The Sami are coming to The Vasa National Archives June 2013   Don't Miss It !!!

   In the most northern part of Europe and the Russian part of Asia one can find several indigenous groups that have been called the "circum polar tribes" a fitting description since these lives in the habitable parts of this northern region. The forefathers of all these people was hunters and fishermen who carved pictures of their quarry in the rocks to tell about successful hunts as well as appease the spirits of nature. The number of wild reindeers decreased when other peoples arrived in these areas and competed for the same game with more efficient hunting tools such as muzzle loaders and rifles. The native peoples adapted their survival strategy and became the herders of the reindeers, some others became fishermen and some appropriated the ways of the immigrants and became farmers. But even today we can find communitys and families that depend on, and derive their necessaries for survival from their reindeers combined with hunting and fishing both in the Scandinavian countries as well as the most inaccessible parts of Siberia.

   As with most indigenous peoples the Sami never has had an sovereign state of their own and today they live in an area which have been divided by Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Currently, there are Sami political, cultural and youth organizations in all four countries and a Sami Parliament in each of the three Scandinavian ones.
 
   Long before the Swedish, Finnish or even the Viking culture had developed, the Scandinavian peninsula was populated by the Saemieh (Sami). The oldest written source of knowledge on the Sami's is the Roman historian Tacitus' who describes fenni in a book from 98 A.D.

For more information on our Sami exhibit (Click Here)

Please Join Us In June at The Vasa National Archives Bishop Hill, Illinois
109 South Bishop Hill Street, Phone: (309) 927-3898 email: viktoria.vasaarchives@gmail.com

8 SEASONS IN SAPMI