Sámi people

The Sámi (also spelled Sami or Saami) are an indigenous people whose traditional home is Sápmi, a region that was once called Lapland. Sápmi stretches across the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and includes the Kola Peninsula in Russia. In English, the Sámi were historically referred to as Lapps or Laplanders, but these are exonyms—names given by outsiders—and the Sámi consider them offensive, preferring their own endonym. The Sámi languages, which belong to the Uralic language family, are their traditional tongues.

Origins of the Norwegian Sea Sámi

The Sámi have traditionally made a living through coastal fishing, fur trapping, and sheep herding. Their most famous livelihood is semi-nomadic reindeer herding.

Organization

About 10% of Sámi have been connected to this practice, which supplies meat, fur, and transportation. In Norway, roughly 2,800 Sámi work full-time in reindeer herding. For traditional, environmental, cultural, and political reasons, reindeer herding is legally reserved for the Sámi in certain parts of the Nordic countries.

Sámi

The word “Sámi” comes from a Proto-Baltic term meaning “land,” related to the Slavic word for the same concept, both tracing back to a Proto-Indo-European root for “earth.” Speakers of Northern Sámi call themselves “the Sámis” or “of Sámi kin,” and other Sámi languages use similar words. The Finnish word for the region of Tavastia, as well as the Finnish name for Finland itself, are thought to derive from this same Proto-Baltic root, though the exact path of borrowing is debated. Sámi institutions—such as parliaments, radio and TV stations, and theatres—use the term “Sámi” even when addressing outsiders in Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, or English. In Norwegian and Swedish, the localized form “same” (plural “samer”) is used.

Finn

The first probable historical mention of the Sámi appears in Tacitus’s writings from around AD 98, where they are called “Fenni.” Variants of “Finn” or “Fenni” were common in ancient Roman and Greek texts. Norse speakers originally used “Finn” (or forms like “skiing Finn”) to refer to the Sámi, as seen in Icelandic Eddas and sagas from the 11th to 14th centuries.

The word likely comes from Old Norse “finna,” meaning “to find,” since the Sámi, as hunter-gatherers, “found” their food rather than grew it. This explanation has replaced older theories linking the word to “fen.” Over time, Swedes began using “Finn” for inhabitants of what is now Finland, while the Sámi became known as “Lapps.” In Norway, however, Sámi were still called “Finns” into the modern era, and some northern Norwegians occasionally use this term today, though the Sámi now consider it inappropriate. Finnish immigrants to northern Norway in the 18th and 19th centuries were called “Kvens” to distinguish them from the Sámi “Finns.” Ethnic Finns are a related but distinct group.

The word “Lapp” can be traced to Old Swedish “lapp” or Icelandic “lappir” (plural), possibly of Finnish origin, where “Lappi” means “Lapp” and “Lappi” (Lapland) may mean “wilderness in the north.” The original meaning is unknown. One of the first written mentions is in the 12th-century work of Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, who referred to “the two Lappias,” though he did not explicitly link the Sámi to these lands.

The term “Lapp” was popularized by Johannes Schefferus in his 1673 work “Lapponia.” Today, the Sámi are often called Lap, Lapp, or Laplanders in other languages, but many consider these derogatory, though some accept “Lappland.” Variants of “Lapp” appear in many European languages, including German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. In Finland and Sweden, “Lapp” is common in place names, while in Norway, “Finn” is far more common in place names, with “Lapp” being rare. In Finnish, people living in Finnish Lapland call themselves “lappilaiset,” while the word for the Sámi people is “saamelaiset,” a distinction that can confuse visitors due to the similar lifestyles of Finns and Sámi in the region.