Norway: OVERVIEW: The Sámi

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OVERVIEW:

Introduction

The Sámi

Sámi geographical provenance

The Sámi

The Sámi are an indigenous people who constitute an ethnic minority in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia. They have their own settlement areas, language, culture and history. The indigenous term Sápmi, from which Sámi derives, exists in every Sámi dialect and has several meanings – the geographical region where they traditionally live, the Sámi population, the Sámi language and a Sámi person.

A programme of Sámi policy adopted at the Nordic Sámi Conference in Troms in 1980 defines a Sámi as ‘any person who has Sámi as his or her first language, or whose father or mother or one of whose grandparents have Sámi as their first language, or considers him/herself a Sámi and lives entirely according to the rules of Sámi society and who is recognised by the Sámi community as a Sámi.’

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