Sami way of living and shamanism has been more and more washed away by western modern society, so nowadays a lot of Samis live like any other Norwegian/Swede/Finne/Russian. Indigenous Sami culture and life is mainly more and more present the more north you go. 

Also read: “I am from Sápmi“