This article focuses on contextualizing the Sami (finnar) representations in Old Norse saga literature. The purpose is to show that the Sami representations reflect multi-layered Old Norse textual and oral traditions, and complex interaction between the Sami and the Norwegians in the Middle Ages. The stereotypes of the Sami tell us more about the society that created them than about real, historical events. We can be sure that behind them lie very mundane phenomena such as trade and marriages.
The ultimate goal of the article is therefore to reveal the multi-ethnic North that provided the background for the saga sources, a North whose history is not as homogeneous as sources suggest and quite unlike the modified version which found its way into the histories of nation states. The literary conventions of sagas are not just imaginary tales—their use in various contexts can reveal something essential in otherwise schematic images or configurations. Even researchers of the sagas have certain personal conceptions of what the “real” lives of the Sami were like at the time, and how the sagas depict this. In fact, they participate in a continuum of saga literature that generates representations of the Sami in history.
This article surveys different cultures of engagement between people, animals, and the landscape across the circumpolar Arctic. Through ethnographic examples the article describes offering rituals and placings in several Arctic contexts in the light of the emphasis they place on affirming personhood. Similarly, rituals of management and regulation are described in the terms of how they strive to create predictability and control. The article tries to mediate this contrast by examining “architectural” examples of co-operation and co-domestication between humans, animals and landscapes. The article concludes with a reflection on how the themes of “origins” and “animal rights” further reconstruct these dichotomies.
Proverbs offer insights into normative symbolic systems of mean- ing. In this article, proverbs collected in Northern Sweden that mirrors an older agrarian environment are studied with a specific subset of such a normative meaning system in focus: masculinity and femininity. The analysis is centered on three important domains of human experience: The Marriage Market, The Household and The Sexuality. It is argued that the gender conceptions found in the proverbs form a system of gender hegemony, with hierarchically superior masculinity and hierarchically subordinate femininity. Furthermore, a possible cultural model found in the proverbs, that of The Successful Household, is out- lined and discussed.
Sweden, with a particular focus on Latvia. Two historical turns in the BalticStates’ recent history have contributed to an out-migration from the region—the restoration of independence in the early 1990s and accession to the EuropeanUnion (EU) in 2004. Although these events were considered positive asthey meant “open” borders for Baltic State citizens, lately the out-migrationfrom Latvia has increased. Likewise, the global economic crisis that started in2008 and the consequential unemployment draw attention to emerging patternsand the composition of emigrants to several destinations, but in this caseparticularly to Sweden. After the EU expansion Sweden did not receive as manyEastern European migrants as was expected at the time, but recent trends revealthat there has been a steady increase in the migration flow since then. TheNordic countries as a potential destination initially lacked pioneer migrants toestablish social support networks that would attract newcomers, but this is nowchanging; statistics for 2010 show that the number of Baltic State immigrantsin Sweden has grown significantly since 2008. With the economic recessionand unemployment in Latvia in 2009, 2010 had even higher emigration activitythan in 2004 just after the country’s accession to the EU. Nordic countriesemerge as welcoming destinations to recent migrants, who state that the proximityto their home country and the labour market opportunities are the mainattraction but also that a positive view of Sweden and the Swedes plays a part.Contemporary trends of migration from the Baltic States and especially Latviaunder conditions of economic downturn lead to emerging pattern of migrationsystems between Latvia and Sweden, combining a mixture of motives and diversityof the people involved in migration chains.
For several years, public debates about the future of the Arctic have included the growing global needs in minerals and energy resources. To explain and manage this development, it is important to understand impacts of previous extractive industries in the north. Using theoretical approaches from economic geography and science and technology studies, the aim of this article is to describe and explain the growth of mining in the Arctic and its consequences for people and environments. How and why have minerals in the Arctic been constructed as natural resources? What systems have been built to extract them, and what were their consequences? How has the legacies of mining been managed when the extraction has ceased and why? The development of mining is explained as resulting from not only economic interests, but also geopolitical considerations, institutional frameworks and cultural-ideological trends. The same drivers are involved in the making of post-extraction futures and the way people relate to the mining legacies through environmental remediation, re-purposing and heritagization.
