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One people – many names: on different designations for the Sami population in the Norwegian county of Nordland through the centuries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 July 2009
Abstract
During the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Sami and the Kvens were classified and categorized in different ways by the Norwegian state authorities in their official censuses. The process whereby various categorization principles were applied was heavily imbued with ideological and political considerations. During the eighteenth century, when main concern was establishing and consolidating the borders of the state, a kind of geographical enclosure and delimitation took place. During the nineteenth century and through to the Second World War, however, the overriding ambition was to depict all the inhabitants within these established borders as being as culturally homogeneous as possible. Today, it has once more become desirable to acknowledge the presence of both the Sami and the Kvens.
Un seul peuple, mais plusieurs noms: comment ont été désignés les sami, ce peuple du nord de la norvège, au cours des siècles
Dans les recensements officiels, les autorités norvégiennes ont classé et traité séparément les Sami et les Kvens tout au long des XVIIIe, XIXe et XXe siècles. Une telle façon de procéder, qui supposait la mise en jeu de principes propres à caractériser chacun, tenait pour beaucoup à des considérations idéologiques et politiques. Au XVIIIe siècle, le principal souci étant de fixer et de consolider les frontières de l'Etat, il fallait mettre en place une sorte de délimitation géographique. Au XIXe siècle, et ce jusqu'à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, ce qui dominait était l'ambition de décrire tous les individus vivant à l'intérieur de ces frontières comme aussi homogènes culturellement qu'il était possible de le faire. Aujourd'hui, il est devenu souhaitable, une fois de plus, de reconnaître la présence à la fois des Sami et des Kvens.
Ein volk – viele namen: über unterschiedliche bezeichnungen der sami in nordland (norwegen) durch mehrere jahrhunderte
Während des 18., 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts wurden die Sami und die Kvens von den staatlichen Behörden Norwegens in den amtlichen Volkszählungen ganz unterschiedlich klassifiziert und kategorisiert, wobei die Prinzipien, nach denen die Kategorisierung jeweils vorgenommen wurde, stark von ideologischen und politischen Überlegungen durchsetzt waren. Während des 18. Jahrhunderts, als die Hauptsorge der Festlegung und Konsolidierung der Staatsgrenzen galt, wurde eine Art geographische Einhegung und Eingrenzung vorgenommen. Vom 19. Jahrhundert bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg dagegen war man vor allem bestrebt, alle Einwohner innerhalb dieser etablierten Grenzen so weit wie möglich als kulturell homogene Gruppe darzustellen. Heutzutage schließlich erscheint es erneut als wünschenswert, die eigene Identität sowohl der Sami als auch der Kvens anzuerkennen.
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References
ENDNOTES
1 This project involved seven constituent projects within separate fields, and was financed by the Norwegian Research Council for a period of four years (2002–2005).
2 See Bergsland, Knut, ‘Synsvinkler i samisk historie’, Historisk Tidsskrift 53, 1 (1974), 1–36Google Scholar, and Salvesen, Helge, ‘Tendenser i den historiske sameforskning med særlig vekt på politikk og forskning’, Scandia: tidskrift för historisk forskning 46, 1 (1980), 21–52.Google Scholar
3 See Lars Ivar Hansen and Bjørnar Olsen, Samenes historie fram til 1750 (Oslo, 2004).
4 The North Norwegian chieftain Ohthere's account of two voyages along the Norwegian coast was included as a supplement to the Anglo-Saxon translation of Paulus Orosius' work from Antiquity, Historiae adversum Paganos. The translation survives in two manuscripts: British Museum Additional MS 47967 (Ker 133) and British Museum Cotton Tiberius B. i (Ker 191), and it has been published in several versions. See for example Joseph Bosworth, King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of the compendious history of the world by Orosius (London, 1859); Henry Sweet, King Alfred's Orosius, Early English Text Society, original series 79 (London, 1883), 17–18, and Anglo-Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse, 15th edn rev. by Dorothy Whitelock (Oxford, 1967), 17–20; Frederic G. Cassidy and Richard N. Ringler eds., Bright's Old English grammar & reader, 3rd edn (New York and London, 1971), 184–91; Janet Bately, The Old English Orosius, Early English Text Society (London, 1980), 13–16; and Alan S. C. Ross, The Terfinnas and Beormas of Ohthere, repr. with an afterword by Michael Chestnutt, Viking Society for Northern Research (London, 1981), 16–23.
5 See for example Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, history of the king of Norway, transl. with introduction by Lee M. Hollander (Austin, 1995).
6 Knut Kolsrud, Sommersete, Samiske samlinger V (Oslo, 1961); Lars Ivar Hansen, Astafjord bygdebok, vol. 1: Fra eldre jernalder til ca. 1570 (Lavangen kommune, 2000), n. 7.
