Before the Fall of the Reindeer People

Thanks for the inputs. Let me know when you write your first book on the Sami. You've written enough on FR and if collected together could almost make that book.

BTW, I'm presently in Indy (Carmel) for Christmas.

Sounds great ~ enjoy the weather. Looks like you will be missing all the snow.

Now, a Sa'ami book ~ could be possible.

Traditional Sami homeland.

Renee Zellweger is a Sami

FYI:

Why are we writing Sami instead of Lapps on these pages?

"Lapp" means a patch of cloth for mending, thus the name suggests that the Sami are wearing patched clothes, a derogatory term and one that needs to be replaced. The word "Laplander" is also problematic since that could mean any person who lives within this region, also those that are non native. Finally there's a part of the Sami population who always have lived outside the region of "Lapland" such as the Sami's in Swedens, Jemtland and Härjedalen.

Webmasters note:

As a curiosity I'd like to mention that there's one Sami word that has made it into several of the major languages of this world, that word is Tundra -doesn't it speak volumes about which part of the world this is. :)

How do you know she is one?

And, just coincidentally, as I clicked on this thread, the second movement of Sibelius’ Second Symphony is coursing through my living room.

Most evocative symphonic composer ever.

"How do you know she is one?"

She told me so (just kiddin')

It says so here.

"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"

Actually, they got most of their stuff in bulk lots, wholesale, at Sami's Club.

I am Swedish and Norwegian but have not got my DNA tested yet. I bought my Aunt that National Geographic test kit for Christmas and she just got it done. When she gets the results she said she will let me know. I am curious to know if I have an Sami in my DNA.

Look for mtDNA of U5 and 'V's. I have both in my family.

Here is some info on the Sami DNA.

My dad's mom is U5a...same as 9,000 year old Cheddar Man

Famous DNA

Ancient DNA

Muawiyah wrote: "One aspect of Sa'ami life not covered in those pictures was the forced relocation of most of the population to America in the mid 1600s through the early 1700s."
They were forest finns, not the sami.

There are today at least 25 million descendants of the Swedes and Finns of the Delaware. At least
half of these, perhaps more, have one or more Delaware Finns in their family tree.
Source

The following Colonial American surnames are known to derive
exclusively from the New Sweden Colony (original froms are in
parentheses): Bartleson/Partleson (Bertilsson);Clemson
(Clementsson/Clemmenson); Dalbo/Dalbow (Dahlbo); Derrickson (Didricsson);
Holston/Hosten (Holstein); Longacre (Langaker); Lykins/Likens/Laican
(Laikkonen/Laukkainen); Mecum/Meekim (Mekonen/Mankinen); Mink
(Minkinnen/Mankinen); Mullica (Mullikka); Olson/Oldson (Olsson);
Rambo/Rambow (Rimbo/Rombo/Romppainen); Seneker/Senecca (Sinikka);
Stallcup/Stalcop (Stalkop); Steelman/ Stilman (Stille); Swanson
(Swensson); Tussey/Toss (Tossavainen/Thoresson); Vanneman/Veinom/Veinon
(Veinom/Viainen/Van Neman/Vainoimen); and Walraven (Wallrafen/Wallraven).
Source

Diamond notching—formed when the bottom ends of v-notched logs were trimmed to create a diamond shape—is found most frequently in west central North Carolina, but has also been found in western Pennsylvania and the Virginia Piedmont. This distinctively Scandinavian technique migrated south with Finns and Swedes and those who were influenced by them.
Source

Born in Ridley, Pennsylvania, in 1725 to descendents of original Finnish immigrants to the Delaware Valley, John Morton led a life dedicated to public service and was among the most respected statesmen in Colonial America.

John Morton, a hero of American independence, was the descendent of Finnish immigrants. The John Morton Project, begun by former U.S. Ambassador to Finland Marilyn Ware, is a collaborative effort to revive the history of John Morton who cast the tie-breaking vote for independence as a member of the Pennsylvania delegation to the Continental Congress in 1776. John Morton then signed the Declaration of Independence at great personal risk.
The John Morton Project

The Finnish Language on the Delaware

Site of first Finnish settlement in America.

Annals of Pennsylvania, from the discovery of the Delaware, 1609-1682
1.
2.

Excellent information. thanks

Understand this the first boat to New Sweden in Delaware had 95 passegers (presumably just the heads of households) who were identified as speaking "FIN" or "FINN". There were about 7 more Swedes, all military officers.

