#sami sweden

[roviellworld]

The reindeer arrived after the last ice caps retreated northwards. And when the prey migrated north, we followed suit. Today, the wild reindeer are located in the western part of Jotunheimen, while the domesticated reindeer herders in Vågå and Lom keep their large herds in the eastern part of Jotunheimen.

[useless-catalanfacts]

Sweden saying they'll vote against allowing the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the European Union Parliament because "there's lots of minority languages and we can't allow them all" is so funny because CATALAN HAS MORE SPEAKERS THAN SWEDISH

Catalan is the 13th most spoken language in the EU. It has more than 10 million speakers, which means it has more speakers than other languages that are already official EU languages like Maltese (530,000), Estonian (1.2 million), Latvian (1.5 million), Irish (1.6 million), Slovene (2.5 million), Lithuanian (3 million), Slovak (5 million), Finnish (5.8 million), Danish (6 million), Swedish (10 million), and Bulgarian (10 million).

Neither Galician (3 million) nor Basque (750,000) would still be the least spoken languages to be allowed in the EU representative bodies.

But even if any of them did, so what? Why do speakers of smaller languages deserve less rights than those of bigger languages? How are we supposed to feel represented by the EU Parliament when our representatives aren't even allowed to speak our language, but the dominant groups can speak theirs?

It all comes down to the hatred of language/cultural diversity and the belief that it's an inconvenience, that only the languages of independent countries have any kind of value while the rest should be killed off. After all, isn't that what Sweden has been trying to do to the indigenous Sami people for centuries?

[vintage-sweden]

Unknown children of Sami (northern indigenous) heritage, 1943, Sweden.

[noosphe-re]

The Sami flag (The Sámi flag is the flag of Sápmi and the Sámi people, one of the Indigenous people groups of the Nordic countries and the Kola Peninsula of the Russian Federation.)

Wikipedia

[noxaeternaetc]

Britta Marakatt-Labba (1951) Sami artist. The works The two of us tonight; You went; and You should have stayed.

The death of her father had a huge impact on five year old Britta Marakatt-Labba. He passed away on Christmas eve, hit by a car while he was on the way to his reindeer herd. She revisited the trauma in her works You went and You should have stayed. The grieving family made her very attentive to people's expression of emotions.

From:

[theoutcastrogue]

Sami knives, early 20th century

Duodji is a traditional Sámi handicraft, and knives are a big part of it. Handles and sheaths are typically made of reindeer bone and antlers, carved and/or painted, while the blades are sometimes borrowed from the Scandinavian knife industry – Swedish Mora and Finnish puukko blades are common. Decoration is sometimes geometric and sometimes representational: there are reindeer, dogs, bears, sledges, lavvus, landscapes, and people.

Puukko, the Finnish word for "knife", is often used in English to describe these knives, but the same term is also used for a Finnish hunting/utility knife, which has similarities with but is decidedly not a Sami knife, so that's confusing. In Swedish they're called sameknivar (in plural, and samekniv in singular), i.e. Sami knives, and they are made all over Sámi territories in Scandinavia.

These examples are dated from 1901 to 1929, and are mostly from Sweden. They include the work of two of the most celebrated artists of that period, Jon Pålsson Fankki (1880-1861) and Nils Nilsson Skum (1872-1951).

[simply-ivanka]

An example of close-minded, naïve, woke "leadership".

Sanna Marin squandered opportunities to make Finland great, to resolve the Sami issues and to unite the country both economically and with a path into the future. She focused on Ukraine, made a stink about trans and gays and ignored the elderly that built the great country of Finland.

Then the Finns got smart and threw her and her party out of their leadership role! Wasted talent (like Obama). She wanted greatness for herself, got selfish, self center and an ego the size of Helsinki and let the good people of Finland go without. Finland now is adrift politically and economically.

Sanna Marin, on the other hand, is working for Tony Blair's political consulting organization making big money and living the jet set celebrity life of a now-divorced woman.

[chiara-klara-claire]

Today is Sámi people national day (and my birthday)! ❤️💚Read my article about Sámi costumes!💛💙

[aivoton-idiootti]

Okay I haven't yet read Püha ja õudne lõhn/Sacred and Terrible Air (I'm planning to! I promise!) so I want to ask: What lore does it give about Vaasa, the Suru and all that? I've like, looked at the first chapter so I know it takes place there/references it.

If I want to reference Vaasa and Suru in a fic I'm writing, should I first read that? Or is someone willing/able to give a summary of any additional lore about the area (like what even is the majority language if the suru are a minority??). I will say that I am Finnish so I don't necessarily need any cultural references explained, just any Elysium specific lore.

[lindahall]

Pehr Högström – Scientist of the Day

Pehr Högström, a Swedish clergyman, traveler, missionary, and linguist, was born Nov. 10, 1714, in what looks to be central Sweden, but is called Northern Sweden, along the coast of the Bay of Bothnia. 

read more...

[throughtheages]

Eva Brita Mulka (with a child on her back), 1868, Sweden. She’s of Sami heritage.

[postcard-from-the-past]

Sami people in northern Sweden

Swedish vintage postcard, mailed to Drancy, France

[vintage-sweden]

People of Sami (northern indigenous) heritage outside their kåta in Gällivare, Sweden in 1913.

