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95-418: Funäsdalen is the site of Härjedalens Fjällmuseum which provides exhibits relating to mountain farming and Sami culture . Funäsdalen has long been a gathering place for Sámi people . The museum buildings were designed by architect Jörgen Grönvik. Inside the museum there is a permanent exhibition of work by sculptor Emil Näsvall (1908-1965). Adjacent to the museum is Fornminnesparken. This open-air museum provides

190-452: A Proto-Germanic word * sōma- , itself from Proto-Baltic * sāma- , in turn borrowed from Proto-Finnic * šämä , which was borrowed from * žēmē . The Sámi institutions—notably the parliaments , radio and TV stations, theatres, etc.—all use the term Sámi , including when addressing outsiders in Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, or English. In Norwegian and Swedish,

285-552: A close-mid back unrounded /ɤ/ (but a close central unrounded /ɨ/ in Livonian), as well as loss of *n before *s with compensatory lengthening . (North) Estonian-Votic has been suggested to possibly constitute an actual genetic subgroup (called varyingly Maa by Viitso (1998, 2000) or Central Finnic by Kallio (2014) ), though the evidence is weak: almost all innovations shared by Estonian and Votic have also spread to South Estonian and/or Livonian. A possible defining innovation

380-559: A Norwegian name. This partly caused the dislocation of Sámi people in the 1920s, which increased the gap between local Sámi groups (something still present today) that sometimes has the character of an internal Sámi ethnic conflict. Another example of forced displacement occurred between 1919 and 1920 in Norway and Sweden. This has been the topic of a recent work of journalism by Sámi author Elin Anna Labba , translated into English in 2023 under

475-471: A display of historic buildings dating from the 16th century to the 19th century. Funäsdalen Church ( Funäsdalens kyrka ) was built between 1926 and 1928 after drawings by the architects Curt Björklund (1895-1958) and Martin Westerberg (1892-1963). The building has a frame of brick. The altarpiece is attributed to the 17th century Dutch artist Henricus Noêll. The church is in the parish of Tännäs-Ljusnedal of

570-491: A dozen native speakers of Votic remain. Regardless, even for these languages, the shaping of a standard language and education in it continues. The geographic centre of the maximum divergence between the languages is located east of the Gulf of Finland around Saint Petersburg . A glottochronological study estimates the age of the common ancestor of existing languages to a little more than 1000 years. However, Mikko Heikkilä dates

665-521: A full-time basis in Norway. For traditional, environmental, cultural, and political reasons, reindeer herding is legally reserved for only Sámi in some regions of the Nordic countries. Speakers of Northern Sámi refer to themselves as Sámit (the Sámis) or Sápmelaš (of Sámi kin), the word Sápmi being inflected into various grammatical forms. Other Sámi languages use cognate words. As of around 2014,

760-577: A marketing tool by promoting opportunities to experience "authentic" Sámi ceremonies and lifestyle. At many tourist locales, non-Sámi dress in inaccurate replicas of Sámi traditional clothing, and gift shops sell crude reproductions of Sámi handicraft. One popular "ceremony", crossing the Arctic Circle, actually has no significance in Sámi spirituality. To some Sámi, this is an insulting display of cultural exploitation. The Sámi have for centuries, even today, been

855-578: A political controversy and the rallying of the Sámi popular movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As a result, the opposition in the Alta controversy brought attention to not only environmental issues but also the issue of Sámi rights. Reindeer have major cultural and economic significance for Indigenous peoples of the North. The human-ecological systems in the North, like reindeer pastoralism, are sensitive to change, perhaps more than in virtually any other region of

950-528: A rather different view. The following grouping follows among others Sammallahti (1977), Viitso (1998), and Kallio (2014): The division between South Estonian and the remaining Finnic varieties has isoglosses that must be very old. For the most part, these features have been known for long. Their position as very early in the relative chronology of Finnic, in part representing archaisms in South Estonian, has been shown by Kallio (2007, 2014). However, due to

1045-519: A special veto right on planned mining projects. Government authorities and NATO have built bombing-practice ranges in Sámi areas in northern Norway and Sweden. These regions have served as reindeer calving and summer grounds for thousands of years, and contain many ancient Sámi sacred sites. State regulation of sea fisheries underwent drastic change in the late 1980s. The regulation linked quotas to vessels and not to fishers. These newly calculated quotas were distributed free of cost to larger vessels on

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1140-564: A variety of areas, even after variety-specific changes. A broad twofold conventional division of the Finnic varieties recognizes the Southern Finnic and Northern Finnic groups (though the position of some varieties within this division is uncertain): † = extinct variety; ( † ) = moribund variety. A more-or-less genetic subdivision can be also determined, based on the relative chronology of sound changes within varieties, which provides

