In English & På norsk

The reindeer herding Sami we met, in Honningsvåg, and around Magerøya, as in Gullgammen and in Finnvika, are people with roots going back centuries. Their ancestors and foremothers have lived their lives up here in the north, grazing around, with the biting cold on the plateau and the midnight sun all summer long.

Reindeer herding Sami have lived out on the coast and most likely also on Magerøya as long as there has been domesticated reindeer herding on the North Calotte, and that is starting to be a long time. It was in the 17th century that domesticated reindeer herding began, we can read in the history books. Over the centuries, the Sami have followed the reindeer herd from the plateau and out to the coast in the spring. Here they have stayed all summer long.

At the time the picture was taken, there was something called Reinskue, and then the tourists from the northbound Hurtigruten came by bus inland to Nordmanset, a couple of kilometers outside Honningsvåg.

Reindeer herding Sami on Magerøya around 1960

We who grew up at that time were probably all there to see the Sami camp, the Sami with one of the many reindeer, and not least all the tourists. The reindeer herding in Nordmanset was closed down around 1965, but we met the many Karasjok Sami on a daily basis in the city as well. So those of us who grew up in Honningsvåg can recognize every single one of them we see in the picture from that time.

In the fall and spring, before the road was built, entire families were on the move, while today only a portion of the families move with the herd
When development made it no longer possible to stay in Nordmanset, the alternative was to move up into the mountains. Here we continue there. So today, tourists meet the Sami with their stalls and the reindeer they have brought with them, there.

The herd that has come over to Magerøya has swum across the Magerøy Strait, just as other herds have swum across other straits. When autumn has come, they have broken up and followed the herd inland towards the winter pastures, where Karasjok is the center, and where the families have lived throughout the winter months.

Here the reindeer herd swims across Magerøysundet — Photo: Aune kortforlag

The Karasjok Sami reindeer herds swum across the Magerøy Strait. They did this in spring and autumn, year after year, ever since the reindeer herding Sami became nomads in the 17th century, and until a couple of decades after the war. Then it ended, because from then on the military’s landing craft began to transport the reindeer herd across.

Reindeer swimming across the Mageøy Strait, something that may have been going on for several hundred years. Large and small ships, and fishing vessels of all sizes, have long sought their way into the fjords on their way both north and south, thus making their way through Magerøysundet.

Reindeer swimming across the Mageøysundet, which may have been going on for several hundred years. Large and small ships, and fishing vessels of all sizes, have long sought their way into the inlet on their way both north and south, thus making their way through the Magerøysundet.

The Sami people

The Sami people we met in Honningsvåg in the post-war period, people who in the summer sea year through generations, even since the 17th century, have followed their reindeer herds from the Finnmark plateau and out here. They have their roots in the northern regions back centuries, if not millennia.

Their ancestors and foremothers have lived their lives in what we can call Sapmi, here where the midnight sun shines through the summer, and the dark time inexorably comes a little way out in the winter and lasts for a couple of months.

Sapmi, the area where Sámi culture has developed over the past two to three thousand years, is often referred to by Sámi as Sapmi. On the vast plains, Sámi culture, with its language, religion, and nomadic way of life, has developed without much influence from people further south.

Finnmǫrk was the Norse population’s name for the large areas in the Nordic region that were considered to lie outside their homelands, and where the Sámi people lived in the main.

On the map we find both Finnmǫrk, Magerey, and in Sámi Makaravjo. — A map from Wikimedia Commons

Trade has been conducted with people outside, perhaps mostly in peaceful forms. With their way of life under different conditions than people further south, and thus under conditions different from the people around them, they have lived with their own language, and with their own religious understandings of existence.

At the same time, through their contact with the outside world, they have seen and experienced it, and perceived themselves as different, as Sami. Their identity has been different, an identity we refer to as Sami.

After northern Norwegian nobles or chieftains from the 9th century began to take an interest in the lands, tax collectors were sent into the areas. Both Norwegian and Swedish envoys, and envoys from the prince of Novgorod came here as tax collectors. The purpose eventually became to subjugate the areas. Those who were taxed were considered residents of the tax collectors’ land area.

The areas where the Sami have lived, in Sapmi, have been divided up and subsumed into Norway, Sweden and Russia, and from 1917 also Finland.

Published with sources

1. Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, (2013) Fredrik Barth, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo
   Barth, Fredrik, ed. (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, The Social Organization of Culture Difference, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo
2. Eidheim, Harald (1969) «When Ethnic Identity is a Social Stigma», in Barth, Fredrik, ed. (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, The Social Organization of Culture Difference, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo
3. Richter Hansen, Einar (1990) NORDKAPP en fiskerskommune fra de eldste tider til i dag, Nordkapp kommune 1990, Honningsvåg

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