COMPARATIVE STUDIES ON GOVERNMENTS AND NON­ 1/ .f:( - DOMINANT ETHNIC GROUPS IN EUROPE, 1850-1940 · Ethnic Groups and Language Rights Volume III ~., i . 1 . Edited by { SERGIJ VILFAN in collaboration with 1 GUDMUND SANDVIK and LODE WILS 1. f' 1 ~... ,' Non-existent Sami Language Rights in Norway, 1850--1940 GUDMUND SANDVIK European Science Foundation NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS DARTMOUTH 128 .., 13 Non-existent Sami Language Rights in Norway, 1850-1940 GUDMUND SANDVIK Background The Samis are an ethnic minority in the Nordic countries and in Russia. According to more or less reliable censuses, they number today about 40 000 in Norway (1 per cent of the total population), 20000 in Sweden (0.25 per cent), 4500 in Finland (0.1 per cent) and 2000 on the Kola peninsula in Russia. Only Finland has had a regular ethnic census. The Samis call themselves sapmi or sabmi. It is only recently (after 1950) that this name has been generally accepted in the Nordic countries (singular same, plural samer). Tacitus wrote about fenni;1 Old English had finnas;2 Historia NorvegitE (History of Norway) written about P80 had finni,3 and the Norse word was {imzar. 4 In medieval Icelandic and Norwegian literature, Finnmork was the region in northern Scandinavia where the Samis lived. The northern­ most Norwegian fylke (county) of today, Finnmark, takes jts name from the huge medieval Finnmork. But Samis of today still use the name S4pnzi for the entire region where they live (See Map 13.1, ;].. which "shows S4pmiwith state frontiers and some Sami centres). 'Finner' is accordingly an authentic Norwegian name. The in­ convenience is that it may easjIy be misunderstood as denoting citizens ofFinland. The Swedes have had the same difficulty since the fifteenth century because they had to distinguish between the inhabitants of southern Finland (the Finns) and the Samis in the north. Theref9re the Swedes adopted lapp (plurallappar), a word of' Finnish origin, for the Sarnis under the crown of Sweden and LAppland for the region where tlley lived. This "name has become internationally known, but if it is used by Scandinavian citizens in a Nordic country today it might easily be considered an insult. The proper term therefore, even outside Scandinavia, should be Spmi (a singular noun and adjective)andSamis (plural noun). ( TheSamilanguage belongs to the Fenn~Hungariangroup within ''"1n ETHNIC GROUPS AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS the Ural linguistic family. Itis remotely related to the modern Finnish and Baltic-Finnish languages, all of them descending from proto­ Finnish spoken in the eastern Baltic area and northwards as late as 1500-1000 Be. The Sami language may, if seen as one language, be divided in six dialects. They are mutually understood if they are in neighbouring areas, but only with difficulty if apart. The dialects indicated on Map 2 transcend modem state frontiers. The western Sami dialects are: -Southern Sami; • Lule and Pite Sami; • Northern Sami, spoken in Norway, Sweden and Finland, along the Norwegian coast as well as in the mountains, by the majority of Samis (7(hgO per cent). The eastern SaIni dialects are: - Inari Sami in the rural community of Inari (Finland); - Eastern ('Skolt') Sami in western Kola and in some localities of Inari, and also, in an earlier period, in southern Varanger (Norway); - Kola Sami. ! The dialect break-up may have taken place during the first millen­ nium AD. From the seventeenth century up to the nineteenth century Sami dialects were put into writing, mainly for religious purposes. All six dialects are used in writing and printing today. A common orthography of northern Sami was established in 1979. The Samis are few in number and they inhabit a very large area. One can also say that this area has no natural centre, nor is it an area with natural borders. These are two of a variety of reasons why nothing resembling a Sami state has ever existed. Today Kautokeino and Karasjok in Norway and Utsjoki in Finland are Sami majority kommuner (municipalities), but most Samis lived ana still live along the northernmost Norwegian fjords, where natural resources are richest {for instance Varanger, Tanafjord, Porsanger, Altafjord, KAfjord, Tysfjord). Here the Samis have become a minority and have acculturated or been assimilated to different degrees. Consequently the Sami language is in a precarious situation even in regions where it prevailed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The assimilation process has been the result of immigration, industries, communications, education, intetrnarriage and deliberate norwegianisation, all different aspects of the dominant Norwegian culture from the south. The Samis on the coast to Varanger have, at least nominally, lived 130 SAMI LANGUAGE RlGHTS IN NORWAY I. under Norwegian law since the fourteenth century. In the inland areas the Samis have lived under