I was travelling north from Trondheim to Bodø and stopped for a few nights at Lomsdal-Visten nasjonalpark. I came across this sign about Sami reindeer herding that looks like some hunters had fired plenty bullets at. I know the Sami people have special rights in reindeer herding, but im curious – how is this kind of thing generally viewed in Norway?
by SsSangu
12 comments
In southern Norway, we don’t care at all about the Samis.
Most Norwegians live in the south and spend very little time thinking about the Sami, since they’re seen as something exotic and far away in the far north. My impression is that most people in the south don’t even realize that there’s a pretty big undercurrent of anti-Sami attitudes in the north, with people making racist comments and accusations of Sami getting special treatment and reparations for things that haven’t happened and so on. There’s also things like firing bullets at signs, like what you have here.
I wanna say that the people being hostile toward the Sami in the north are a loud minority, but at the same time they are definitely large enough to be noticed. Arguably, a local government election in Tromsø (the largest city in the north) flipped when the ruling party negotiated a deal to make Tromsø part of the Sami Language Area and the opposition ran on a very successful campaign of reversing that decision. That was about fifteen or twenty years ago.
Part of what makes the whole thing extra sad is that many of those who are the most hostile towards the Sami have Sami ancestors. The Norwegianization process caused a lot of people to deny their own Sami ethnicity in pretty outwardly vocal ways, because the process tied Sami culture to something shameful. They then passed this on to their children who passed it on to their children and so on.
Probably some assholes using the shotgun on the first and best sign they could find. I’m sometimes traveling rurally and finding shot signs of all kinds.
I was driving a along rural road near Harstad a few decades ago. _Every_ street sign had been hit by a shotgun at least once.
I live in the south but originate from north in Norway and have parents of mixed Sami descent.
Most Norwegians don’t really give a shit about the Sami at all. Sure we got a week each year to celebrate their culture but nobody really notices or care.
But the Sami population in reindeer business seem to love fucking up their own image in the Media all the time. They come off as extremely entitled and it’s really easy for any political force to make them the enemy as it’s easy pickings (They want special rights, schools, political power and courts) but it’s all paid by the Norwegian state.
This doesn’t fly well with the Norwegian culture of equality.
As with everyones rights, some are fair and sensible, whereas others are bad and detrimental to the environment.
The ones with the strongest dislikes of certain sami rights are also the ones who has to deal with the consequences of those rights.
I doubt this was a hate crime if that’s what youre asking
For what it’s worth, those are bb’s (probably from a shotgun) not bullet holes (from a rifle).
There’s definitely “antisamitism” alive and well in Norway, and in the mixed communities where they’re a visible minority it’s most likely to manifest in mockery and open racism.
That said, I would be careful drawing conclusions from a shot up sign. Probably bored hunters as opposed to threats of lynching.
Don’t get it twisted, there’s plenty of racism going around, but I don’t think it tends to express itself in the “someone oughta put them down” or “round up the boys, get the pickup truck and scare them off the land” direction.
I could be wrong though, not being Sami or a local my exposure to this subject is largely academic plus talks with people closer to the subject. I would caution against putting to much currency in most commenters input here, as most Norwegians are in similar positions. I would be curious to hear from Sami people living in the area on the subject.
It really is a mixed bag. The Sámi have many special rights as an indigenous population that are enshrined in Norwegian and international law. In areas with Sámi population in Northern Norway there is sometimes antagonism towards Sámi people. Some people think that reindeer can be annoying eating all the flowers in the garden and stuff like that. Some think they are privileged, that it’s unfair that they can drive their snow scooters everywhere while others can’t. There are also plenty of jokes about them where the general gist is that they are backwards and uneducated. Then again there are those who claim that the Sámi aren’t a real minority, they are simply Norwegians with an ‘alternate culture’. And there are still people of Sámi descent who are subject to racism. New signs with the alternative Sámi name have in some areas been regularly tagged and shot at. So it’s complicated.
https://www.nrk.no/nordland/tagget-ned-bodos-nye-samiske-skilt-1.7502819
https://www.nrk.no/ytring/stopp-rasismen-mot-samer-1.15677056
Samisk are native people of Norway and every1 else immigrated here.
Some extreme Norwegians dont want to be reminded of this fact that they are also migrant if u go back few generations (except if u are samisk who migrated before others)
They faced some of the same acts of discrimination as the Native Americans. Many of them got mixed with other races during those time but some still look like their American counterparts and practice their religion, their language got isolated during that time and got divided in several different languages which differs from each other quiet substantially.
Reindeer herders get to drive their quad bikes around in the wilderness to herd the rain. A lot of people find the enormous amount of trails this generate and the overpopulation of reindeer very much in conflict with the indigenous nature people image that is used to get the rights to do so. Than again, it’s the Sami that have the traditional right to use the areas, so it should to some degree be they that decide. It’s just that this don’t work well as a background for protests against other uses of the land such as power lines or mining.
Than again, further south such as here there is at least less overpopulation of reindeer, and I don’t know about the use of quad bikes as much as in Finnmark.
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