1235-615: Is a common element in Norwegian (particularly Northern Norwegian) place names, whereas Lapp is exceedingly rare. Terminological issues in Finnish are somewhat different. Finns living in Finnish Lapland generally call themselves lapp i lainen , whereas the similar word for the Sámi people is lapp a lainen . This can be confusing for foreign visitors because of the similar lives Finns and Sámi people live today in Lapland. Lappalainen

1330-551: Is also a common family name in Finland. In Finnish, saamelainen is the most commonly used word nowadays, especially in official contexts. The western Uralic languages are believed to have spread from the original Proto-Uralic homeland along the Volga , which is the longest river in Europe. The speakers of Finnic and Sámi languages have their roots in the middle and upper Volga region in

1425-463: Is at the expense of Sámi populations. ILO Convention No. 169 would grant rights to the Sámi people to their land and give them power in matters that affect their future. In Russia's Kola Peninsula, vast areas have already been destroyed by mining and smelting activities, and further development is imminent. This includes oil and natural gas exploration in the Barents Sea . Oil spills affect fishing and

1520-698: Is the loss of *h after sonorants ( *n, *l, *r ). The Northern Finnic group has more evidence for being an actual historical/genetic subgroup. Phonetical innovations would include two changes in unstressed syllables: *ej > *ij , and *o > ö after front-harmonic vowels. The lack of õ in these languages as an innovation rather than a retention has been proposed, and recently resurrected. Germanic loanwords found throughout Northern Finnic but absent in Southern are also abundant, and even several Baltic examples of this are known. Northern Finnic in turn divides into two main groups. The most Eastern Finnic group consists of

1615-444: Is the reindeer's only source of sustenance during the winter months, when snow is deep. The logging has been under the control of the state-run forest system. Greenpeace , reindeer herders, and Sámi organisations carried out a historic joint campaign, and in 2010, Sámi reindeer herders won some time as a result of these court cases. Industrial logging has now been pushed back from the most important forest areas either permanently or for

1710-677: The Bronze Age , the Sámi occupied the area along the coast of Finnmark and the Kola Peninsula . This coincides with the arrival of the Siberian genome to Estonia and Finland, which may correspond with the introduction of the Finno-Ugric languages in the region. Petroglyphs and archeological findings such as settlements, dating from about 10,000 BC can be found in Lapland and Finnmark, although these have not been demonstrated to be related to

1805-515: The Corded Ware culture . These groups presumably started to move to the northwest from the homeland of the early Uralic peoples in the second and third quarters of the 2nd millennium BC. On their journey, they used the ancient river routes of what is now northern Russia. Some of these peoples, who may have originally spoken the same western Uralic language, stopped and stayed in the regions between Karelia , Ladoga and Lake Ilmen , and even further to

1900-448: The Diocese of Härnösand . Funäsdalen has a subarctic climate influenced by the combination of its high elevation and simultaneous deep valley position. This leads to high diurnal temperature variation and cooler summer days than its far inland position would suggest. Being a ski resort, Funäsdalen has lower accumulation than Storlien to its north, but retains a reliable snow pack due to

1995-688: The East Finnish dialects as well as Ingrian, Karelian and Veps; the proto-language of these was likely spoken in the vicinity of Lake Ladoga . The Western Finnic group consists of the West Finnish dialects, originally spoken on the western coast of Finland, and within which the oldest division is that into Southwestern, Tavastian and Southern Ostrobothnian dialects. Among these, at least the Southwestern dialects have later come under Estonian influence. Numerous new dialects have also arisen through contacts of

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2090-513: The Sámi languages , has long been assumed, though many of the similarities (particularly lexical ones) can be shown to result from common influence from Germanic languages and, to a lesser extent, Baltic languages . Innovations are also shared between Finnic and the Mordvinic languages , and in recent times Finnic, Sámi and Moksha are sometimes grouped together. There is no grammatical gender in any of

2185-534: The Sámi languages , which are classified as a branch of the Uralic language family . Traditionally, the Sámi have pursued a variety of livelihoods, including coastal fishing, fur trapping , and sheep herding . Their best-known means of livelihood is semi-nomadic reindeer herding . As of 2007 about 10% of the Sámi were connected to reindeer herding, which provides them with meat, fur, and transportation; around 2,800 Sámi people were actively involved in reindeer herding on

