Posted on 12/21/2009 8:32:22 AM PST by BGHater
Those from Finland are a bit more fortunate since many of them have older Sa'ami names acceptable to the Suomi (the Uralic/Altaic white folk who run that place these days).
Sapala (spelled several ways) is a popular Sa'ami name, as is Takala!
That name means "Fisher", and you'll find some Skolt Sa'ami from Russia who are/were Russian Orthodox and they all translated their names (which meant the same thing, but in a different language) into English when they got here.
I know a number named Nelson, Hoke, Hovas/Hovis, and so on. Those names are all spelled a lot of different ways.
One problem is that MOST Sa'ami languages were not reduced to writing until well after Amerian settlement had begun. So, you have a mix of Sa'ami names in 11 Sa'ami languages, half a dozen other languages, and they're still fairly rural in Scandinavia with about 98% of their descendants living in the United States and almost no one here knows anyone there.
Look for "Lapland" "Surnames" ~ there are a number of quite informative sources ~
Also, Elsis ~ sometimes changed to Ellis ~ but when you find Elsis and Keppel you're into some hardcore, downhome, fish eating, reindeer chomping, ligonberry snacking Sa'ami.
My practice is to ignore the ethnicity of the names and read pieces about the people who lived on the land. Then there are the Finnish and Swedish medical services who use the Skolt and Inari as "test subjects". Got an unusual problem you think might be genetic, you may have a Sa'ami ancestor or two (usually two somewhere), and the Swedes and Finns have a paper or 2 or 3, or 100, on just your problem. Sometimes they compare their findings with OTHER PEOPLE who herd reindeers but who are not Sa'ami.
If anyone is interested that's certainly an interesting connection.
Back during one of the mini Ice Ages over the last 10 thou, a bunch of them moved South to Bhutan. They did quite well. Buddha was a Sakha BTW.
Then, about 200 AD the Hindu Restoration was initiated, Buddhists weren't all that welcome, and the Sakha were chased away.
Recently Russian archaeologists have determined that the Sakha RETURNED to Yakutia.
They later left there when the climatological catastrophe of 535 AD happened. They are believed to have then conquered Korea, and Japan ~
And here everybody had their eyes on the Ainu trying to find that "white blood"! They should have asked the Emperor.
That part of Yakutia has recently been in the news. That's the area where Dr. Mann got his tree ring samples he then misused to tell everybody it was getting warmer.
It does appear that as isolated as Yakutia appears to be the folks who live there can get around the rest of the world quite easily.
Didn’t Chernobyl poison the lichens across northern Scandinavia and cause the reindeer farmers to cull their herds?
This is fascinating stuff!
However, a lot of that sinks into the soil, or was discovered to not present a long term threat. I believe the Russians are still prohibiting the consumption of Reindeer but folks in Western Scandinavia seem to be recovering.
One of the Sa'ami problems is they've lived with an exceedingly high iron content background for tens of thousands of years ~ and their game animals have had a high iron content. Some of the Sa'ami may well have spent the Younger Dryas on the Norwegian Coast eating little but seals.
They seem to have a NEED for a very high iron content in their food ~ way beyond what can be provided through ordinary means.
With the reindeer meat shortage, they probably ought to be provisioned with that canned Harp Seal meat the Canadians are putting out. Unfortunately the EU, which has a lot of people always into genocide, prohibits the importation of seal meat.
Yakutia is where the Eskimo, Aleuts and American Indians come from! This is also where the ruling classes in Korea and Japan came from.
With the recent translation of a good deal of their ancient records (the Sakha "lost writing" BTW) by Russian researchers, everybody now knows who these Sakha/Yakuts are.
There are "other" Saka ~ and today that part of the world is quite diverse having a population composed mostly of white folks of Russian origin.
BTW, unlike all other groups in Japan, the Japanese top nobel families (descended from the Sakha who went to India) have females with breasts ~ just like the statues in India.
Their warrior class must have been interested in the girls!
The Scythians supposedly were identified by a specific ideograph by the ancient Sumerians. Be interesting if it has reindeer antlers in it!