[mypagancottage]

[human-antithesis]

Barren Earth - On Lonely Towers (Bonus Track Edition) [March 27th, 2015] Country: Finland Genre: Progressive Melodic Death Metal Reuploaded: FLAC

Lineup: Jón Aldará - Vocals Sami Yli-Sirniö - Lead Guitar Janne Perttilä - Rhythm Guitar Olli-Pekka Laine - Bass Marko Tarvonen - Drums Kasper Mårtenson - Keyboards

Guest/Session: Mila Laine - Cello (Tracks 1, 4, 6) Petri Herranen - Saxophone (Track 8)

Miscellaneous Staff: Theodor Kapnas - Recording (Vocals) Jukka-Pekka Miettinen - Recording Petri Majuri - Recording, Mixing Tony Lindgren - Mastering Travis Smith - Cover Art, Layout

Label: Century Media Records

Tracklist:

From The Depths of Spring - 01:25

Howl - 05:39

Frozen Processions - 04:51

A Shapeless Derelict - 07:33

Set Alight - 07:26

On Lonely Towers - 11:52

Chaos, The Songs Within - 07:43

Sirens of Oblivion (Bonus Track) - 07:02

The Vault - 11:07

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Det sted man er fra er alltid pent, det er fedrelandsfølelsen i det små, hjemmefølelsen.*

- Knut Hamsun

*The place you're from is always beautiful, it's the sense of country in a small way, the feeling of home.

Most of us have heard of Lapland, but we’re not supposed to call it that anymore. The correct term these days is Sápmi - i.e. the land inhabited by the Lapps (or, rather, the Sami - as they very much prefer to be known). And, fair enough: they’ve got every right to assert their own identity, especially after centuries of domination by their southern neighbours.

Some of those neighbours are now keen to make amends for past injustices. For instance, the Swedish government made a point of using its presidency of the EU Council of Ministers to celebrate Sami National Day.

I can only imagine that it was worded with the best intentions, but if you read any of the Scandinavian press and media, it’s clear that it hasn’t gone down well with everyone. The problematic claim is that the Sami are “the EU’s only indigenous people” (my italics).

For a start, what is meant here by ‘indigenous’? According to most dictionaries, it’s the property of being original to, or characteristic of, a particular part of the world. In which case, there are all sorts of European peoples who could claim to be indigenous to Europe. For instance, the geneticist Razib Khan points out that the ancestors of today’s majority-Swedish population have been in Scandinavia for at least as long as the ancestors of today’s Sami.

The Norwegians and Swedes originated from the Norse people. The Norse people in turn originated from the Proto-Germanic peoples who migrated to the area of northern Germany, Denmark, southern Scandinavia. The Proto-Germanic peoples in turn originated from the Proto-Indo-European people whose homeland lies in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, the area around Ukraine and southern Russia.

Likewise, the Sami are not quite indigenous to the area either. The Sami originated from the Proto-Uralic people, whose homeland was around the Ural mountains (and was therefore close to the Proto-Indo-Europeans and resulted in interactions between their protolanguages, resulting in lexical borrowings). The Proto-Uralic peoples, just like the Proto-Indo-Europeans, slowly expanded and migrated, but in their case they expanded to the northwest and the northeast (with the notable exception of the Hungarians who ended up in Hungary). The Proto-Samic people, a subgroup of the Proto-Uralic peoples that gave rise to the modern Sami, were said to have displaced or merged with a much earlier indigenous Paleo-European group that was already in northern Scandinavia. This is evidenced by substrate words present in the Sami languages that derive neither from Proto-Uralic nor from Proto-Indo-European.

In any case, if Europeans are going to have a competition as to who was in Europe first, then it might be won by those with the most Neanderthal ancestry - because, as genomic testing has revealed, millions of us carry Neanderthal genes.

But perhaps the Swedish government is using indigenous to mean something more specific. According to Merriam-Webster the word relates to “the earliest known inhabitants of a place and especially of a place that was colonised by a now-dominant group”. This extra element of oppression by outsiders sharpens up the definition. However, while it applies to the Sami people and their history, it doesn’t do so uniquely. There are many ethnic groups in Europe that have been around for ages and which have been maltreated by foreign overlords. Just ask the Welsh, for instance, or the Basques.

It could be argued that the Sami are in a special category because of where they live (i.e. the most northerly reaches of Europe) and how they lived there (e.g. by reindeer herding). To have maintained a traditional culture for so long into the modern era surely sets them apart. But, again, this is debatable. While there’s no doubting the distinctiveness of the Sami, other Europeans can also lay claim to ancient traditions that have survived against the odds. To take a topical example, the Ukrainians are literally sacrificing their lives for a distinctive culture, language and history that Putin wants to erase.

Progressives ought to think twice before making an issue about who is and isn’t indigenous in Europe. While the label might play into the victim/oppressor narratives of the woke Left, it can also be exploited by the far-Right.

At a time when populism is a constant threat, telling people that they’re not indigenous to a place where they and their ancestors have lived for “time immemorial” is less than helpful. I’m sure that the Swedish government meant well, but it’s pulling on a dangerous thread.  

When language is allowed to become dissociated from meaning or the map from the territory, then fractional strife and chaos awaits. Orwell understood it perfectly from his observations of Stalinists: control language and you control expression; control expression, you control dialogue, and eventually the political narrative.