2280-763: The fjords , had access to the major European trade routes so that, in addition to marginal farming in the Nordland , Troms , and Finnmark counties, they were able to establish commerce, trading fish for products from the south. According to old Nordic texts, the Sea Sámi and the Mountain Sámi are two classes of the same people and not two different ethnic groups, as had been erroneously believed. This socioeconomic balance greatly changed when bubonic plague came to northern Norway in December 1349. The Norwegians were closely connected to

2375-457: The oblique case forms. For geminates , the process is simple to describe: they become simple stops, e.g. ku pp i + -n → ku p in (Finnish: "cup"). For simple consonants, the process complicates immensely and the results vary by the environment. For example, ha k a + -n → haan , ky k y + -n → ky v yn , jär k i + -n → jär j en (Finnish: "pasture", "ability", "intellect"). The specifics of consonants gradation vary by language (see

2470-562: The 1990s, several Finnic-speaking minority groups have emerged to seek recognition for their languages as distinct from the ones they have been considered dialects of in the past. Some of these groups have established their own orthographies and standardised languages. Võro and Seto , which are spoken in southeastern Estonia and in some parts of Russia, are considered dialects of Estonian by some linguists, while other linguists consider them separate languages. Meänkieli and Kven are spoken in northern Sweden and Norway respectively and have

2565-467: The 19th century, they showed little interest in the harsh and non-arable inland populated by reindeer-herding Sámi. Unlike the Norwegians on the coast who were strongly dependent on their trade with the south, the Sámi in the inland lived off the land. From the 19th century Norwegian and Swedish authorities started to regard the Sámi as a "backward" and "primitive" people in need of being "civilized", imposing

2660-516: The Coastal Estonian dialect group), Livonian and Votic (except the highly Ingrian-influenced Kukkuzi Votic). These languages are not closely related genetically, as noted above; it is a paraphyletic grouping, consisting of all Finnic languages except the Northern Finnic languages. The languages nevertheless share a number of features, such as the presence of a ninth vowel phoneme õ , usually

2755-595: The Finnic dialects that can be extracted from Viitso (1998) is: Viitso (2000) surveys 59 isoglosses separating the family into 58 dialect areas (finer division is possible), finding that an unambiguous perimeter can be set up only for South Estonian, Livonian, Votic, and Veps. In particular, no isogloss exactly coincides with the geographical division into 'Estonian' south of the Gulf of Finland and 'Finnish' north of it. Despite this, standard Finnish and Estonian are not mutually intelligible . The Southern Finnic languages consist of North and South Estonian (excluding

2850-527: The Finnic languages, nor are there articles or definite or indefinite forms. The morphophonology (the way the grammatical function of a morpheme affects its production) is complex. Morphological elements found in the Finnic languages include grammatical case suffixes, verb tempus, mood and person markers (singular and plural, the Finnic languages do not have dual ) as well as participles and several infinitive forms, possessive suffixes, clitics and more. The number of grammatical cases tends to be high while

2945-518: The Finnish government has denied funding for these rights in most of the country, including in Rovaniemi , the largest municipality in Finnish Lapland. Sámi activists have pushed for nationwide application of these basic rights. The city of Rovaniemi offers day care and preschool education in the Sámi language, and then as basic education first as supplementary native language education starting from

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3040-740: The Middle Ages, and in southern Sweden, including finds in Lesja Municipality , in Vang Municipality , in Valdres and in Hol Municipality and Ål Municipality 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. In Finland, a 2022 study said that Sámi habitation

3135-512: The Norwegians; being only loosely connected to the European trade routes, they fared far better than the Norwegians. Fishing has always been the main livelihood for the many Sámi living permanently in coastal areas. Archeological research shows that the Sámi have lived along the coast and once lived much farther south in the past, and they were also involved in work other than reindeer herding (e.g., fishing, agriculture, iron work). The fishing along

3230-527: The Scandinavian languages as the only valid languages of the kingdoms and effectively banning Sámi language and culture in many contexts, particularly schools. How far south the Sámi extended in the past has been debated among historians and archeologists for many years. The Norwegian historian Yngvar Nielsen , commissioned by the Norwegian government in 1889 to determine this question in order to settle contemporary questions of Sámi land rights, concluded that

3325-414: The Sámi are today referred to by the localized form Same . The first probable historical mention of the Sámi, naming them Fenni , was by Tacitus , about AD 98. Variants of Finn or Fenni were in wide use in ancient times, judging from the names Fenni and Φίννοι ( Phinnoi ) in classical Roman and Greek works . Finn (or variants, such as skridfinn , 'skiing Finn' )

