They were eliminated in their Southern range BEFORE the arrival of the Indo Europeans.
I suspect a couple of eruptions of Mt. Hekla may have wiped them out since the lines of withdrawal (demonstrated by artifacts found by architects) are straight ~ and Mt. Hekla spews fluorine.
Something Scandinavians ought to think about eh!
I've found a reference to Sa'ami speaking people in the Carpathian Mountains. No dates were given, nor locations. However, I do know that during the age of the Swedish Empire (1600s) the Swedes undertook gold and silver mining ventures in the Carpathians ~ most likely on the strength of the major findings in Bohemia at the Westernmost end of that mountain chain.
One of the occupations dominated by Sa'ami in Scandinavia was hard-rock mining ~ which they still do. I suspect the Swedes simply brought a company of Sa'ami down to find gold and silver, maybe other minerals. When the Swedish Empire turned to garbage in 1810 and the Czar took over Finland, et al, he also acquired the Carpathians and had his Cossacks go in and remove the other inhabitants. That's about the time the first goldminers hit the United States in force.
That's one hypothesis tied into historical events that could have led to Sa'ami speakers living in the Carpathians. Another may be that there was a residual population of the original occupants of nearby Hungary still living up in the mountains and the correspondent who got his reference cited simply misidentified proto-Hungarian for Sa'ami.
Whichever the case all these people were dragged down the mountains and kicked out of the Czar's mountains between 1812 and 1820.
Ordinarily there'd be no way to go back and do DNA tests on these folks but since almost all the expellees ended up in Southern and Western Indiana by 1838, there actually is a way to do DNA tests on them!
Thanks. Very interesting. How about the iron range up in Minnesota? Did any of them go there to mine iron ore?
A mountain that spews fluorine when it erupts? Poor ba*tards.
So the Scandinavian girl of my dreams in is Indiana? My buddy is Norge-American. I need to ask him if he is Sa’ami.