The Sami People

Sami singing is guttural and sometimes even jarring. It tries to capture the forms of nature in its melodies: trees, rivers, or wind. Commonly called joiks, they are sometimes sung in honour of people or events. Just like those who sing them, joiks are centuries old. People of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, the Sami have inhabited a region now called Sápmi for over eight thousand years. Known as ‘Lappland’ by some, Sápmi is still home to over 160,000 people of this remarkable and ancient community. In their nomadic lifestyle and even their Lavvu – pointed tents which are much like a tipi – the Sami people have been likened to Native Americans. In much the same way, they provide an insight into mankind’s past. Their shamanism, which has been preserved in oral tradition and archaeological remains, tells of a time before Christianity. This was a time when worship was about the landscape and nature. Sieidis provided focal points for such worship; jutting rocks and anomalies where the spiritual world could be accessed. A colourful host of spirits were woven into the fabric of shamanistic folklore. Figures like Bieggaålmaj, the ‘wind god’, the Akka (female spirits) and the Stallo (clumsy, man-eating giants of the wilderness) have been kept alive in Sami tales and song. Before they were effectively banned by Christians in the seventeenth century, Sami shamans (noaidis) would invoke the spirits for their protection and blessings, falling into trance like states and singing with their iconic drums.

Just as their lifestyle reflects those of some Native American tribes, so too are such shamanistic rituals and beliefs similar to that of Siberian peoples, the Sioux and the Inuit. And one could be forgiven for mistaking their joiks for Native American chanting, the two sound so alike. Perhaps this reflects something instinctual in worship and song; that the natural world should be held in reverence and that the human voice is the most basic instrument. Or perhaps this is a whisper of something more ancient. Perhaps the similarities in culture and spirituality speak of a time before mankind set foot in North America. It is after all believed that the first humans in America arrived from the Bering Strait, and given the relationship between Sami and Siberian peoples, perhaps all these similarities trace a path back to a time when these populations were not so distant from one another.

The recent history of the Sami is one of persecution. Since the 15^th century, reindeer hunting was intensified – and so the Sami had to adapt their way of life at a time when Russia, Norway and Sweden began to impose taxes and control them as a people. In 1542, Swedish King Gustav Vasa declared that all unclaimed lands belonged to God and the Swedish crown. The lands of the Sami in Northern Sweden became officially ‘Swedish’ and by the 1600s, Sami culture started to be crushed. In the seventeenth century, many Sami were forbidden the right to use Swedish lands since they could not pay their taxes. Forced Swedish settlements began encroaching on Sami lands. One attempt to make sense of the people was the 1673 book Lapponia, translated from Latin into English, German and Dutch. The Swedish translation would come in 1956. Unfortunately the book had little impact on the attitudes towards the indigenous people; its purpose was to dispel propaganda that Sweden was using Sami black magic on the battlefield.