3420-463: The Sámi had lived no farther south than Lierne Municipality in Trøndelag county until around 1500, when they started moving south, reaching the area around Lake Femund 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 recent years, several archaeological finds indicate a Sámi presence in southern Norway in

3515-477: The Sámi migrations into the northern regions. For centuries, the Sámi and the Scandinavians had relatively little contact; the Sámi primarily lived in the inland of northern Fennoscandia , while Scandinavians lived in southern Scandinavia and gradually colonised the Norwegian coast; from the 18th and especially the 19th century, the governments of Norway and Sweden started to assert sovereignty more aggressively in

3610-645: The Sámi people in Norway are entitled special protection and rights. The legal foundation of the Sámi policy is: Finnic languages The Finnic or Baltic Finnic languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples . There are around 7 million speakers, who live mainly in Finland and Estonia . Traditionally, eight Finnic languages have been recognized. The major modern representatives of

3705-597: The Sámi people were created. In 1989, the first Sámi parliament in Norway was elected. In 2005, the Finnmark Act was passed in the Norwegian parliament giving the Sámi parliament and the Finnmark Provincial council a joint responsibility of administering the land areas previously considered state property. These areas (96% of the provincial area), which have always been used primarily by the Sámi, now belong officially to

3800-487: The Sámi people. These hunter-gatherers of the late Paleolithic and early Mesolithic were named Komsa by the researchers. The Sámi have a complex relationship with the Scandinavians (known as Norse people in the medieval era), the dominant peoples of Scandinavia, who speak Scandinavian languages and who founded and thus dominated the kingdoms of Norway and Sweden. The migration of Germanic-speaking peoples to Southern Scandinavia happened independently and separate from

3895-514: The Sámi themselves now consider this to be an inappropriate term. Finnish immigrants to Northern Norway in the 18th and 19th centuries were referred to as Kvens to distinguish them from the Sámi "Finns". Ethnic Finns ( suomalaiset ) are a group related to the Sámi, but distinct from them. The word Lapp can be traced to Old Swedish lapper , Icelandic lappir (plural) perhaps of Finnish origin; compare Finnish lappalainen "Lapp", Lappi "Lapland" (possibly meaning "wilderness in

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3990-405: The Sámi were mostly independent of supplies from Southern Norway. During the 19th century, the pressure of Christianization of the Sámi increased, with some Sámi adopting Laestadianism . With the introduction of seven compulsory years of school in 1889, the Sámi language and traditional way of life came increasingly under pressure from forced cultural normalization. Strong economic development of

4085-847: The Sámi with the "two Laplands". The term "Lapp" was popularized and became the standard terminology by the work of Johannes Schefferus , Acta Lapponica (1673). The Sámi are often known in other languages by the exonyms Lap , Lapp , or Laplanders , although these are considered derogatory terms by some, while others accept at least the name Lappland . Variants of the name Lapp were originally used in Sweden and Finland and, through Swedish, adopted by many major European languages: English: Lapps ; German, Dutch : Lappen ; French : Lapons ; Greek : Λάπωνες ( Lápōnes ); Hungarian : lappok ; Italian : Lapponi ; Polish : Lapończycy ; Portuguese : Lapões ; Spanish : Lapones ; Romanian : laponi ; Turkish : Lapon . In Russian

4180-578: The UN Racial Discrimination Committee were delivered to Norway, addressing many issues related to the legacy of Norwegianization policies, including the need for more Sámi language education, interpreters, and cultural support. One committee recommendation was that discrimination against someone based upon their language be added to Article 1 of the Norwegian Discrimination and Accessibility Act. A new present status report

4275-412: The area of modern-day Finland, they encountered groups of peoples who spoke a number of smaller ancient languages ( Paleo-Laplandic languages ), which later became extinct. However, these languages left traces in the Sámi language ( Pre-Finnic substrate ). As the language spread further, it became segmented into dialects. The geographical distribution of the Sámi has evolved over the course of history. From

4370-453: The area to avoid forced labour. As a result, the population of Pite - and Lule -speaking Sámi decreased greatly. For long periods of time, the Sámi lifestyle thrived because of its adaptation to the Arctic environment. Indeed, throughout the 18th century, as Norwegians of Northern Norway suffered from low fish prices and consequent depopulation, the Sámi cultural element was strengthened, since

4465-447: The basis of the amount of the catch in previous years, resulting in small vessels in Sámi districts falling outside the new quota system to a large degree. The Sámi recently stopped a water-prospecting venture that threatened to turn an ancient sacred site and natural spring called Suttesaja into a large-scale water-bottling plant for the world market—without notification or consultation with the local Sámi people, who make up 70 percent of