The article investigates the complex intertextual dialogue between Torgny Lindgren’s Minnen (2010) and Augustine’s Confessions, from which Lindgren has taken the motto of his autobiography. By using the patristic intertext as a starting point, the investigation intends to show how Lindgren has constructed his image of Västerbotten. The article is divided into four parts. The first part (I), establishes the heuristic principles of the investigation, which adhere to the recent tendency in patristic studies to observe the heterogeneous character of Augustine’s world of thought. The second part of the article (II) charts parallels between text and intertext in their portrayal of grace, evil, and man. It emerges that those elements of Lindgren’s world view which are particularly closely related to Augustinian theology are also the ones that possess a particularly strong Västerbottnian character. This intertextual affinity can be explained not only with reference to the Lutheran tradition of Västerbotten, but also has to be related to the text’s specific structure of memoria, which is unravelled in the remaining parts (III– IV). On the basis of modern cultural anthropological theories of memory, the third part demonstrates that most of the differences between text and intertext can be linked to the cultural memory of modernity, and document the rise and fall of industrial subjectivity. Lindgren embeds his autobiographical version of Västerbotten into the basic structure of modern memory, transforms it into a quasi-subject, and taints it with the symptoms of decay that plague the industrial ‘I.’ In the same as Western modernity, Minnen draws the majority of its metaphors of dissolution from Augustine’s paradigmatic doctrine of sin. The fourth part of the article (IV) aims to analyse the autobiography’s mechanisms of substitution. It is argued that these attempt—in analogy to many Western critics of modernity—to counteract the crisis of industrial cultural memory by reviving the Augustinian forms of memoria and creating a synthesis of pre-industrial and industrial. Within the quasi-subject of Västerbotten and its wealth of agrarian objects, Lindgren finds adequate metaphorical models for use in his compensatory project of counter-memory. The article concludes by observing that, just as Minnen’s productive dialogue with Augustine allows it to recapitulate the history of Western memory, Lindgren’s Västerbotten is elevated to the status of a universal symbol of European consciousness and its fate.
After being either completely ignored or mixed up with monsters and devils, which in the medieval imagination dwelled in the Extreme North, the Sami were suddenly brought into the limelight by Olaus Magnus (1492–1557), Swedish catholic bishop in exile. His Carta marina (1539) and Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (1555) contain most valuable information, depicting the Sami’s natural virtues, practical skills and mysterious magic powers. The image provided by these works became widely spread in Europe thanks both to the reprints of the Latin originals and to the numerous translations. In the seventeenth century the theme was re-actualized by a new publication, entirely devoted to Lapland and its inhabitants: Lapponia (1673) by Johannes Schefferus (1621–1679). Translated into a number of languages it replaced the image created by Olaus Magnus with a new one, at the same time similar and different. The present paper examines some crucial points of this evolution in order to show that both “portraits” reflect motivations that go beyond purely scholarly interest: each of them is part of the ideological struggle of its time—the Reformation in one case, the conflicts brought to life by the Thirty Years’ War in the other.
Archaeological and palaeoecological studies in the Arjeplog area of northern Sweden have verified the arrival of hunter–gatherers soon after deglaciation. After modelling and subsequently surveying the reconstructed shorelines of tilted watercourses, Early Mesolithic settlements dating to 8600–8000 BP (14C years BP) were discovered. Makrosubfossil-, pollen- and charcoal analyses of peat stratigrafies and lake sediments corroborated that deglaciation was completed more than 1000 years earlier than has previously been postulated. Pollen records show that the early postglacial environment included complex plant communities lacking present day analogies, providing optimal subsistence conditions for the pioneer settlers. Studies of charcoal influx into lake sediments indicate that fires were more frequent than ever after, contributing to a productive natural environment. Regional studies in the Ipmatis valley in combination with in-depth analyses of selected archaeological sites, display that hunter–gatherers made the resources of the valley an integral part of their subsistence at an early stage. Landscape acquisition included not only the adjustment to existing conditions, but the actual manipulation of the environment. The interdisciplinary research approach has produced unique sets of archaeological and palaeoecological data. Results open new perspectives on human pioneer colonisation and landscape acquisition in relation to deglaciation and the development of postglacial ecosystems. The variety of methods applied sets a new standard for future research on early societies in sub-arctic regions.
This study is focused on the development of northern lights chase tourism, a particular type of northern lights tourism consisting in guided tours that have the goal to find good views of the northern lights. The theoretical approach is based on the understanding of the northern lights experience as a visual experience, and on the recognition of the tourism practitioners as the driving force to new product development. The empirical case concerns the recent development of northern lights chase tourism in the Tromsø area, in Northern Norway. The aim of this study is to investigate the tourism practitioners’ understanding of the northern lights chase tourism, with a particular focus on the development of such a form of tourism as a source of positive memorable experiences. The research questions are: How is the northern lights chase tourism experience described by the tourism practitioners involved in its development? What are the recognized potentials, critical factors and challenges in terms of memorability? On the basis of the empirical results, this study indicates actions directed at fully exploiting the identified potentials, and meeting the relative challenges, and considers critically the adopted theoretical approach proposing directions for future research.
