The Sámi Peoples of the North. A Social and Cultural History. By Neil Kent

Neil Kent’s overview of Sámi history, The Sámi Peoples of the North. A Social and Cultural History, is a rare example of transnational history in a research field dominated by methodological nationalism. The indigenous Sámi people lives across a northern homeland called Sápmi, spanning from Norway in the West, over the northern expanses of Sweden and Finland to northwestern Russia in the East. A vast majority of the scholarly literature on the Sámi, however, treats the history of this population within the boundaries of just one of the four countries. Kent’s book is impressive in its inclusion of themes from all around Sápmi, and of sources from many different language areas.

The range of the book is comprehensive. Beginning with Sámi prehistory and linguistic research on the origins of the different Nordic populations, the book covers the history of the Sámi from earliest contact with other populations, through the mission period and the governmental policies of twentieth-century Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia/the USSR, up until the current era. It is a narrative of colonialism, forceful conversion, and oppression, but also of cooperation, resistance, and Sámi activism. The comprehensive character of the book makes it suitable not only for scholars and interested readers, but also for curricular use. I myself have used the book as core literature for a course on Sámi history that I have taught since 2015. There are few, if any, other volumes that cover the history of the Sámi in as chronologically and geographically comprehensive a manner as Kent’s book does. The book also succeeds in conveying the diversity of Sámi cultures: when talking about the Sámi, we are, in fact, talking about a number of separate yet related cultural and linguistic groups that fall under the umbrella term Sámi.

The comprehensive and even encyclopedic structure of the book results in a certain number of shortcomings. The book is divided in seven thematic chapters ranging from “Ethnicities, the Law, Repressions and War” through e.g. “Health, Family, Sexuality and Education” to “Reindeer Herding and Other Livelihoods.” It is not always clear according to what principle the themes (such as Ethnicities and War) are grouped together in the chapters. This leaves the reader with an impression of a certain arbitrariness in the choice of themes, and a wish for more careful editing from the side of the publisher. The thematic chapters are at times repetitive, stating again some of the contents of earlier chapters from only a slightly different viewpoint. Due to this structure, chronological streams are often lost in the depth of detail that Kent presents.

In some instances, the use of sources could have been more balanced. The eighteenth-century travel diary of Italian diplomat and traveler Giuseppe Acerbi is a very interesting example of travel literature from within the Sámi areas. Acerbi’s book is, however, given pages and pages of space in the form of direct quotes (pages 136–137, for instance, include twenty-nine consecutive rows of direct quote from Acerbi). The problem with these quotes is, apart from a certain numbness after reading them, that when Acerbi speaks for himself, and is not treated critically, the Sámi are, in fact, many times portrayed through the eyes of a late-eighteenth-century explorer rather than a twenty-first-century scholar.

There are some minor errors in the use of sources that are only relevant to point out for future scholars on Sámi history: for instance, nomad school inspector Vitalis Karnell’s quote “Let a Lapp be a Lapp” is on page 147 erroneously ascribed to bishop Olof Bergqvist. Also, the different language forms of place names are sometimes used inconsistently, e.g. on page 129 where the Finnish and Swedish names Inari/Enare for the Inari municipality are used interchangeably without any apparent logic. All this is, however, forgivable, considering the enormous number of sources and literature used in the book.

In summary, Neil Kent’s book is highly recommended reading for anyone interested in Sámi history. I have presented some minor critical remarks and the more general observation of a certain arduousness in the reading experience due to the encyclopedic structure of the book. Much of this could have been avoided through careful editing. It is, however, one of the very few books that offer a “complete view” of Sámi history, rather than a history of the Sámi in nation-state-sized chunks or divided into shorter historical periods. As such, it is a highly useful gateway to the diverse history of the Sámi peoples of the North.