7 Samuele Rheen, ‘En kortt relation om lapparnes lefwarne och sedher, wijdskiepellsser, sampt i många stycken grofwe wildfarellsser’, in Berättelser om samerna i 1600-talets Sverige, Kungl. Skytteanska samfundets handlingar, 27 (Umeå, 1983), 67. (This and later quoted passages are translated by our translator.)
8 Lars Ivar Hansen, ‘Handel i Nord: Samiske samfunnsendringer ca. 1550 – ca. 1700’, unpublished thesis, University of Tromsø, 1990 (together with ‘Appendikser’) (Tromsø, 1990), 154–94.
9 M. Huurre, Pohjois-Pohjanmaan ja Lapin esihistoria, Pohjois-Pohjanmaan ja Lapin historia, 1 (Oulo, 1983); Stang, H., ‘Rysslands uppkomst – en tredje ståndpunkt’, Scandia 2 (1981)Google Scholar; Hansen and Olsen, Samenes historie, 50–1.
10 Siida: a traditional local Sami community or co-operative organization, consisting of several families or household units, who controlled a common resource territory and used it jointly for seasonal migration, hunting and the exploitation of various resource niches. As such the concept of siida connotes both a unit of social organization and the spatial extension of the corresponding usufruct territory (see Ørnulv Vorren and Ernst Manker, Lapp life and customs (London, 1962); Lars Ivar Hansen, ‘Siida’, in St. Imsen and H. Winge eds., Norsk historisk leksikon (Norwegian Historical Encyclopedia) (Oslo, 1999); and Helander, Elina, ‘Sami subsistence activities – spatial aspects and structuration’, Acta Borealia: a Nordic Journal of Circumpolar Societies 16, 2 (1999), 7–25).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 L. Laursen, Danmark-Norges Traktater 1523–1750, vol. II (Copenhagen, 1912), 244; see also Oscar Albert Johnsen, Finmarkens politiske historie, aktmæssig fremstillet, Vidensskapsselskapets Skrifter, II. Hist.-filos. Klasse. 1922, 3 (Kristiania, 1923), 262–3.
12 Norske Rigs-Registranter, vol. III, 500–2; National Archives of Norway, Danish Chancery, Skapsaker, Skap 15, pk. 125B.
13 Further documentation is presented and discussed in detail in Lars Ivar Hansen, ‘Grenseoverskridende reindrift i en grenseløs tid. Reindrift i nordre Nordland på begynnelsen av 1600-tallet’, in E. G. Broderstad et al. eds., Grenseoverskridende reindrift før og etter 1905 (Tromsø, 2007), 21–36. In this article the Sami population of the inland areas that are listed in the Swedish and Dano-Norwegian tax registers, respectively, have been subjected to a detailed comparison at the level of the individual, so that those Sami having winter quarters on Swedish side and paying taxes to both states have been identified, whereas all the other reindeer-herders who stayed permanently on the Norwegian side and who only paid taxes to the Norwegian authorities also stand out as a separate group.
14 Leidang was originally, in the early Middle Ages, a military obligation on the peasants to provide crew, weapons and ships for defence. During the High Middle Ages it was transformed into an ordinary annual tax paid by the Norwegian population. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Danish-Norwegian government introduced a leidang or ‘conscription’ tax to be levied on the Sea Sami population too, in order to have a similar, parallel tax system for both Norwegians and Sami.
15 Published in three printed volumes by Kjeldeskriftfondet, Oslo, 1929–1983: Peter Schnitler, Grenseeksaminasjonsprotokoller (‘Border Examination Protocols’), 1742–1745, vol. I publ. by Kr. Nissen (1962), vol. II by J. Qvigstad and K. B. Wiklund (1929) and vol. III by L. I. Hansen and T. Schmidt (1983).
16 Schnitler, Grenseeksaminasjonsprotokoller, vol. II, 117, 119, 275–6.
17 Schnitler, Grenseeksaminasjonsprotokoller, vol. II, 119.
18 Despite the fact that these Sami were permanently attached to a set of farms, Knut Kolsrud has shown that in Tysfjord, for example, they could migrate between winter dwelling places on farms out by the mouths of fjords and summer dwelling places – so-called sommerseter – in the inner fjord areas, in order to harvest extra resources for their livestock-raising. According to Kolsrud these migrations to the summer pastures were dictated by the need to get additional fodder for the livestock, and took on ‘eventually … the character of mountain dairy farming (seterbruk)’, even if that was not the case in the beginning; Knut Kolsrud, Sommersete, Samiske samlinger, V (Oslo, 1961), 8, 35, 39, 65 and 67.