When New Sweden RELOCATED out of Lancaster PA (where most of them had moved AFTER the Dutch takeover of New Sweden, they organized 5 Sa'ami settlements in Pennsylvania and 2 in Maryland.

That relocation was in 1700 (from DE/MD to PA/Western MD.

The Sa'ami who lived in Finland's forests and chased reindeer were sometimes mistakenly called "Forest Finns".

But, not to worry, there was a Swede on board the Mayflower ~ but he has been mis-identified as being a guy named Digerie Priest ~ but it's more like he was actually "De La Gard" Bedel or Hoparties.

Remember, the compact was reduced to writing with appropriate names of the signatories some number of years AFTER the voyage.

The fellow identified as Digerie Priest, who was supposedly on the boat, had a young daughter back in Nederland. She's the ancestress of about 1/2 of the members of the Mayflower Society.

BTW, at the time of the settlement in Delaware, Finland was still under development, and was firmly part of the Swedish empire ~ complete with a nobility, etc. In the mid 1600s the term FINN or FIN still applied to a language group spoken from the Southeastern part of today's Finland Northward to the Arctic (those borders not yet having been determined.

Accept the fact the Finnish Finns (the Suomi), and even the Swedish nobility in Finland didn't come to the Americas in large numbers until about 1810 when Finland was being prepped to be given to the Czar as a Grand Duchy. I know where most of those guys in the nobility went. You guys should probably focus your genealogical research on boats arriving after that date.

BTW, people of substantial Sa'ami ancestrycan "prove it" with the x-factor DNA sequence on the female side, the y-chromosome on the father's side, and assorted genes lodged in Chromosome 6 that are peculiar to the Sa'ami, or otherwise known to have originated in that population.

Muawiyah wrote:
"Understand this the first boat to New Sweden in Delaware had 95 passegers (presumably just the heads of households) who were identified as speaking "FIN" or "FINN". There were about 7 more Swedes, all military officers."

We know from the records of the colony that many of the passengers on the ships bound for New Sweden were Finns. For example, out of a total of 105 colonists on the Mercurius, which sailed in 1655, Huygen lists 92 as Finns. 'The majority were "Swedish Finns" and, since Papegoja [the commander] did not understand the Finnish language, he engaged one Hendrick Olsson, who had been in New Sweden before, to assist him.' Thirdly, the records also contain indications of the presence of large numbers of Finns in the colony. For example, Lindeström remarks, circa 1655, that the land between the Christina River and the Sandhook (i.e., New Castle) was 'here and there settled by Finns'; Beeckman, Stuyvesant's representative at Altena (formerly Fort Christina), speaks, in 1662, of 'sixteen or eighteen families, mostly Fins, residing in our jurisdiction'; Thomas Paschall, an English settler in Philadelphia, writes to a friend, in 1683, that the 'River ... [was] taken up all along, by the Sweads, and Finns and some Dutch, before the English came'; and a Philadelphian, Jacob Bengtson, in 1748 observes, on the strength of information given to him by his grandfathers, who were among the first Swedish settlers, that 'a large number [of early colonists came] from Finland.' Finally, we have the testimony of travelers like William Edmundson, an English clergyman, who observed, upon his arrival in Delaware Town (i.e., New Castle), circa 1675, that most of the inhabitants were Dutch and Finns; or like the Labadists Jasper Danckaerts and Peter Sluyter, who, on a journey through the Delaware River valley in 1679, visited Takany (i.e., Tacony, now a part of Philadelphia), 'a village of Swedes and Finns, situated on the west side of the river'.

However widely Finnish may have been used along the Delaware, it was destined, like its most immediate competitor, Swedish, to eventual eclipse. An informative comment on the decline of Finnish appears in Peter Kalm's journal under the entry for November 22, 1748, as follows:

Finns have also settled here. They have never had clergymen of their own, but have always had themselves served by the Swedish. They have always spoken Finnish among themselves. Most of them settled in Penn's Neck, where people have been found who until very recently spoke Finnish. But now most of them are dead, and their descendants changed into Englishmen.
The Finnish Language on the Delaware
A. R. Dunlap & E. J. Moyne

Muawiyah wrote:
"The Sa'ami who lived in Finland's forests and chased reindeer were sometimes mistakenly called "Forest Finns"."

