Posted on 06/15/2008 8:34:34 AM PDT by blam
Native Sweden
Volume 61 Number 4, July/August 2008
by Zach Zorich
Indigenous Saami are rediscovering their long-lost heritage
Smithsonian archaeologist Noel Broadbent and Tim Bayliss-Smith of Cambridge University walk past a line of 1,100-year-old hut foundations at Grundskatan. (Zach Zorich)
Smithsonian archaeologist Noel Broadbent offers me a handful of blueberries he has picked from the shrubs that hug the forest floor. I pop them into my mouth. The pulp and seeds are sugary, rough, and slick at the same time. In early September the leaves change color and the berries ripen on Sweden's Hornsland peninsula.
Broadbent crouches by the trail and picks up a hunk of pale gray lichen. "This is what the reindeer eat," he announces before letting it fall to the ground. But the sun is beginning to dip below the treetops and I am too preoccupied with getting to the archaeological site before dark to notice that this is my first lesson in how the landscape fed the ancestors of the Saami people and what meanings the geography held for them.
The Saami (formerly called Lapps) have lived in northern Scandinavia and Russia's Kola peninsula since the glaciers retreated some 10,000 years ago. Today, they number fewer than 100,000 people, many of whom have assimilated into Scandinavian culture but still maintain ties to their ancestral lands and family reindeer herds.
The black dots on the map show the distribution of places with Saami names, evidence that they had once settled far beyond the borders of "Lapland."
Because the Saami are historically known from the accounts of priests and government officials, they have been stereotyped as nomadic reindeer herders who live only in what was once called "Lapland," an area that extends from the coast of the Arctic Ocean 300 miles south of the Arctic Circle in Sweden.
Except for the work of Broadbent and a few others, Saami prehistory before they adopted reindeer herding 400 or 500 years ago is largely a blank slate. Historic texts identified them as hunters who traveled on skis, but said little else. This lack of history has made it difficult for modern Saami to establish their rights to land that was once used for grazing their reindeer. "It is a common problem of indigenous people around the world," Broadbent says. "People without written histories of their own can be helped by archaeology in asserting their rights to their own history."
A 2002 decision by a Swedish court ruled that archaeological evidence was not admissible in land-rights cases. Nevertheless, Broadbent's work is helping to define ancient Saami history, part of which comes from the site at Hornsland on the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, 500 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
The Swedish state and landowners are claiming rights to land far north of here, based on the assumption that the Saami never settled this far south. Broadbent doesn't see himself as an activist, but that doesn't make his finds less controversial or less important in helping the Saami establish their cultural identity.
BTW, that was just this last Tuesday evening when I saw the Hakka version of the "three emperors" for the first time.
They used to herd reindeers too!
They are not, however, Sa'ami, although I suspect some Sa'ami have, of course, found opportunity to "mate with them" from time to time ~ that being the normal course of events for folks who live out in the woods with nothing to do but chase reindeer, chop wood and try to grow rye.
I've studied some about the Hakka and Xiongnu. They made five migrations all the way across China. The ones with Caucasian features were singled out and killed along the way during these migrations.
It is my opinion that the Xiongnu and the Hakka are related to the Caucasian mummies found in the China desert a few years back. The Curse Of The Red-Headed Mummy
They'd chop down trees
They'd eat their lunch
They'd go to the lava'treeeeeeee.
I'll shut up, now.
Ping to the Swedish Ping List.
Since these are the same people as the Yayoi in Japan, and many of them have nose bridges, I'd suspect the story is not exactly true.
Still, there's a uniformity in reindeer cultures from Western Asia to Eastern Asia, so whatever their genetic background, they did some cultural swapping.
Even extends to Santa Claus.
‘strange eyes’
Very true, I have a good friend from Finland, she has beautiful eyes, slightly asiatic, blue eyes and ash-blond hair, I am so envious...
Go Austria!
Joni Mitchell had Norwegian grandparents who allegedly had “Sami blood.” Her large teeth hypothetically come from the Nordic (Germanic) component of her heritage, but she has prominent cheekbones which could be from the Sami component. A map in Wikipedia shows that Sami once occupied most of Norway but were pushed back, much as Indians were in N. America, although there are many whites who claim a trace of Indian blood.
“The black dots on the map show the distribution of places with Saami names, evidence that they had once settled far beyond the borders of “Lapland.””
Have you come across any lists of Saami names?
I don't understand the question.
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Thanks Blam. |
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I need to take one of those genetic background tests. I come from primarily mixed scandinavian ancestors my last name means “swede” lol. Outwardly I look like any typical swede being blonde and 6’-8” tall. But my blue eyes turned hazel/green and I have large cheek bones. I wonder if there is some Saami lurking inside.
LOL!
Scandinavian Ancestry — Tracing Roots to Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan International | Summer 2000 | Thor Heyerdahl
Posted on 12/15/2001 2:43:28 PM PST by spycatcher
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/591434/posts
I meant lists of surnames and perhaps towns or locales that have their origin in the Saami native tongue.
Freeper Muawiyah would be the most help on this request.
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