2.3.2 Sami history
Description
This article is from the Nordic countries FAQ, by Antti Lahelma and Johan Olofsson, with numerous contributions by others.
2.3.2 Sami history
The origins of Sami people have been researched for long but no
certain answer has yet been found. The name "Sami" has the same origin
as the names "Suomi" (Finnish name for Finland), and "Häme" (Tavastia,
an area in southern Finland) and comes originally from the Baltic word
"Sämä" - meaning the area north of Gulf of Finland, i.e. current
Finland.
Anthropologically there are two types of Sami people, the eastern type
which resembles northern Asian peoples, and the western which is
closer to Europids; blood survey, especially in this century,
indicates western rather than eastern heritage.
Perhaps the Sami identity should therefore be seen more as a nomadic
hunter-gatherer way of life, rather than as anything genetic - people
who adopted the Sami way of life became Sami.
It is believed that the original Sami people came to areas now known
as Finland and eastern Karelia during and after the last ice age,
following herds of reindeer. Prehistoric (some 4000 years old) ski
findings by the Arctic Sea show that there was some sort of Sami
culture living there already at that time. Some 1500 rock drawings
have been found in the areas where they lived, e.g. by lake Onega and
in Kola peninsula; the easternmost of them are 5000 years old.
Some archeologists have linked the oldest known Scandinavian stone age
culture, the so-called Komsa culture by the Arctic Sea, to the
ancestors of the Sami. Historians now also note that Ghengis Khan
wrote that the Sami (or, Fenner as they were then called), were the
one nation he would never try to fight again. The Sami were not
warriors in the conventional sense. They simply didn't believe in war
and so they "disappeared" in times of conflict. The Sami remain one
culture that has never been to war but are known as "peaceful
retreaters" adapting to changing living conditions, whether they were
caused by nature or by other people.
Anyway, it is known that the Sami people are the original people in
the Fennoscandia area. Many names even in southern Finland and central
Sweden are of Sami origin. There was a Sami population in those areas
as late as the sixteenth century. The Sami are known to have fished
and hunted seals on the west coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, but in the
late Middle Ages the Swedish agricultural population "invaded" the
coastal area, pushing the Sami further north. The same happened in
Finland so that now the original Sami people can only be found north
of the Arctic Circle.
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