4560-512: The beginning of the diversification (with South Estonian as the first split) rather precisely to about 150 AD, based on loanword evidence (and previous estimates tend to be even older, like Pekka Sammallahti's of 1000–600 BC). There is now wide agreement that Proto-Finnic was probably spoken at the coasts of the Gulf of Finland. The Finnic languages are located at the western end of the Uralic language family. A close affinity to their northern neighbors,

4655-525: The consistently cold temperatures. With the inversion at the lower elevations in the valley combined with longer nights in summer, frosts are common year round. The regular seasonal variation is slightly larger than Røros on the Norwegian side of the border, although the all-time temperature range is larger in the Norwegian town. [REDACTED] Media related to Funäsdalen at Wikimedia Commons Sami culture The Sámi ( / ˈ s ɑː m i / SAH -mee ; also spelled Sami or Saami ) are

4750-486: The construction of roads. There is a gas pipeline that stretches across the Kola Peninsula, and power lines cut off access to reindeer calving grounds and sacred sites. In northern Finland, there has been a longstanding dispute over the destruction of forests, which prevents reindeer from migrating between seasonal feeding grounds and destroys supplies of lichen that grow on the upper branches of older trees. This lichen

4845-461: The corresponding term is лопари́ ( lopari ) and in Ukrainian лопарі́ ( lopari ). In Finland and Sweden, Lapp is common in place names, such as Lappi ( Satakunta ), Lappeenranta ( South Karelia ) and Lapinlahti ( North Savo ) in Finland; and Lapp ( Stockholm County ), Lappe ( Södermanland ) and Lappabo ( Småland ) in Sweden. As already mentioned, Finn

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4940-520: The current consensus among specialists was that the word Sámi was borrowed from the Proto-Baltic word * žēmē , meaning 'land' ( cognate with Slavic zemlja ( земля ), of the same meaning). The word Sámi has at least one cognate word in Finnish : Proto-Baltic * žēmē was also borrowed into Proto-Finnic , as * šämä . This word became modern Finnish Häme (Finnish for

5035-518: The early 18th century, there were many Sámi who were still settling on these farms left abandoned from the 1350s. After many years of continuous migration, these Sea Sámi became far more numerous than the reindeer-herding mountain Sámi, who today only make up 10% of all Sámi. In contemporary times, there are also ongoing consultations between the Government of Norway and the Sámi Parliament regarding

5130-470: The east and to the southeast. The groups of these peoples that ended up in the Finnish Lakeland from 1600 to 1500 BC later "became" the Sámi. The Sámi people arrived in their current homeland some time during the Bronze Age or early Iron Age . The Sámi language first developed on the southern side of Lake Onega and Lake Ladoga and spread from there. When the speakers of this language extended to

5225-539: The establishment of an independent truth commission to examine and document past abuse of Sámi by the Swedish state. In 2021, the Church of Sweden made a formal apology to Sweden's Sámi population for its role in forced conversions and Swedification efforts, outlining a multiyear reconciliation plan. In Finland, where Sámi children, like all Finnish children, are entitled to day care and language instruction in their own language,

5320-553: The family are Finnish and Estonian , the official languages of their respective nation states. The other Finnic languages in the Baltic Sea region are Ingrian and Votic , spoken in Ingria by the Gulf of Finland , and Livonian , once spoken around the Gulf of Riga . Spoken farther northeast are Karelian , Ludic , and Veps , in the region of Lakes Onega and Ladoga . In addition, since

5415-533: The feasibility of using the area for winter grazing in practice is impossible. Sweden has received strong international criticism, including by the UN Racial Discrimination Committee and the Human Rights Committee, that Sweden violates Sámi landrättigheter ( land rights ), including by not regulating industry. In Norway some Sámi politicians (for example—Aili Keskitalo) suggest giving the Sámi Parliament

5510-507: The first grade and as a voluntary subject on its own starting from the fourth grade. As in the other countries claiming sovereignty over Sámi lands, Sámi activists' efforts in Finland in the 20th century achieved limited government recognition of the Sámis' rights as a recognized minority, but the Finnish government has maintained its legally enforced premise that the Sámi must prove their land ownership, an idea incompatible with and antithetical to

5605-751: The globe, due in part to the variability of the Arctic climate and ecosystem and the characteristic ways of life of Indigenous Arctic peoples. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster caused nuclear fallout in the sensitive Arctic ecosystems and poisoned fish, meat and berries. Lichens and mosses are two of the main forms of vegetation in the Arctic and are highly susceptible to airborne pollutants and heavy metals. Since many do not have roots, they absorb nutrients, and toxic compounds, through their leaves. The lichens accumulated airborne radiation, and 73,000 reindeer had to be killed as "unfit" for human consumption in Sweden alone. The government promised Sámi indemnification, which

