Image: Bertil Wreting / Nordiska museet
Image: Bertil Wreting / Nordiska museet
Research project Sami have been living and working in Swedish farming areas outside the traditional Sami districts ("lappmarkerna" and "renbetesfjällen") for a long time. They have been herders, slaughterers of horses and dogs, crofters, farmhands, reindeer herders, and active in many other roles. The aim of the SESAME project is to deliver the first comprehensive study of the Sami living in farming areas before 1900 AD.
It is well known that Sami have long been permanently living outside the traditional Sami districts, in areas dominated by Swedes and Finns and characterized by farming. Earlier research has focused on the Parish Sami ("sockenlappar"), who were employed by parishes to perform certain tasks. However, there were also many other Sami living and working in the farming areas, which is why we have chosen to employ the term "bygdesamer" in this project. SESAME is the first research project that aims to take a comprehensive approach to the group, not only in Sweden but also in Norway and Finland.
The first major task of the SESAME project will be to create a database of the Sami population living outside traditional Sami areas before 1900. Data will primarily be gathered from church records, from Övertorneå parish in the north to Österfärnebo parish in the south. Since the Sami population was highly mobile, it is necessary to go through a large number of church records to follow their tracks. The aim is also to connect as many individuals as possible into families. The population database will enable analyses and studies that have not been feasible before.
Who will be included in the database? This is an important question, since we almost never know whether an individual identified as Sami or not. Instead, we will have to rely on labels applied by non-Sami, mostly priests. As a complement, we will follow family lines back in time, because there are a few known cases of people without Sami ancestry who have been labelled as Sami, for example a man who married a Sami women and came to share her life.
In areas where the Sami language has been replaced by other languages there can still be old Sami place names, so called substrate toponyms. Often, they have been distorted and changed so that they are not easily recognized as Sami. However, a trained linguist can detect such place names, and explain their meaning. In lucky cases, substrate toponyms can even be dated, for example when they represent islands that are no longer surrounded by water due to post-glacial rebound. A skilled linguist will be recruited to the project to map Sami substrate toponyms outside the traditional Sami districts, as a way of achieveing a more complete understanding of the historical geography of the Sami.
In northernmost Sweden, it was not uncommon for Sami to emigrate from the Sami districts for a permanent residence in the farming areas dominated by Swedes and Finns. Some of them spent the rest of their lives there, along with their children and grand-children, whereas others went back. What factors affected this dynamic? There are several possibilities. Members of a family with a taxland of their own might have been less prone to leave their homelands. On the other hand, the rising numbers of settlers in the Sami districts might have lead to such competition about resources that some Sami preferred to find their future elsewhere. During certain times there were also royal regulations limiting where Sami were allowed to live. We do not yet what explanatory factors were important and how the dynamics of migrations worked, but we will try to find out through this project.
In the farming areas, Sami could live in simple huts as well as in timbered cottages. However, only a few dwelling sites are known and even fewer have been investigated. Especially huts are difficult to find, both because they leave few and subtle remains and because much land has been affected by industrial forestry or other kinds of exploitation. Nevertheless, it should be possible to find more sites by combining different sources and methods. One clue comes from the many place names containing the word "lapp" (old Swedish word for Sami) or "kåta" (Sami hut), which should indicate places were Sami have been dwelling. Furthermore, historical maps sometimes contain information on the location of such places. In the SESAME project, Sami dwelling sites will be located and investigated in the field in search of hearths, culturally modified trees, and other remains of Sami life. In addition, an archaeological excavation will be performed.
It is reasonable to believe that Sami families that have been living among Swedes and Finns for generations have finally been assimilated into the majority population. But how can you tell when this has happened?
One criteria could be that young members of a family marry non-Sami partners, and that this pattern becomes permanent. Other clues can be found in estate inventories, where all the clothes and possessions of a deceased person were listed. Sometimes, there are items in such inventories for which Sami terms are used. Sometimes, the clothes mentioned are typically Sami. But there are also inventories that are more or less the same as from non-Sami living in the same area. In this project, we will analyse all estate inventories from individuals with a known Sami ancestry that have been permanently residing outside the traditional Sami districts before 1900. In this way, we will be able to understand how the possessions and clothes of Sami families changed over time.
Different aspects of the living conditions of the Sami living in the farming areas can be investigated using several sources. First, court records often contain interesting notes on the life and living of the persons involved. Second, estate inventories show what tools a person possessed, which reflects how he or she made a living. Third, birth records include notes on godparents, who represent parts of a social network. It may also be possible to find sources that tell about Sami that have become crofters or farm owners. The aim is to understand both the living conditions of the Sami, and the roles they played in Swedish farming society during various time periods.
There were probably Sami permanently living in farming society also in Finland, which was a part of Sweden until 1809. However, very little is known about this, at least among Swedish scholars. Therefore, the project includes the hiring of a post doc with good knowledge in Finnish language and Finnish history for an investigation of relevant sources. In this way, we hope to find out to what extent there were connections between the Sami living in farming areas on both sides of the Gulf of Bothnia. Also, we will investigate how the situation for the Sami on the Finnish side changed after Sweden had lost this part to the Russian Empire.
In Norway, much research has been performed on Sami living in farming areas dominated by Norwegians. In collaboration with researchers in Norway, we will analyse similarities and differences, and investigate to what extent individuals were migrating between the two countries.