Forest Finns (Norwegian: Skogfinner, Swedish: Skogsfinnar, Finnish: Metsäsuomalaiset) are people of Finnish descent in the forest areas of Eastern Norway and Central Sweden. The Forest Finns emigrated from Savonia in Eastern Finland during the late 16th and early to mid 17th centuries, and traditionally pursued slash-and-burn agriculture.
WIKIPEDIA

The recruiting of soldiers, officials and settlers for New Sweden was a difficult task at the beginning of the 1640s and thus, already in 1640 the Swedish government made plans to sentence Finns for deportation to New Sweden. These were Finns living in the forests of the Swedish countryside who had earned a bad reputation for their burnbeating methods of deforestation. In 1640 at least four Värmland Finns, who had been sentenced to military duty for burnbeating, petitioned for deportation to New Sweden. Their request was approved and the Crown decided to round up even more of the Finnish burnbeaters. At this point, the government also found some Forest Finns who volunteered to go.

In 1643 the Governors of several Swedish provinces received orders from the Crown to imprison burnbeating Finns for deportation to New Sweden. This action apparently brought additional Värmland Finns to New Sweden. At the same time, some petty thieves from prisons in Finland were also sent to the colony. This forced migration could not have been very extensive, since the population of New Sweden in 1647 still numbered under 200 and the settlers formed a very small part of this number. The majority were still soldiers and civil servants.
In time, forced migration was no longer necessary, for at the end of the 1640s a veritable "America fever" spread among the Värmland Finns. Thus, in 1649 Matts Erickson of Värmland wrote to the Swedish Privy Council on behalf of 200 Finns and petitioned to have this group sent to New Sweden. From the Council's records for the same year, it becomes clear that there were close to 300 who desired to emigrate. A few, perhaps a tenth of the applicants, succeeded in sailing with the ninth expedition, but very few of this group arrived at their intended destination. There are no existing details about the composition of the large group which arrived in New Sweden in the spring of 1654. Since we know that recruitment work for this expedition was carried out in the forest regions of Värmland and Dalarna, it is quite likely that the group included Värmland Finns. The recruiter (Sven Skute) came from Kronoby in western Finland.
Finns in the New Sweden Colony

The legacy of the 17th century "Forest Finns" lives on in the border areas of Norway and Sweden
By some curious historical accident, George W. Bush may have his roots in Finnish Savo
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 19.10.2008

Muawiyah wrote:
"Accept the fact the Finnish Finns (the Suomi), ....didn't come to the Americas in large numbers until about 18.."

This is True
http://www.loc.gov/rr/european/FinnsAmer/finchro.html

The Finns on the Delaware, of course, were quite a small group among those who settled in America. By the beginning of the 1700s they had already lost their language. Nevertheless, the group left its mark to the extent that its existence was known in some form up until the 19th century, since the Delaware Finns still appear in American literature that dates from the beginning of the 1800s.
Finns in the New Sweden Colony

In the 1500s, 1600s, and most of the 1700s ~ the Swedes generally referred to Finns as being identical with the people living in the far North form middle of the West Coast of Norway, up and around to Petsamo and then down through the virtually empty countryside made up of what is now Lapland County and thither in the remote uplands, all the way to whatever border the Russians could defend.

The Skolt nation, the true woodland Sa'ami, lived in general from about where the Norwegian/Russian border is today, across to Penchanga and then down to Lake Inari and east to what is the Russian/Finnish border regions.

The Pomars, also reindeer chasing people, but of Slavic origin ~ usually identified as Russian by most sources, competed for the same sort of range in the Eastern reaches, or Fenns/Finns of Finland.

The Pmars and Sa'ami are clearly identifiable from the standpoint of modern Finns.

Still, when the term "Finn" was ascribed principally to the people living in the Finmark ~ in the North Everywhere, the people who actually lived there were Sa'ami.

The ships logs kept by the Swedes (which ever ones we can find) identified the LANGUAGE spoken by the people on board the book ~ and Sa'ami were always identified as FIN.

It is possible there were a couple of "Finns" somewhere ~ 'cause there's the town of Finland in Lanaster County PA ~ it dates from an early time. It's right up the road from Nickelmines ~ originally settled by Sa'ami from what is now Petsamo Oblast

Only Germans and English people live there now, all the Scandinavians having moved out to avoid disturbances by Quakers.

Otherwise there are many places whose names contain the word "deer" or "union", and they are places established later by Sa'ami who were only lightly supervised, counseled, or ruled over by anyone!

The Skolt Sa'ami were clearly REMOVED from most of their territory in Northern Finland and Russia by Swedes and Russians more interested in the iron ore, and the nickel mines than in people selling baskets and deer hide.

At some point in time it became conventional to refer to the various Scandinavan, Russian and Latvian/Estonian tribesmen living in Finland as Finns.

Before that time Finn was the description of the language and place where the Sa'ami lived.

Where Do The Finns Come From?