About Lule Sami
The Sami are an indigenous people living in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Their territory stretches from the Kola peninsula in northwestern Russia to Engerdal in southern Norway and Idre in southern Sweden. This area is called Sápmi in the Northern Sami language. Traditionally, the Sami have lived by reindeer herding, fishing, hunting and farming, but today, they have both traditional and modern jobs. There are many interesting sites about Sami and the Sami people that you can visit online. For an overview over the links that we found useful please go to Lule Saami online.
Sami has been spoken on the Scandinavian and Kola Peninsulas in Northwest Europe since prehistoric times. Recent genetic, archaeological and linguistic research suggests that the Sami people are descendants of the first inhabitants of the area after the glaciers of the last ice-age receded.
Linguists currently recognize 9 living Sami languages. Lule Sami is the second largest of these. It is spoken by about 1,500 people. The traditional Lule Sami area runs from Luleå in Sweden on the Gulf of Bothnia to Nordland in Norway. This is shown on the following map. Note that the Sea Sami no longer have an independent language, but have adopted North Sami, Lule Sami or Norwegian.
Archaeological evidence shows that Sábme/Sápmi extended along most of the western coast of the Gulf of Bothnia and reached as far south as Hudiksvall. This area, not shown on most modern maps for political reasons, is indicated in the small map that you find to the left. As noted in a recent article from the journal Archeology (in an abstract published online Archaeology Volume 61 Number 4, July/August 2008) it is not least the lack of written history that makes it difficult for the Sami to claim any right for the lands that they once used.
Different from most other languages spoken in Western Europe, the Sami languages belong to the Uralic language. The closest relatives of Sami are Finnish and Estonian, yet Sami separated from these two languages more than 3,000 years ago.
Although the Sami languages are classified as Finno-Ugric, their vocabularies are heavily influenced by contact with Slavic and Germanic languages. In addition, recent research suggests that they also contain remnants of the original Paleolithic languages of Scandinavia.
Sami has a long independent history and not least because of its relatively few number of speakers (i.e. less than 30,000 total), this language family is arguable the most endangered language family in Europe (UNESCO Redbook of Endangered Languages).