5700-444: The greater European trade routes, along which the plague traveled; consequently, they were infected and died at a far higher rate than Sámi in the interior. Of all the states in the region, Norway suffered the most from this plague . Depending on the parish , 60 to 76 percent of northern Norwegian farms were abandoned following the plague, while land-rents, another measure of population, dropped to 9–28% of pre-plague levels. Although

5795-521: The large number of diphthongs . There are 16 diphthongs in Finnish and 25 in Estonian; at the same time the frequency of diphthong use is greater in Finnish than in Estonian due to certain historical long vowels having diphthongised in Finnish but not in Estonian. On a global scale the Finnic languages have a high number of vowels. The Finnic languages form a complex dialect continuum with few clear-cut boundaries. Innovations have often spread through

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5890-473: The legacy of laws that were created to deny the Sámi rights (e.g., to their beliefs, language, land and to the practice of traditional livelihoods). The Sámi are experiencing cultural and environmental threats, including: oil exploration, mining, dam building, logging, climate change, military bombing ranges, tourism and commercial development. Sápmi is rich in precious metals, oil, and natural gas. Mining activities and prospecting to extract these resources from

5985-493: The legal status of independent minority languages separate from Finnish. They were earlier considered dialects of Finnish and are mutually intelligible with it. Additionally, the Karelian language was not officially recognised as its own language in Finland until 2009, despite there being no linguistic confusion about its status. The smaller languages are endangered . The last native speaker of Livonian died in 2013, and only about

6080-456: The local authorities offered incentives to the Sámi—faced with their own population pressures—to settle on the newly vacant farms. This started the economic division between the Sea Sámi ( sjøsamene ), who fished extensively off the coast, and the Mountain Sámi ( fjellsamene, innlandssamene ), who continued to hunt reindeer and small-game animals. They later herded reindeer. Even as late as

6175-400: The new quota system to a large degree. As the Sea Sámi settled along Norway's fjords and inland waterways, pursuing a combination of farming, cattle raising, trapping and fishing, the minority Mountain Sámi continued to hunt wild reindeer . Around 1500, they started to tame these animals into herding groups, becoming the well-known reindeer nomads , often portrayed by outsiders as following

6270-563: The next 20 years, though there are still threats, such as mining and construction plans of holiday resorts on the protected shorelines of Lake Inari. The Swedish government has allowed the world's largest onshore wind farm to be built in Piteå, in the Arctic region where the Eastern Kikkejaure village has its winter reindeer pastures. The wind farm will consist of more than 1,000 wind turbines and an extensive road infrastructure, which means that

6365-521: The north Norwegian coast, especially in the Lofoten and Vesterålen islands, is quite productive, with a variety of fish; during medieval times, it was a major source of income for both the fishermen and the Norwegian monarchy . With such massive population drops caused by the Black Death , the tax revenues from this industry greatly diminished. Because of the huge profits that could be had from these fisheries,

6460-541: The north also ensued, giving Norwegian culture and language higher status. On the Swedish and Finnish sides, the authorities were less militant, although the Sámi language was forbidden in schools and strong economic development in the north led to weakened cultural and economic status for the Sámi. From 1913 to 1920, the Swedish race-segregation political movement created a race-based biological institute that collected research material from living people and graves. Throughout history, Swedish settlers were encouraged to move to

6555-499: The north"), the original meaning being unknown. It is unknown how the word Lapp came into the Norse language , but one of the first written mentions of the term is in the Gesta Danorum by the twelfth-century Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus , who referred to 'the two Lappias', although he still referred to the Sámi as (Skrid-)Finn s. In fact, Saxo never explicitly connects

6650-443: The north, and targeted the Sámi with Scandinavization policies aimed at forced assimilation from the 19th century. Before the era of forced Scandinavization policies, the Norwegian and Swedish authorities had largely ignored the Sámi and did not interfere much in their way of life. While Norwegians moved north to gradually colonise the coast of modern-day Troms and Finnmark to engage in an export-driven fisheries industry prior to

6745-452: The northern regions through incentives such as land and water rights, tax allowances, and military exemptions. The strongest pressure took place from around 1900 to 1940, when Norway invested considerable money and effort to assimilate Sámi culture. Anyone who wanted to buy or lease state lands for agriculture in Finnmark had to prove knowledge of the Norwegian language and had to register with

