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In this chapter, we give a brief outline of the South Saami people’s historical, linguistic and political position as a so-called in Fennoscandia. One of the research questions asked in the book is how the past has been incorporated into modern South Saami self-understanding and how the past is actively used to shape contemporary society. In this volume as a whole, we aim to promote research that sheds light on the complexity and development of the South Saami communities. Part II focuses on the socio-linguistic aspects of the modern South Saami language. Part III analyses and discusses key historical and archaeological issues relating to prehistory and historic research questions within the South Saami sphere. Part IV will focus on the extent to which and how the South Saami people and South Saami affairs are represented, and to what extent and how the South Saami voices take part in the public general discourse. Part V discusses some contemporary policies in Norway. Questions of how land disputes and the South Saami use of history, culture and traditions play a role in the identity processes and the struggle for the South Saami land is one aspect examined in this chapter, in addition to negotiations between indigenous groups and majority societies.

In this chapter, I will present an analysis of how a Southern Sámi identity is performed in our late modern society, first and foremost how this identity is expressed through the use—or omittance—of the Southern Sámi language. It has been pointed out that it is more or less a miracle that Southern Sámi is still a living language. In my chapter, I will try to demonstrate how some sociocultural and political factors through history have inhibited the use of this language, while other factors have supported—directly or indirectly—the transmission of this linguistic repertoire from one generation to another. The master story of the Southern Sámi language and culture is intimately connected to the general ‘climate of opinion’ when it comes to minority–majority relations in Norway. The position of the Sámi population today has in several ways been fundamentally changed, compared with how the Sámi were regarded by the Norwegian majority population well into the twentieth century, as a lesser and inferior people. Some of the main aspects of my analysis will be related to contrasts like stigma versus pride, tradition versus modernity—as these values are attached to the Sámi culture.

The aim of this study has been to highlight the complexity of a linguistic community which has undergone two language shifts in less than one century. The different social actors are given a voice in this multiple environments. All these social actors and positions are important to take into consideration in future language planning. To strengthen the societal position of the language and culture, it is important to create learning resources and instruction programmes that are suited to all kinds of speakers and their linguistic and identity tangles. As Paine (op. cit.: 294) stated 15 years ago, the identity tangle consists of the question of to be a Saami—and I could add: how to be Saami. How much does one have to produce in the linguistic and ethnic markets to be able to claim linguistic and ethnic legitimacy? The growing group of new speakers is claiming legitimacy and authority on another basis than the traditional authenticity. In this way, they are creating parallel hierarchies and competing legitimacies.

In this chapter, I examine why the Norwegian 1801 census is a problematic source for South Saami history. Both the notion that archival sources necessarily reflect Saami presence and the trust in ethnonyms are refuted. These notions still have repercussions in court decisions and historical narratives. The chapter is based on studies of the Norwegian 1801 census compared with church registers contemporary with the census from areas on both sides of the present Nordland–Trøndelag county borders in Norway. Comparison with the church registers shows that ethnonyms are inconsistent. Often, the census and the church registers did not register the same people as Saami, and there are more people registered as Saami in church registers than in the census. I explain the erratic registration of the Saami by interpreting it as an expression of an identification process, as exclusion and inclusion of the Saami by others as well as a part of colonialism. It exemplifies why non-indigenous sources should be critically interpreted, and how identification of ethnicity constitutes a challenge. I suggest that the 1801 census cannot be treated as a census of the South Saami.

This chapter calls for a dialogue on Saami history with a higher degree of cooperation between archaeologists and historians than what has been the case up to now, which is necessary if we are to trying to understand the gaps in time. Today there is a gap between Saami history produced according to written sources and Saami history based on archaeological material. This only increases the already asymmetric relations for the Saami and keeps teachers, politicians and other people in the majority societies in the dark when it comes to the long lines of Saami history on the Scandinavian Peninsula, what I call a power of silence. This silence makes or contributes to keeping old myths about Saami history from the end of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries alive in the majority society today. The aim of this chapter is to look across national borders to provide a brief summary of history based on what we (think we) know and have discussed as important for the understanding of the South Saami’s prehistory from 4000 BC to 1000 AD. Another aim is to reflect on different strategies and interactions between Saami societies and agricultural communities.

In this chapter, I discuss early picture postcards of South Saami and South Saami culture from approximately 1880–1950. The point of departure is Tromsø University Museum’s collection of more than 3800 postcards with Saami motives as well as the postcard exhibition ‘With an eye for the Sámi’ at Perspektivet Museum in the same city. While postcards of Saami have a bad reputation as objects of contempt or symbols of oppression, I emphasize their potential as historical sources. How picture postcards are technologies of memory that may help reclaim a hidden or lost past, providing both personal and collective value as they open up discussions related to colonization and decolonization.

This chapter presents a study of how South Saami people and Saami affairs are represented in central Norwegian regional newspapers from around 1880 to 1990. Papers published in Steinkjer, the regional capital of Nord-Trøndelag County, constitute the bulk of the material. To what extent and how are Saami affairs represented in the newspapers? How do the papers represent South Saami identity? How and why do these representations change and to what extent and how are South Saami voices represented? The predominant topics are Reindeer herding, Saami politics, Education and language, History and culture. The period of my study coincides with the culmination and, from around 1970, the gradual elimination of the Norwegian assimilation policy practised on the Saami population. Social Darwinist or racial biological views are practically non-existent in my material, although quite common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries topographical literature about the Saami. There are examples of stereotyping and othering, mostly before the 1960s, but in general, the regional newspapers in my study take a respectful interest in Saami affairs, although Saami affairs do not make up a substantial part of the newspaper content until the 1970s.

This chapter discusses how the relationship between the Saami and majority non-Saami population in Norway is negotiated in the public domain, and what premises and assumptions that currently govern these negotiations. The point of departure is a three-volume history of the Trøndelag region. This 2005 publication resulted in a heated public and academic debate, as representatives of the Saami population criticized the volumes for writing the Saami people out of the history of the region. Both the three-volume history work and the ensuing debate are examples of how national and cultural identities are products of cultural and textual practices. They are not fixed and final, but under constant negotiation, and a continuation of a process that may be traced back to mediaeval times and beyond, and similar processes may be found across the globe. Against this backdrop, the academic and public debate of this work of regional history is analysed applying methods adopted from critical discourse analysis.

This chapter will analyse the debate over the use and management of the South Saami cultural landscape where the construction of a large number of windmills in South Saami land has drawn the front line between the reindeer herders and commercial interests. More specifically, I will examine how culture and the indigenous people’s own history have been activated and are used to influence political decisions. For centuries, South Saami life and business have been integrated in their traditional landscape, where the relationships between people, economic activities and the landscape represent important core values for the South Saami community. The South Saami themselves point out that reindeer husbandry is an important prerequisite for the preservation and continuation of South Saami knowledge and traditions, and that language and culture are at stake if reindeer husbandry is threatened. The continuous use of the South Saami cultural landscape involves sources of knowledge, insight and identification because traditions and rituals are key cultural concepts and important identity markers in the modern South Saami self-understanding. Hence, this chapter seeks to shed light on how the South Saami society relates to the cultural landscape in this struggle, and how landscape, history and traditions act as an important point of departure in the historical and political negotiations with the majority society.