Colonization in Greenland lasted from 1721 to 1953 but even after the introduction of self-government in 2009, aspects of economic and cultural colonization persist. Several epidemics that decimated the population have been recorded from the colonial period. In the post-colonial period urbanization, immigration of Danish workers and alcohol consumption increased significantly while suicides became an important cause of death.
We have outlined two parallel sequences of events, namely the general history of Greenland with emphasis on certain effects of colonization on everyday life and the epidemiological transition with emphasis on mental health. In particular, results from a health survey in 2014 among the Inuit in Greenland showed statistically significant associations between suicidal thoughts in adulthood and sexual abuse as a child as well as between sexual abuse as a child and alcohol problems in the childhood home. Among women also current socioeconomic conditions were associated with sexual abuse as a child.
Colonization in Greenland was relatively benign and our results illustrate that it is not only extensive colonial stress such as genocide and loss of language and culture that has negative effects on mental health but also the more subtle stress factors that the Inuit in Greenland were exposed to.
Typologies have been proposed to organise Inuit placenames in several categories based on the meaning of and glosses on the names. One possible category gathers those toponyms that are related to beings that are neither human nor animal (“other-than-animal non-human beings”). In Nunavut and Nunavik (Canadian Eastern Arctic), this category is used quantitatively to name an almost insignificant number of sites. On the other hand, however, such particular place-names are to be found all over the lands inhabited by Inuit, witnessing the “other” nature of this space by comparison to the space commonly frequented by people and animals.
Swedish state policy regarding the Sam.i from the late nineteenth century onward and studies on Sam.i history have tended to treat reindeer husbandry as much more important than other liveli- hoods practiced by Sam.i communities and families.By comparing live- lihood diversity insouthern and northem mountain-reindeer husband- ry communities in Swedish Säpmi (the traditional land of the Sami people) during the period 1860-1920, this study challenges the notions of Sam.i as reindeer herders and mountain reindeer husbandry as a no- madic monoculture. The results shows that Sami communities and families exploited diverse natural resources, trades and means of sub- sistence. The study supports an understanding of historical Sam.i live- lihoods, were reindeer husbandry as recognized as one of various Sam.i trades and means of subsistence, rather than as the Sam.i livelihood.
This paper proposes a model of how Indigenous communities may engage with the mining sector to better manage local development impacts and influence governance processes. The model uses a resource lifecycle perspective to identify the various development opportunities and challenges that remote Indigenous communities and stakeholders may face at different stages of the mining project. The model is applied to two case studies located in the Northern Territory of Australia (Gove Peninsula and Ngukurr) which involved different types and scales of mining and provided different opportunities for development and governance engagement for surrounding Indigenous communities. Both cases emphasise how the benefits and burdens associated with mining, as well as the bridges between Indigenous and outsider approaches to development and governance, can change very quickly due to the volatile nature of remote mining operations. There is thus a need for more flexible agreements and more dynamic relationships between Indigenous, mining and other governance stakeholders that can be adjusted and renegotiated as the conditions for mining change. The final discussion reflects on how the model may be applied in the context mining governance and Indigenous stakeholder engagement in the Fennoscandian north.
In 1960, a range of leading rural geographers started a debate about population development and the “advance and retreat” of human settlement in sparsely populated rural areas, including in the inland north of Sweden. In what came to be known as the “Siljan Symposium,” they identified a number of key themes in relation to migration and human mobility that were thought to determine settlement patterns in the inland north, including: internal migration and urbanisation of populations; the role of simultaneous in- and out-migration in re-shaping settlement patterns; redistribution of rural populations through return migration and international migration; and changing preferences for settlement in different northern “zones” based on the methods for exploiting natural resources for agriculture, forestry, mining and energy production. This paper re-visits the main themes from the 1960 Siljan Symposium and examines Swedish register data to identify how migration patterns and the resulting “advance and retreat” of human settlement have changed across the inland of Västerbotten and Norrbotten. The results suggest that, while general urban-rural and regional- local settlement patterns appear to have been relatively consistent, new forms of migration (including internal, return and international) with different preferences for rural settlement emerging in different localities as a result of both persistent (mining, forestry, energy) and changing (tourism, lifestyle) values of natural resources. We also observe substantial differences in migration and urbanisation rates between Norrbotten and Västerbotten. The paper then discusses how the persistence and discontinuity of experiences over the past decades may provide insights into the potential future patterns of northern settlement.
