The Sámi ( , ; also spelled Sami or Saami) are the traditionally Sámi-speaking indigenous people inhabiting the region of Sápmi. Formerly known as Lapland, Sápmi encompasses large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and of the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Historically, the Sámi have been known in English as Lapps or Laplanders; however, these terms are exonyms, regarded as offensive by the Sámi, who prefer their own endonym. Their traditional languages are the Sámi languages, which are classified as a branch of the Uralic language family.
Traditionally, the Sámi have pursued a variety of livelihoods, including coastal fishing, fur trapping, and sheep herding. Their best-known means of livelihood is semi-nomadic reindeer herding. , about 10% of Sámi were connected to reindeer herding, which provides them with meat, fur, and transportation; around 2,800 Sámi people were actively involved in reindeer herding on a full-time basis in Norway. For traditional, environmental, cultural, and political reasons, reindeer herding is legally reserved for only Sámi in some regions of the Nordic countries.
Etymologies
Sámi Speakers of Northern Sámi refer to themselves as "the Sámis" or "of Sámi kin," the word being inflected into various grammatical forms. Other Sámi languages use cognate words. As of approximately 2014, the consensus among specialists was that the word Sámi was borrowed from the Proto-Baltic word , "land," cognate with Slavic (), of the same meaning. Both terms ultimately descend from the Proto-Indo-European root *dʰéǵʰōm.
The word Sámi has at least one cognate in Finnish: Proto-Baltic was also borrowed into Proto-Finnic as and evolved into modern Finnish , the region of Tavastia. The second ä of is still found in the adjective . The Finnish word for Finland, , is also thought probably to derive ultimately from Proto-Baltic , though the precise route is debated and proposals usually involve complex processes of borrowing and reborrowing. and its adjectival form must come from /. Finnish linguist Grünthali Riho [fi] proposes that this Finnish root comes from a Proto-Germanic word , itself from Proto-Baltic , in turn borrowed from Proto-Finnic , which was borrowed from .
Sámi institutions—notably the parliaments, radio and TV stations, theatres, etc.—all use the term Sámi, including when addressing outsiders in Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, or English. In Norwegian and Swedish, the Sámi are referred to by the localized form , plural .Bokmålsordboka og Nynorskordboka, retrieved 12 June 2025 Svenska Akademiens ordböcker, retrieved 12 June 2025
Finn
The first probable historical mention of the Sámi, naming them , was by Tacitus about AD 98. Variants of Finn or were in wide use in ancient times, judging from the names and () in classical Roman and Greek works. Finn (or variants, such as , 'skiing Finn') was the name originally used by Norse speakers (and their proto-Norse speaking ancestors) to refer to the Sámi, as attested in the Icelandic Eddas and Norse sagas (11th to 14th centuries).
The etymology is somewhat uncertain, but the consensus seems to be that it is related to Old Norse , from proto-Germanic ('to find'), the logic being that the Sámi, as hunter–gatherers, "found" their food, rather than grew it. This etymology has superseded older speculations that the word might be related to fen.
As Old Norse gradually developed into the separate Scandinavian languages, Swedes apparently took to using Finn to refer to inhabitants of what is now Finland, while the Sámi came to be called Lapps. In Norway, however, Sámi were still called Finns at least until the modern era (reflected in toponyms like , , and ), and some northern Norwegians will still occasionally use Finn to refer to Sámi people, although the Sámi themselves now consider this to be an inappropriate term. Finnish immigrants to Northern Norway in the 18th and 19th centuries were referred to as Kvens to distinguish them from the Sámi "Finns." Ethnic Finns () are a group related to the Sámi, but distinct from them.
Lapp
The word Lapp can be traced to Old Swedish , Icelandic (plural) perhaps of Finnish origin; compare Finnish "Lapp," "Lapland" (possibly meaning "wilderness in the north"), the original meaning being unknown. It is unknown how the word Lapp came into the Norse language, but one of the first written mentions of the term is in the by the twelfth-century Danish historian , who referred to 'the two Lappias', although he still referred to the Sámi as s. In fact, Saxo never explicitly connects the Sámi with the "two Laplands". The term "Lapp" was popularized and became the standard terminology by the work of , (1673).
The Sámi are often known in other languages by the exonyms Lap, Lapp, or Laplanders, although these are considered derogatory terms by some, while others accept at least the name Lappland. Variants of the name Lapp were originally used in Sweden and Finland and, through Swedish, adopted by many major European languages: ; German, ; ; (); ; ; ; ; ; ; . In Russian the corresponding term is () and in Ukrainian ().
In Finland and Sweden, Lapp is common in place names, such as (), (South Karelia) and (North Savo) in Finland; and (Stockholm County), () and () in Sweden. As already mentioned, Finn is a common element in Norwegian (particularly Northern Norwegian) place names, whereas Lapp is exceedingly rare.
Terminological issues in Finnish are somewhat different. Finns living in Finnish Lapland generally call themselves , whereas the similar word for the Sámi people is . This can be confusing for foreign visitors because of the similar lives Finns and Sámi people live in Lapland. is also a common family name in Finland. In Finnish, is the most commonly used word nowadays, especially in official contexts.
