The Sami are not an indigenous people

  • kristina [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Its a bit incorrect to say they inhabited Scandinavia before. Scandinavia is pretty big, first off, and early Germanic settlers were in the South and the Sami were in the North. Its likely that it was concurrent and with no immediate conflict. But of course, as there was expansion north from the Germanic settlers some bad shit happened, especially during the 1800s and 1900s

    • Yanhanderiljumyasten [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      They went past Trondheim and had old settlements in southern Norway, and lived in the Jämtland, that's not just the North, that's close to Central Scandinavia, so nearly half the peninsula.

      Also lmao at "some bad shit happened". Yeah, the fucking missionaries, boarding schools, witch hunts, massacres, colonialism, habitat destruction and indebtment herd slaughtering is pretty bad, but I guess it could have been worse too!

      • kristina [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Iirc there is no evidence of any large battle in the south between the two groups early on. Obviously after the Christianization things got really bad. I'm not being specific because I'd have to go grab sources and its you know, Christmas and I'm handling family right now. Saami started out in Finland by the time the Scandinavians were in Denmark anyways

        edit: Like the whole idea is just absurd. We have documentation that both were in the region during the Iron Ages (700bce), and before that we only have vague objects from the Battle Axe cultures and the Corded Ware cultures who may or may not be related to either of them or may have been pre-Indo European and pre-Finno-Ugric. They've both been there since written history began. No need to obfuscate something like that. Lets focus on the bad shit that happened after Christianization and capitalism, not who got where first in two highly nomadic societies.