In the past years and with recent political developments across the world, the growth and normalisation of fascism have amplified the influence of White supremacists, who fixate on the myth of an exclusively White Middle Ages to justify their beliefs and claim their “Indigenous” ancestry in the medieval past. These ideas are built on misinformation and are outright wrong, but are continually reinforced by whitewashed portrayals of the Middle Ages in popular media. This fraught oversimplification of the past erases the many complexities of the medieval world, instead presenting a monocultural space of “racial” and cultural “purity”. The Saami, or Finnar as they are called in medieval Norse sources, are Indigenous people of Fennoscandia whose presence in medieval sources confront and complicate this monocultural vision.
The traditional homeland of the Saami people, Sápmi (also Sábme/Saepmie), stretches across the borders of the modern nation states of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. This area was most likely significantly larger in the medieval period. The Saami languages, of which there are nine “living” (meaning spoken) languages today, belong to the Finno-Ugric language family and are structurally and etymologically different from the Nordic languages. Across the four nation states of Sápmi, the Saami have varying political rights and cultural statues, but the Saami have Indigenous status in Norway, Sweden and Finland, with increasing difficulties for Saami people in Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Across the Saami region, there is significant historical and cultural diversity, but as an Indigenous group, the Saami are often presented as “without history” or as “static historical actors“. This contradiction stems from the past and ongoing colonial structures that continue to shape Saami realities today. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Social Darwinism and eugenics gained traction, the Saami were dehumanised both by the national states and a large part of the majority populations across Sápmi, in the process of reinforcing racial hierarchies, placing the Saami at the evolutionary bottom as a primitive and dying ‘race’ while Norwegians, Swedes and Finnish peoples (“Nordic people”) were positioned at the top. These states were undergoing processes of national consolidation and national romanticism, seeking to create unified, homogenous identities and by labelling the Saami as “primitive” and “less than” themselves could justify the assimilationist and segregationist policies. Such policies included forced conversion to Christianity, relocation and schooling of children in so-called “nomad schools”, which ultimately had the goal of either removing the Saami culture altogether or preserve it in its dying breath. Theories like Yngvar Nielsen’s 1889 framrykningsteori (‘theory of migration’) claimed that the Saami had only recently migrated into the southern regions of Sápmi in Norway and Sweden, and became widely accepted as the Saami in these areas lost hunting rights and were increasingly seen as foreigners on their own land. While these theories have been debunked on several occasions and that race biology has been scientifically discredited (but still lives on in certain popular beliefs), colonialist and racist assumptions about the Saami past and present continue to persist both in public and in academia. This is both due to general knowledge gaps about the Saami as well as a kind of cultural amnesia associated with Nordic colonial projects.
Within Medieval Studies, this same tendency can be seen in the typical portrayal of the Saami as Othered and far-northern – magical outliers in Norse society, if not ignored or simply mentioned in a footnote, despite the many rich descriptions of Saami peoples across medieval texts. The way we understand medieval Scandinavia today then is shaped by these long-standing historiographic traditions that have privileged certain narratives (the monocultural Norse) while erasing others (the Saami), with White Supremacist and far right misappropriations of this past becoming more normalised. Challenging these narratives is crucial – not only because history shapes contemporary Saami Indigenous rights across Sápmi, but also to push back against White supremacists and the far right who distort the medieval past, erasing real Indigenous histories while claiming Indigeneity themselves.
Across a multitude of medieval texts, in various genres, the Saami appear in multifaceted ways. Saami characters are often described as skilled in magic, as able skiers and archers, associated with winter weather and hunting, and as skilled tradesmen. In Heimskringla, a thirteenth century collection of Norwegian and Swedish kings’ sagas compiled by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, the Saami are described in multidimensional ways. In the Saga of King Harald Fairhair, among the king’s many wives is the Saami woman Snøfrid from Dovre (now in mid-Norway), and his son first meets his own wife while she is learning magic from two Saami men. In the Saga of the Sons of Harald (not the same Harald, it was a popular name!), the pretender to the throne Sigurd Slembe is described as hiring Saami boat-builders who host a banquet for him. In the Saga of King Olaf Haraldson, Thorir hund (“dog”) is described as trading with the Saami and living with them for two winters, making a lot of money. Later on in the story, Thorir kills the Christian king during the Battle of Stiklestad, allegedly with the protection of an impenetrable cloak made by his Saami associates. Kings themselves also seek out Saami magic, and in the Saga of Olaf Tryggvason presumably written by the Icelandic monk Odd Snorrason in the twelfth century, the Christian Olaf seeks out a Saami man in the mountains of Trøndelag for his advice. Importantly, the Saami are not just depicted as contributing to Norse society and act as agents in their own right across these narratives. In a short story preserved in the thirteenth century manuscript Morkinskinna, Saami characters seize the farm of one of the main characters. Saami goods such as fur and pelts were particularly sought after in a global trading system, and Saami characters enter significant personal and political alliances within and without Sápmi. In fact, there is not a medieval Nordic world without the Saami. How can we continue to emphasise this while also confronting racist views and right wing extremism at the same time?
Engaging thoughtfully with Indigenous methodologies open up opportunities for rethinking how we approach medieval history today. The voices we recognise in medieval texts shape the voices we acknowledge in the real world and addressing the Saami characters in medieval texts means acknowledging the multitude of Saami realties today. As Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith makes clear, understanding history is key to making sense of the present and reclaiming history is a vital part of decolonisation. For the medieval Saami, this means re-reading the medieval texts in ways that centre Saami presence, agency and perspectives, rather than treating them as peripheral. Doing so not only reveals the complexities of the medieval Nordic world, but also challenges the colonial and fascists narratives that continue to erase Saami and Indigenous history.
One way of doing this re-reading could be through Red Reading, a methodology which approaches Eurocentric texts through non-Western and Indigenous perspectives. What happens when we “red read” the medieval texts using Saami perspectives and methodologies? How does our reading change when we understand Saami resilience during the Battle of Stiklestad as described in the Saga of Olaf Haraldson through the Saami concept of birgejupmi, which incorporates self-sufficiency and social values? Or when we consider Indigenous relations to the land and current land right struggles when we analyse the Saami characters that seize the Norse farm in Morkinskinna? Can the Saami creation-myth as narrated in Anders Fjellner’s nineteenth century poem Beaivvi bártni soagnu Jiehtanasaid máilmmis (‘The son of the sun’s courting in the land of the giants’) recontextualise the medieval Saami characters? Such alternative readings, when done with care, open up more inclusive interpretations of the past and present, beyond simple and outdated dichotomies of ‘us’ and ‘them’.
Recognising Saami medieval histories and perspectives is not just about setting the record straight, it is key to decolonising Medieval Studies and pushing back against White Supremacist distortions of the past. Incorporating the many and dynamic portrayals of Saami people in medieval texts into our presentation of medieval history challenges the false myth of a monocultural medieval North and breaks down rigid ideas about race, culture and Indigeneity. Bringing Indigenous perspectives and methodologies into this conversation does not just change how we see the past, – it helps us imagine a more just and inclusive future.