Great post. I had heard of the New Sweden colony along the Delaware River but never knew that the Sa’ami were part of it. And your explanation of their influence on our Christmas tradition is especially interesting.
Also of interest is a DNA study which was recently completed of the Viking influence in the British Isles and Ireland. This is not, of course, to confuse the Vikings with The Family but it is to raise the issue whether any DNA studies have been undertaken?
Thanks again.
Also of interest is a DNA study which was recently completed of the Viking influence in the British Isles and Ireland. This is not, of course, to confuse the Vikings with The Family but it is to raise the issue whether any DNA studies have been undertaken?
Thanks again.
My husband has connections to New Sweden, and at least one of his family lines there is Sa’ami, or so the research I’ve read says.
Hubby is a real mutt. Old American family with Swedish, English, German, Scots and Irish, and Welsh families on one side, on the other Slovakian and Japanese. Makes doing genealogy intersting...
Yes, one rather famous (or infamous) study found that the Sa'ami, the Chippewa, the Berbers and some other American Indian groups (iriquois, Cherokee, Choctaw, etc.) carry a genetic marker unique to the Sa'mi.
That blew the ethnologists out of the water. They'd always believed the Sa'ami were a Turcic people who'd originated in Siberia somewhere. Genetic studies demonstrate that they have no more East Asian ancestry than other white folk ~ 5% to be precise ~ which is now generally believed to reflect some Ice Age or immediate post Ice Age gene transfers (my guess is trading girls over centuries you move those genes thousands of miles).
The most extreme notion to arise out of this is the idea that the Clovis people were, in fact, Sa'ami. The idea is they had boats, fished and hunted seals along the edge of the North Atlantic Ice Shelf, and went back and forth from Europe to America to Europe to America for many centuries.
An East Asian group from Siberia beat them to Oregon, and probably beat them to Wisconsin too (the famous Oregon human coprolite and a pile of butchered elephants from 14,500 years back play a part in that one).
Current belief is the Sa'ami are simply the first of many different groups that moved out of the Western European Refugia as the Big Ice melted and opened up new lands. They traveled further, faster, and harder and managed to become a genetic isolate for up to 15,000 years ~
Lancaster was a major piece of New Sweden in the 1600s. About 1700s Penn, the Quaker, decided to start bringing in Quakers from England.
The Sweden colony folks were predominantly nominal Lutherans so the Quakers tried to convert them to the "true path". Swedish ministers were brought over to "defend" their colonists. This entailed bringing in big, strong churchmen to beat down Quaker missionaries messing with their people.
People were rough in those days and fistfights were not thought of as all that serious.
Some of the Lancaster Swedes and Sa'ami moved to Bucks County to get away from this. Read the history of Daniel Boone's family regarding that.
A smarter bunch relocated the colony to York PA on the other side of the river.
Later on the King of England used Lancaster as a dumping ground for German refugees ~ I think he didn't like the Quakers!
Roughly, if you find an ancestor from Lancaster in the 1600s, he or she is a Swede or Sa'ami. If the date slops over into 1701 to about 1725 or so, they are invariably Quaker. You get up beyond 1725 you find Germans ~ sometimes pretty obviously so. due to the interlocking ethnicities started by the Old West Gothic speaking people back in the 6th and 7th centuries, some German, English and Swedish surnames ARE IDENTICAL, so be very careful.
Your Sa'ami ancestors will probably have Swedish surnames and live in Lancaster county up to 1700, and then they live in York county.
That may possibly explain why part of my family original cemetary in Lancaster county was plowed over and crops grown on it.
However, the old Lutheran churches in Elkton are owned by the Episcopals these days and maintained as historic sites.
In looking for Scanderhoovian Lutheran churches in America you have to look for the term "Evangelical" first.
Wooden boats just don't last!
Thanks.
I had no idea these people were ordering their clothes out of catalogs from the North Face, Columbia Sports, etc. 100+ years ago. The shipping charges must have been tremendous.
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