6840-408: The number of verb infinitive forms varies more by language. One of the more important processes is the characteristic consonant gradation . Two kinds of gradation occur: radical gradation and suffix gradation. They both affect the plosives /k/ , /t/ and /p/ , and involve the process known as lenition , in which the consonant is changed into a "weaker" form. This occurs in some (but not all) of

6935-473: The old dialects: these include e.g. the more northern Finnish dialects (a mixture of West and East Finnish), and the Livvi and Ludic varieties (probably originally Veps dialects but heavily influenced by Karelian). Salminen (2003) present the following list of Finnic languages and their respective number of speakers. These features distinguish Finnic languages from other Uralic families: Sound changes shared by

7030-405: The people of the province, whether Sámi or Norwegian, and not to the Norwegian state. The Indigenous Sámi population is a mostly urbanised demographic, but a substantial number live in villages in the high Arctic. The Sámi are still coping with the cultural consequences of language and culture loss caused by generations of Sámi children being taken to missionary and/or state-run boarding schools and

7125-467: The population of northern Norway is sparse compared to southern Europe, the disease spread just as fast. The spread of the plague-carrying flea ( Xenopsylla cheopsis ) from the south was facilitated by the transport of wooden barrels holding wheat, rye, or wool, where the fleas were able to live, and even reproduce, for several months at a time. The Sámi lived on fish and reindeer meat, and did not eat wheat or rye. They lived in communities detached from

7220-529: The population. The Finnish National Board of Antiquities has registered the area as a heritage site of cultural and historical significance, and the stream itself is part of the Deatnu/Tana watershed, which is home to Europe's largest salmon river, an important source of Sámi livelihood. In Norway, government plans for the construction of a hydroelectric power plant in the Alta river in Finnmark in northern Norway led to

7315-464: The pressure was relaxed, though the legacy was evident into recent times, such as the 1970s law limiting the size of any house Sámi people were allowed to build. The controversy over the construction of the hydro-electric power station in Alta Municipality in 1979 brought Sámi rights onto the political agenda. In August 1986, the national anthem (" Sámi soga lávlla ") and flag ( Sámi flag ) of

7410-694: The proposed mines are in Sámi lands and will affect their ability to maintain their traditional livelihood. In Kallak (Sámi: Gállok ) a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists protested against the UK-based mining company Beowulf which operated a drilling program in lands used for grazing reindeer during the winter. There is often local opposition to new mining projects where environmental impacts are perceived to be very large, as very few plans for mine reclamation have been made. In Sweden, taxes on minerals are intentionally low in an effort to increase mineral exploration for economic benefit, though this policy

7505-500: The region of Tavastia ; the second ä of * šämä is still found in the adjective häm ä läinen ). The Finnish word for Finland, Suomi , is also thought probably to derive ultimately from Proto-Baltic * žēmē , though the precise route is debated and proposals usually involve complex processes of borrowing and reborrowing. Suomi and its adjectival form suom a lainen must come from * sōme- / sōma- . In one proposal, this Finnish word comes from

7600-521: The region often interfere with reindeer grazing and calving areas and other aspects of traditional Sámi life. Some active mining locations include ancient Sámi spaces that are designated as ecologically protected areas, such as the Vindelfjällen Nature Reserve . The Sámi Parliament has opposed and rejected mining projects in the Finnmark area, and demanded that resources and mineral exploration benefit local Sámi communities and populations, as

7695-442: The right of the coastal Sámi to fish in the seas on the basis of historical use and international law. State regulation of sea fisheries underwent drastic change in the late 1980s. The regulation linked quotas to vessels and not to fishers. These newly calculated quotas were distributed free of charge to larger vessels on the basis of the amount of the catch in previous years, resulting in small vessels in Sámi districts falling outside

7790-516: The separate article for more details). Apocope (strongest in Livonian, Võro and Estonian) has, in some cases, left a phonemic status to the phonological variation in the stem (variation caused by the now historical morphological elements), which results in three phonemic lengths in these languages. Vowel harmony is also characteristic of the Finnic languages, despite having been lost in Livonian, Estonian and Veps. The original Uralic palatalization

7885-532: The strong areal nature of many later innovations, this tree structure has been distorted and sprachbunds have formed. In particular, South Estonian and Livonian show many similarities with the Central Finnic group that must be attributed to later contact, due to the influence of literary North Estonian. Thus, contemporary "Southern Finnic" is a sprachbund that includes these languages, while diachronically they are not closely related. The genetic classification of