The struggle to determine the pace and nature of resource development has long been at the centre of northern autonomy movements. The fortyyear-long debate over the Kemano Power Project in Northern British Columbia reveals how the understanding of hydro-development has shifted from a major regional benefit to a more complicated and conflicted view in which environmental and indigenous concerns are balanced against economic opportunities. When built in the 1950s, Kemano was seen as the foundation for a stable and prosperous industrial economy. The planned expansion of the hydro-electric system in the 1980s and 1990s touched off a major debate inside and outside the region. The region wrestled with the difficult choices presented by such major projects but the decision to cancel the Kemano Completion Project (KCP) rested on the provincial government’s reaction to southern pressures. Kemano, as with many major resource projects in northern regions, reveals the degree to which external political and commercial forces continue to determine northern development and therefore the very future of the region.
During its nadir between approximately 1565 and 1720, the Little Ice Age cooled the Arctic by 0.5° C relative to early twentieth- century averages. Historians of past climates often craft declensionist and even determinist narratives of the Little Ice Age in the far north. Conversely, social or cultural historians usually depict the early modern Arctic environment as unchanging. The journals kept by Henry Hudson and his crew during their voyages of Arctic exploration provide detailed information on environmental conditions and human responses that bridge these different historical perspectives and concerns. The journals reflect the influence of the Little Ice Age in the Arctic, but also demonstrate that voyages of northern exploration were affected by complex and even counterintuitive relationships between global climate change and its local environmental manifestations. These relationships can only be examined with a rigorous methodology that confronts issues of scale and causation that are still rarely considered by climate historians. Ultimately, the journals reveal that a shifting climate was a dynamic, but hardly determinist, agent in the early modern exploration and exploitation of the Arctic.
This paper examines the role of Borg Mesch (1869–1956) in the development of a nascent tourist industry in the North of Sweden. The concept of culture broker is used to clarify Mesch’s varying activities as a photographer, outfitter, and guide in relation to two different clienteles: Swedes from the south of the country and international tourists from England and elsewhere. The history of Svenska Turistföreningen (the Swedish Tourist Association) in facilitating tourist activities in northern regions is described.
Objective: The aim of this project was to describe the work organisation in the Sami communities and in reindeer-herding work and to explore the range of female duties and compare how men and women experience their psychosocial working conditions.
Design: A kind of intervention study was performed by means of a questionnaire sent out to 200 individuals from seven Sami communities. Questions were asked about work organisation, communication, personal relations, solitary work, support, participation and appreciation from colleagues and women's tasks. Meetings and discussions were held about what was perceived as being important in the life of the Sami communities. Notes from 16 group discussions were written down and analysed according to themes of topics relating to how men and women in the Sami communities experience their lives.
Results: Communication and relations were described as being inadequate and some respondents experienced a heavy workload. The women reported more troubled relations, less participation in decision-making and less appreciation from colleagues. Positive issues reported were the Sami identity and a strong connection to the reindeer and to nature.
Conclusions: This study indicates a need for a more systematic study of the psychosocial work conditions in the Sami communities in Sweden. Measures should be taken to develop the organisation of work, e.g. through developing communication strategies and conflict management, which has been requested by several Sami communities.
Review of: Catarina Röjder, Hugo Karlsson & Roger Wadström, Ortnamnen i Göteborgs och Bohus län. XIII. Ortnamnen i Stångenäs härad. 1. Bebyggelsenamn, Göteborg: Institutet för språk och folkminnen. Dialekt-, ortnamns- och folkminnesarkivet i Göteborg 2021, ISSN 02841908; ISBN 9789186959746, XXXVII + 208 pp.
Review of: Dansk editionshistorie, editor-in-chief: Johnny Kondrup. Volume 1, Udgivelse af græsk og latinsk litteratur, edited by Christian Troelsgård with participation of David Bloch.; Volume 2, Udgivelse af norrøn og gammeldansk litteratur, edited by Britta Olrik Frederiksen; Volume 3, Udgivelse af dansk litteratur, edited by Johnny Kondrup; Volume 4, Litteraturlister og registre—Volume 1–4: Charlottenlund: Museum Tusculanums Forlag 2021
Review of: Nils-Gustaf Stahre, Per Anders Fogelström, Jonas Ferenius & Gunnar Lundqvist (with participation of Börje Westlund, Lars Wikström, Göran Sidenbladh, Lars Cleve & Carl Magnus Rosell), expanded and revised edition by Staffan Nyström, Stockholms gatunamn, 4th edition (Monografier utgivna av Stockholms stad 50), Stockholm: Stockholm stad 2022, ISSN 02825899; ISBN 9789170313363, 784 pp.