19 In older times, the overwhelming majority of the Norwegian population in Northern Norway were tenants, and consequently had to pay rent and entry fines to some land-owner (either the church, the state or some noble families) for the farms they operated. In contrast, some of the farms occupied and cultivated by the Sea Sami population were exempted from the ordinary land-ownership system. That meant that the Sami holders could operate them freely, without having to pay rent or entry fines, and consequently they could also decide who the next occupant should be, in case of a vacancy. As such, these farms came into the same position as what were called ‘freehold farms, with allodial rights’ in southern Norway. Therefore, the authorities of the time also allocated the name ‘Sami allodium’ (finneodel) to these farms, as they enjoyed about the same rights as allodial property elsewhere.
20 Schnitler, Grenseeksaminasjonsprotokoller, vol. II, 234.
21 Schnitler, Grenseeksaminasjonsprotokoller, vol. II, 234.
22 ‘Rigtig Mandtall over alle Field-Lapper og Søe-Finner udj mit anbefalede Missions District Røttangen’ (‘Correct census of all mountain-Lapps and Sea-Finns in my assigned mission district, Røttangen’), printed in Schnitler, Grenseeksaminasjonsprotokoller, vol. II, 229ff.
23 Schnitler, Grenseeksaminasjonsprotokoller, vol. II, 239.
24 The State Archive in Trondheim: Salten tax district, Extra tax 1762, vol. 97.
25 See the first population census in Norway, 1769, in Central Bureau of Statistics, Norway, Official statistics of Norway B 106 (Oslo, 1980), in particular pp. 321–2.
26 Rognan in Saltdalen, 18 June 1743; Schnitler, Grenseeksaminasjonsprotokoller, vol. II, 135.
27 In Schnitler's terminology both ‘Settled Finns’ and ‘District Lapps’ were so-called ‘privately (unilaterally) Norwegian’ (privative norske) – that is, they were solely subject to Norwegian authority and jurisdiction, in contrast to the ‘Eastern Lapps’ (østlappene) who had their primary residences east of the mountain ridge. See J. Qvigstad and K. B. Wiklund, Dokumenter angaaende flytlapperne m.m. samlede efter reinbeitekommisionens opdrag, vol. I (Kristiania, 1909), 449.
28 Lars Ivar Hansen, Astafjord bygdebok, vol. 2: Astafjord ca. 1570–ca. 1730 (Lavangen kommune, 2003), 348.
29 In 1720 the bailiff of Senja bailiwick wrote, ‘there are that sort of people I am not familiar with, and whom I never see more often than when they are present at the summer [thing] assembly, and in order to verify the whereabouts and conditions of these elusive and unsteady Finns, I have asked the common people at all courts, who thereupon have given their answers … For it is true that these mountain Finns must accommodate themselves to their reindeer, so that when they let them loose on the mountain in the autumn, after they have milked them during the summer, they run on their own in the winter from one mountain to another, in order to seek their food, and then the mountain Finn must have great trouble in finding his reindeer again, and then move to [the place] where he finds them in the springtime, often from one district to another, even at the borders of Sweden’ (Bailiff Tønder's response to auditor's remarks on item 10 in the accounts for 1720, here quoted from Qvigstad and Wiklund, Dokumenter, vol. I, 319).
30 ‘Noget om Nordlandene, især om Saltens fogderi’, skrevet i 1790, i Budstikken (1824), s. 779, 781 (‘Something about the Nordlands, especially about Salten's tax district’, written in 1790, in Budstikken (1824)), 779, 781, here cited from Just Knud Qvigstad, Sjøfinnene i Nordland, Tromsø Museums årshefter, Hum. avd. nr. 1 (vol. 51) (Tromsø, 1929), 8.
31 Qvigstad, Sjøfinnene i Nordland, 8.
32 Dikka Storm, Gressmyrskogen – en bygd på Senja: Bosetningsmønstret I markebygdene 1700–1900, Senter for samiske studier, skriftserie, 15 (Tromsø, 2008), 30–1, 50, 54–5.
33 Storm, Gressmyrskogen – en bygd på Senja, 32, 80–9.
34 Oddmund Andersen, ‘Flyttefolk og bofaste: en studie av samisk bosetting i Sør-Troms og Nordre Nordland’, unpublished Dr. art. dissertation in Archaeology, University of Tromsø, 2002, 301ff., 422–3, 512.
35 ‘… Sami, who stay in the wooded fields [outlying forest areas] above the farmers’ farms, and still subsist poorly, by way of fishing, as well as by making cargo ships [jekter], boats, and by necessary timber-work like production of oars and the like' (Lars Ivar Hansen, Samiske rettigheter til jord på 1600-tallet: ‘Finnejorder’ i Sør-Troms, Tromsø Museums Skrifter, XX (Oslo, 1986), 112; see also Qvigstad and Wiklund Dokumenter, vol. II, 297).
