http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami
Sami people
The Sami people (also Sámi, Saami, Lapps and Laplanders) are an indigenous people of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia, covering a total area in the Nordic countries corresponding to the size of Sweden. The Sami are one of the largest groups of indigenous peoples in Europe. Their languages are the Sami languages, which are classified as Finno-Ugric.
The Sami call their ancestral lands Sápmi. Traditional occupations are hunting, fishing, reindeer herding and farming, but today only a minority of the Sami are making a living from these things alone. The population is estimated to about 85,000, although it is difficult to establish exactly how many there are. Roughly half live in Norway, although Sweden also has a significant group. Finland and Russia only have smaller groups located in the far north, including the Russian Kola peninsula. The Sami in Russia were forced by the Soviet authorities into one collective called Lovozero/Lojàvri, in the central part of the Kola peninsula.
Traditionally, the Sami had a variety of livelihoods; fishing on the coast and in the inland, trapping animals for fur, sheep herding etc. The best known livelihood is reindeer herding, but only a small percentage of the Sami have been mainly reindeer herders over the last centuries. Today, many Sami lead modern lives in the cities inside and outside the traditional Sami area, with regular jobs.
Names
The abbreviation Lap(p) has been used to abbreviate peoples in Northern Scandinavia who call themselves Sapmi (sing.) or Sabme or Same (plur.). It corresponds to Sami or Saami.
It is unknown how the Lapp comes into Norse language, but it seems to be introduced by the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus to distinguish between Fish-Fennians (Coast peoples) and Lap-Fennians (Forest peoples). It was popularized and became standard abbreviation by the work of Johannes Schefferus "Acta Lapponica" (ca 17th c.), but is also used earlier by Olaus Magnus in his '"Description of the Northern peoples" (ca 16th c.). There is another suggestion that it originally meant wilds. In lack of meaning one may take the interpretation made by Damião de Góis in 1540, where he derives Lapland from "the dumb and lazy land", because it is lazy when no vegetables grow and therefore is dumb when it serves for no living. Note that Lap and Lapland sometimes have the meaning 'exotic' in Central Europe. However, it is today considered to be a disparaging and offensive term, since it actually means "uncivilized", "fool" or "dumb", or at least sounds very derogatory in Saami languages.
History
The Sami peoples have inhabited the northern regions of Scandinavia since far back into antiquity. How far back is a matter of discussion, but most experts agree that we can trace Sami culture back around 2000-2500 years. They are undoubtedly the oldest ethnic group in the area they live in, as all other ethnic groups arrived later.
Lapponia, a large, 35-chapter book written by the rhetorican Johannes Schefferus (1621 - 1679) is the oldest source of detailed information on Sami culture. It was written due to "ill-natured" foreign propaganda (in particular from Germany) claiming that Sweden had won victories on the battlefield by means of 'Sami magic'. In attempts to correct the picture of Sami culture amongst the Europeans, Magnus de la Gardie started an early 'ethnological' research project to document Sami groups, conducted by Schefferus. The book was published in late 1673 and quickly translated to French, German, English, and other languages (though not to Swedish until 1956). However, an adapted and abridged version was quickly published in the Netherlands and Germany, where chapters on their difficult living conditions, topography, and the environment had been replaced by made-up stories of magic, sorcery, drums and heathenry.
Up to around 1500 the Sami were mainly fishermen and trappers, usually in a combination, leading a nomadic lifestyle decided by the migrations of the reindeer. Around 1500, due to excessive hunting, again provoked by the fact that the Sami had to pay taxes to Norway, Sweden and Russia, the number of reindeer started to decrease. Most Sami then settled along the fjords, on the coast and along the inland waterways to pursue a combination of cattle raising, trapping and fishing. A small minority of the Sami then started to tame the reindeer, becoming the well-known reindeer nomads, who, although often portrayed by outsiders as following the archetypical Sami lifestyle, only represent around 10% of the Sami people.
The Sami crossed the borders freely until 1826, when the Norwegian/Finnish/Russian border was closed. Sami were still free to cross the border between Sweden and Norway according to inherited rights laid down in the Lapp Codicil of 1751 until 1940, when the border was closed due to Germany's occupation of Norway. After WWII, they were not allowed to return. Their summer pasturages are today used by Sami originating in Kautokeino.
For long periods of time, the Sami lifestyle reigned supreme in the north because of its unique adaptation to the Arctic environment, enabling Sami culture to resist cultural influences from the South. Indeed, throughout the 18th c., as Norwegians of Northern Norway suffered from low fish prices and consequent depopulation, the Sami cultural element was strengthened, since the Sami were independent of supplies from Southern Norway.
However, in the 19th century Norwegian authorities put the Sami culture under pressure in order to make the Norwegian language and culture universal. A strong economical development of the north also took place, giving Norwegian culture and language status. On the Swedish and Finnish side, conditions were much more lax. The strongest pressure took place from around 1900 to 1940, when Norway invested considerable money and effort to wipe out Sami culture. Another factor was the heavy war destructions in Northern Finland and Northern Norway in 1944-45, destroying all existing houses and visible traces of Sami culture. After World War II, the pressure was relaxed somewhat.
The construction of the hydro-electric power station in Alta in 1979 brought Sami rights onto the political agenda. In August of 1986, the national anthem (Sámi soga lávlla) and flag (Sami flag) of the Sami people was created. In 1989, the first Sami parliament in Norway was elected. In 2005, the Finnmark Law was passed in the Norwegian parliament. This law gives the Sami parliament and the Finnmark Provincial council a joint responsibility of administering the land areas previously considered state property. These areas, 98% of the provincial area, that have always been used primarily by the Sami, now belong officially to the people of the province, Sami or Norwegian, and not the Norwegian state.
A Sami family around 1900
Organization
Sami inhabitants have in Sweden, Norway and Finland (but not Russia) a vote, in addition to the regular elections in each country, to elect representatives to their special designed authority, the Sami Parliament (SP). The SP is a democratically elected parliament and acts as a governmental authority. An individual has a Sami vote if any of the following applies:
- s/he considers himself to be culturally or ethnically Sami (valid in Sweden, Norway, or Finland) because:
- s/he speaks a Sami language
- s/he had or has a parent, or grandparent, that speaks or spoke a Sami language
For the Swedish case, the term 'Sami' have been defined by the government, and included only peoples herding reindeers. This was contrary to how the Sami themselves wanted to be defined.
The main organisations for Sami representation are the Sami village(s), Siida. They cover northern and middle Sweden.
Language
The Sami language is divided into nine dialects, of which several have their own written languages (orthography). Southern Sami cannot understand Northern Sami. Most dialects are spoken in several countries, because linguistic borders do not correspond to national borders. The Sami language is part of the Finno-Ugric family, related to Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian but not to Norwegian and kin. Due to prolonged contact with the Scandinavians, however, there are a large number of Germanic words in Sami. The majority of the Sami now speak the majority languages of the countries they live in, i.e. Swedish, Russian, Finnish and Norwegian. Efforts are being made to further the use of Sami language among Sami and persons of Sami origin.
发表于 2005-11-25 15:38:00
发表于 2005-11-25 15:39:00