Swedish lawsince the fourteenth century (the border west of Varanger dates from 1751, when Finland was a part of Sweden; the Varanger border was agreed upon by Norway and Russia in 1826; Swedish law remained in the grand duchy of Finland after 1809). People were equal before the law. Sami customary law was not directly applied by civil servants and judges. They governed and applied (or adapted) national law to local conditions. and they did it in Nordic; that is, non-Sami and non­ Finnish languages. The language question was a practical one for civil servants and for judges as well as for the lcx:al population: how to make oneself understood. Mutual problems of understanding were due to arise during the ting (the regular meetings between the local , i 1 population and the authorities. such as the county governor, judge. , ~ I i or tax collector). In the Swedish areas there is evidence of public ling : ; - interpreters since the seventeenth century, and in Norway since . ; the eighteenth century in the inner part of Finnmark which feB to I ~ Norway in 1751. There appear to have been fewer interpreters on the , i. coast, where Samisand Norwegians lived doser to each other than , J T did Samis and Swedes in Swedish Lappland. J . This is the essential background for the two general characteristics .. of language rights of the Samis in the Nordic countries: ., 1 • The Sami language has never had the status of a public language; • Between 1850 and 1940 the polidesofthe three Nordicstates were . i 1 aimed at linguistic assimilation of the Sami speaking citizens. j. : .' How was this poliCY,carried out? Whatwere its main points and what ~ were its causes? . ;.J Parliament Sets the Tone The only general debate on Sami questipns in the Norwegian Starling (parliament) between 1850 and 1940 was held in 1863. 5 The government had proposed the estabIishmentofa lectureship in the ,; .j Sami and Finnisi:l languages at the University of Christiania/Oslo. The money was a trifle. The debate and its subject was not. It marked th~offidalbeginning of norwegianisation. The opposition was led by Johannes Steen (Prime Minister 1891-93 and 1898-1902) and Johan , : Sverdrup (prime Minister 1884-89), both liberals. Johannes Steen claimed that the Samis now had . the New Testament and the catechism in Sami,agrammar and a Samireader. C I , i -' That was right and sufficient. It would be unfair to the Sami people to i. j actually create a Sami literature and thus maintain Sami nationality "', t\ "; 1 . ,i ETHNIC GROUPS AND LANGUAGE RlGHTS by artificial means. That might be the conseq·uence ofa lectureship in Sami at the university. Instead, the Samis should be encouraged to move doser tothestate ofwhich they were citizens. 6 He proposed as a general measure that Sami children should be fostered in Norwegian families, so that they could return to their people as missionaries of norwegianisation. Johan Sverdrup declared that the only salvation for the samis was to be absorbed by the Norwegian nation.s He supported Steen by affmning that rarely had a good cause been so well defended in the Storling. If a Sami nationality was developed further, permanent difficulties mightresuIt. One had to be wary of Russia. It was not a humanitarian obligation for Norway to foster a Sami nationality. Such a policy 'would only prolong the death agony of that national­ ity, which is sad enough in itself'. Anton Martin Schweigaard (professor at the Faculty of Law) . defended the government. As to the assimilation of the Samis, he would leave it to God and to the Samis themselves. But the Samis were a weak race, numbering only 15 000 souls, and the Norwegians should b€ their protectors. He therefore supported the founding of a lectureship at the university. Later in the debate Schweigaard said that the Sami people would not perish but that there was a risk that the present state of things would continue. This was a state in which the mountain Samis ('a tough race and perhaps the toughest') felt isolated from the Norwegians, and the coast Samis felt that they were regarded like vermin. Two human races, Samis and Norwegians, could not fuse when One was neglected and despised and the other lived as a ruler. Only as equals could they eventually mix. When, as here, colonists lived next to an aboriginal population, one could become impatient because of the many difficulties. Anyhow, justice should be maintained. Two sorel1skrivere (local judges) and MPs of the time from Finnrnark, Frederik Norgreen and jens Holmboe, also supported the government. Norgreen claimed that it was anadvantagefor the local population when civil· servants spoke Sami. As for the Samis themselves, they possessed one of the qualities required for consti­ tuting a-nationality, namely respect for the law. They were also loyal. They had never exposed Norway to such international conflicts as could· easily have been provoked if the Samis had wanted it.