History
The western Uralic languages are believed to have spread from the original Proto-Uralic homeland along the Volga, which is the longest river in Europe. These groups presumably started to move to the northwest from the homeland of the early Uralic peoples in the second and third quarters of the 2nd millennium BC. On their journey, they used the ancient river routes in the area that became known as northern Russia. Some of these peoples, who may have originally spoken the same western Uralic language, stopped and stayed in the regions between Karelia, Ladoga and Lake Ilmen, and even further to the east and to the southeast. The groups of these peoples that ended up in the Finnish Lakeland from 1600 to 1500 BC later "became" the Sámi. The Sámi people arrived in Sápmi sometime during the Bronze Age or early Iron Age (2nd and 1st millennia BCE).
The Sámi language first developed on the southern side of Lake Onega and Lake Ladoga and spread from there. When the speakers of this language extended to the area of modern-day Finland, they encountered groups of peoples who spoke a number of smaller ancient languages (Paleo-Laplandic languages), which later became extinct. However, these languages left traces in the Sámi language (Pre-Finnic substrate). As the language spread further, it became segmented into dialects. The geographical distribution of the Sámi has evolved over the course of history. From the Bronze Age, the Sámi occupied the area along the coast of Finnmark and the Kola Peninsula. This coincides with the arrival of the Siberian genome to Estonia and Finland, which may correspond with the introduction of the Finno-Ugric languages in the region.
Petroglyphs and archeological findings such as settlements, dating from about 10,000 BC can be found in Lapland and Finnmark, although these have not been demonstrated to be related to the Sámi people. These hunter–gatherers of the late Paleolithic and early Mesolithic were named Komsa by the researchers.
Relationship between the Sámi and the Scandinavians The Sámi have a complex relationship with the Scandinavians (known as Norse people in the medieval era), the dominant peoples of Scandinavia, who speak Scandinavian languages and who founded and thus dominated the kingdoms of Norway and Sweden. The migration of Germanic-speaking peoples to Southern Scandinavia happened independently and separately from the Sámi migrations into the northern regions. For centuries, the Sámi and the Scandinavians had relatively little contact; the Sámi primarily lived in the inland of northern Fennoscandia, while Scandinavians lived in southern Scandinavia and gradually colonised the Norwegian coast; from the 18th and especially the 19th century, the governments of Norway and Sweden started to assert sovereignty more aggressively in the north, and targeted the Sámi with Scandinavization policies aimed at forced assimilation from the 19th century.
Before the era of forced Scandinavization policies, the Norwegian and Swedish authorities had largely ignored the Sámi and did not interfere much in their way of life. While Norwegians moved north to gradually colonise the coast of modern-day Troms and Finnmark to engage in an export-driven fisheries industry prior to the 19th century, they showed little interest in the harsh and non-arable inland populated by reindeer-herding Sámi. Unlike the Norwegians on the coast who were strongly dependent on their trade with the south, the Sámi in the inland lived off the land. From the 19th century Norwegian and Swedish authorities started to regard the Sámi as a "backward" and "primitive" people in need of being "civilized", imposing the Scandinavian languages as the only valid languages of the kingdoms and effectively banning Sámi language and culture in many contexts, particularly schools.
Southern limits of Sámi settlement in the past
How far south the Sámi extended in the past has been debated among historians and archeologists for many years. The Norwegian historian Yngvar Nielsen, commissioned by the Norwegian government in 1889 to determine this question in order to settle contemporary questions of Sámi land rights, concluded that the Sámi had lived no farther south than Lierne Municipality in Trøndelag county until around 1500, when they started moving south, reaching the area around Lake Femund in the 18th century. This hypothesis is still accepted among many historians, but has been the subject of scholarly debate in the 21st century. In recent years, several archaeological finds indicate a Sámi presence in southern Norway in the Middle Ages, and in southern Sweden, including finds in Lesja Municipality, in Vang Municipality, in Valdres and in Hol Municipality and Ål Municipality in Hallingdal. Proponents of the Sámi interpretations of these finds assume a mixed population of Norse and Sámi people in the mountainous areas of southern Norway in the Middle Ages.
In Finland, a 2022 study said that Sámi habitation was found in the entirety of continental Finland at least until the 14th century. Toponyms of Sámi origin are common in the southernmost provinces of Finland Proper and Uusimaa. Etymologies based on Sámi names have been suggested for Aurajoki and Nuuksio. The Sámi coexisted with Finns and Swedes and traded squirrel furs with them. The division was based on occupation: unlike Finns and Swedes, the Sámi did not engage in significant agriculture, relying on fishing, hunting, gathering and fur trapping instead. Complete colonization of the two provinces by Finns and Swedes led to the assimilation and disappearance of a distinct Sámi population by the 14th century.Reijo Solantie. *Helsingin pitäjän sekä muun Etelä-Suomen kadonnut saamelaisasutus.* In *Helsingin pitäjä - Vantaa 2022 Helsinge - Vanda*, published by Vantaa-Seura, 2022.
Origins of the Norwegian Sea Sámi
Bubonic plague