7980-407: The subject of discrimination and abuse by the dominant cultures in the nations they have historically inhabited. They have never been a single community in a single region of Sápmi, which until recently was considered only a cultural region. Norway has been criticized internationally for the politics of Norwegianization of and discrimination against the Sámi. On 8 April 2011, recommendations from

8075-600: The title The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow: The Forced Displacement of the Northern Sámi . In 1913, the Norwegian parliament passed a bill on "native act land" to allocate the best and most useful lands to Norwegian settlers. Another factor was the scorched earth policy conducted by the German army, resulting in heavy war destruction in northern Finland and northern Norway in 1944–45, destroying all existing houses, or kota , and visible traces of Sámi culture. After World War II ,

8170-445: The traditional Sámi lifestyle. The Mountain Sámi had to pay taxes to three states, Norway , Sweden and Russia , as they crossed each border while following the annual reindeer migrations; this caused much resentment over the years. Between 1635 and 1659, the Swedish crown forced Swedish conscripts and Sámi cart drivers to work in the Nasa silver mine , causing many Sámis to emigrate from

8265-433: The traditional reindeer-herding Sámi way of life. This has effectively allowed the Finnish government to take without compensation, motivated by economic gain, land occupied by the Sámi for centuries. Non-Sámi Finns began to move to Lapland in the 1550s. The Sámi have been recognized as an Indigenous people in Norway (1990 according to ILO convention 169 as described below), and therefore, according to international law,

8360-590: The traditionally Sámi -speaking Indigenous peoples inhabiting the region of Sápmi , which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway , Sweden , Finland , and of the Kola Peninsula in Russia . The region of Sápmi was formerly known as Lapland, and the Sámi have historically been known in English as Lapps or Laplanders , but these terms are regarded as offensive by the Sámi, who prefer their own endonym , e.g. Northern Sámi Sápmi . Their traditional languages are

8455-410: The two provinces by Finns and Swedes led to the assimilation and disappearance of a distinct Sámi population by the 14th century. Until the arrival of bubonic plague in northern Norway in 1349, the Sámi and the Norwegians occupied very separate economic niches . The Sámi hunted reindeer and fished for their livelihood. The Norwegians, who were concentrated on the outer islands and near the mouths of

8550-516: The word might be related to fen . As Old Norse gradually developed into the separate Scandinavian languages, Swedes apparently took to using Finn to refer to inhabitants of what is now Finland, while the Sámi came to be called Lapps . In Norway, however, Sámi were still called Finns at least until the modern era (reflected in toponyms like Finnmark , Finnsnes , Finnfjord and Finnøy ), and some northern Norwegians will still occasionally use Finn to refer to Sámi people, although

8645-512: Was found in the entirety of continental Finland at least until the 14th century. Toponyms of Sámi origin are common in the southernmost provinces of Finland Proper and Uusimaa , e.g. Aurajoki ~ Oarrijohka "Squirrel River". The Sámi coexisted with Finns and Swedes and traded squirrel furs with them. The division was based on occupation: unlike Finns and Swedes, the Sámi did not engage in significant agriculture, relying on fishing, hunting, gathering and fur trapping instead. Complete colonization of

8740-502: Was lost in proto-Finnic, but most of the diverging dialects reacquired it. Palatalization is a part of the Estonian literary language and is an essential feature in Võro , as well as Veps , Karelian , and other eastern Finnic languages. It is also found in East Finnish dialects, and is only missing from West Finnish dialects and Standard Finnish. A special characteristic of the languages is

8835-502: Was not acted upon by government. Radioactive wastes and spent nuclear fuel have been stored in the waters off the Kola Peninsula, including locations that are only "two kilometers" from places where Sámi live. There are a minimum of five "dumps" where spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste are being deposited in the Kola Peninsula, often with little concern for the surrounding environment or population. The tourism industry in Finland has been criticized for turning Sámi culture into

8930-569: Was the name originally used by Norse speakers (and their proto-Norse speaking ancestors) to refer to the Sámi, as attested in the Icelandic Eddas and Norse sagas (11th to 14th centuries). The etymology is somewhat uncertain, but the consensus seems to be that it is related to Old Norse finna , from proto-Germanic * finþanan ('to find'), the logic being that the Sámi, as hunter-gatherers "found" their food, rather than grew it. This etymology has superseded older speculations that

9025-400: Was to have been ready by the end of 2012. In 2018, The Storting commissioned The Truth and Reconciliation Commission to lay the foundation for recognition of the experiences of the Sámi subject to Norwegianization and the subsequent consequences. Sweden has faced similar criticism for its Swedification policies, which began in the 1800s and lasted until the 1970s. In 2020, Sweden funded

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