36 Storm, Gressmyrskogen – en bygd på Senja.
37 Alf Ragnar Nielssen and Hilgunn Pedersen, Lødingen, Tjeldsund og Tysfjords historie, vol. V: Fra vidstrakt prestegjeld til storkommune (Bodø, 1994).
38 A corresponding category has been observed in Troms County, where during a witness examination on the farm Nord-Straumen in Sørreisa (28 August 1743) reference was made to ‘Norwegian east-Lapps, who during the summer reside in Norwegian mountains and pay their taxes to Norwegian tax collectors, and in the autumn go over to Sweden's Lapmark …’ (Schnitler, Grenseeksaminasjonsprotokoller, vol. II, 276).
39 See, for example, Schnitler's ‘Relation of the 15th of April 1744’, in Qvigstad and Wiklund, Dokumenter, vol. I, 455.
40 National Archives of Norway, bailiff's account from Salten, 1746 (pk. 4620), fols. 38–40, and bailiff's account from Salten, 1748 (pk. 4622), pp. 37, 41, 43, 45, 47 and 49.
41 Schnitler, Grenseeksaminasjonsprotokoller, vol. II, 243.
42 Qvigstad and Wiklund, Dokumenter, vol. I, 502.
43 The census results are available for the years 1865, 1875 and 1900 in a printed edition and in digitized form on the website of the Registreringssentral for Historiske Data (RHD) at the University of Tromsø, http://www.rhd.uit.no/. For our project the original censuses for 1910 and 1930 have also been examined.
44 Einar Lie and Hege Roll-Hansen, Faktisk talt: statistikkens historie i Norge (Oslo, 2001).
45 Knut Einar Eriksen and Einar Niemi, Den finske fare: sikkerhetsproblemer og minoritetspolitikk i nord 1860–1940 (Oslo, 1981).
46 Central Bureau of Statistics, Official statistics of Norway, vol. 4 (1904), 174: Instructions to the census-takers, RHD's home page, see also Eivind Torp, ‘Registrering av etnisitet i folketellinger’, Heimen, XXIII, 2 (1986), 67–77.
47 Letter of 6 August 1887, in Hansen, Lars Ivar, ‘J. A. Friis' etnografiske kart over Troms og Finnmark’, Ottar: Populærvitenskapelig Tidsskrift fra Tromsø Museum, Universitetsmuseet 3 (1998), 47.Google Scholar
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50 Central Bureau of Statistics, Official statistics of Norway, vol. VII, 81 (1923), 41.
51 Central Bureau of Statistics, Official statistics of Norway, vol. 4 (1930).
52 Gunnar Berg, Bygdebok for Skjerstad og Fauske (Bodø, 1975); Roger Kvist, Rennomadismens dilemma: det rennomadiske samhällets förändring i Tuorpon og Sirkas 1760–1860 (Umeå, 1989); Nielssen and Pedersen, Lødingen, Tjeldsund og Tysfjords historie, vol. V.
53 A. N. Kiær, ‘Bidrag til en befolkningsstatistikk’, Official statistics of Norway (NOS), new series (1882), 144.
54 Nielssen and Pedersen, Lødingen, Tjeldsund og Tysfjords historie, vol. V.
55 Bjørg Evjen, Et sammensatt fellesskap: Tysfjord kommune 1869–1950 (Tysfjord,1998), 44f.
56 Evjen, Et sammensatt fellesskap, 46.
57 Vilhelm Aubert, Den samiske befolkningen i Nord-Norge, Artikler fra statistisk sentralbyrå, 107 (Oslo, 1978), 15, and Hanne Christine Thorsen, Registreringen av den samiske befolkning i Nord-Norge fra 1845 til 1970, unpublished Mag. Art. dissertation in Sociology, University of Oslo, 1972.
58 Aubert, Den samiske befolkningen, 19 and 23.
59 Aubert, Den samiske befolkningen, 20.
60 Norsk historisk leksikon (Norwegian Historical Encyclopedia), 360.
61 Aarseth, Bjørn ed., ‘Kystsamisk bosetting’, Ottar: Populærvitenskapelig Tidssskrift fra Tromsø Museum, 137, 4 (1982), 2.Google Scholar
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65 Torp, ‘Registrering av etnisitet i folketellinger’, 73.
66 Central Bureau of Statistics, Official statistics of Norway, vol. 4 (1904).
67 Central Bureau of Statistics, Official statistics of Norway, new series (1882), 145.