Once World War Two ended, the Norwegian government began to adopt a progressive policy regime in regard to the entire Saami population and the Northern Saami dialect. The implementation of a welfare state within Norway meant that the country had to reconcile with its treatment of Saami for the past century and this manifested in several educational reforms. Following the establishment of the Saami committee by the Department of Church and Education in 1956, Parliament passed the School Law later in 1959, which specified that the language could be used for instruction in schools (Bucken-Knapp, 2003, p.105). An amendment a decade later had parents decide whether their children were educated in Saami if it was the language of home. These acts centred on Northern Saami since it is one of three languages considered a historically common language in Norway, alongside Kven and Norwegian (Hermansen and Olsen, 2020, p.65). New reforms in education set a precedent for Saami to be integrated into Norwegian society and meant that the language and practises of the group would be respected by Norwegians, but it did not manifest as a return of land and livelihood. While the progressive laws regarding the Saami language actively helped to revitalise the language, arguably the Land Act of 1902 damaged economic incentives to a point of irreparability and that education was revitalising cultural identity without acknowledgement of the deteriorated material conditions of the Saami people at the order of the Norwegian government.

 Some oppression by the Norwegian government on Saami would continue into the 1980s with the Alta Controversy (Sand, 2021)  which is credited for the eventual creation of a Saami Parliament, based on the principle that Norwegian parliamentary imposition must be opposed by a collective force (Borderstad, 2022). This was established in 1989, with the ratification of ILO 169 meaning that the Saami was recognised across all Scandinavian nations as an indigenous group, allowing special provisions to ensure the continuation of its language and practises. Examples include the Sami Language Act which came into effect in 1992 (Bucken-Knapp, 2003), which centred Saami speakers having the right to use the language with local government officials and receive official responses in their chosen language. Further efforts in language revitalisation include the creation of Saami language media like TV-Odassat, a fifteen-minute television programme that has been broadcast since 2001 (Pietikäinen, 2008, pp.24-25). The revitalisation of Northern Saami can be attributed to the Norwegian government wanting to ratify their forced assimilation policies of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, focusing on the language and cultural implications of their policies, but it is by Saami Parliamentary policies that Northern Saami is able to have economic and social incentives through the establishment of the Language act and media.

Most recent data shows that there are 15,000 speakers of Northern Saami in Norway, the largest of all Scandinavian countries, but is still considered an endangered language, meaning more work needs to be done to protect and continue the regular use of the language.

Reference List:

Bucken-Knapp, G. (2003) ‘The Shifting Fate of Sami Languages in Norway’, in Elites, Language, and the Politics of Identity. Albany: State University of New York Press , pp. 99–124.

Grete Broderstad, E. (2022) ‘Sámi education between law and politics – the sámi-norwegian context’, Indigenising Education and Citizenship, pp. 53–73. doi:10.18261/9788215053417-2022-04.

Hermansen, N. and Olsen, K. (2020) ‘Learning the Sámi language outside of the Sámi core area in Norway’, Acta Borealia, 37(1–2), pp. 63–77. doi: 10.1080/08003831.2020.1751410.

Pietikäinen, S. (2008) ‘Sami in the Media: Questions of Language Vitality and Cultural Hybridisation’, Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 3(1), pp. 22–35. doi: 10.1080/17447140802153519.

Sand, Stine Agnete (2022), ‘“Call the Norwegian embassy!” The Alta conflict, Indigenous narrative and political change in the activist films The Taking of Sámiland and Let the River Live’, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, 12(1), pp. 3– 4, https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_000XX_XX.

In the northernmost regions of Western Europe, where reindeer herding and fishing are the common livelihoods, there is a minority language of an indigenous group named Saami. The Saami language has over nine regional dialects and is spoken mainly in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. We will be focusing on the largest population of Saami speakers: those who speak the Northern dialect in Norway.

Two key factors contributed to Northern Saami language being minoritized in Norway. The first is social exclusion, where Saami, its language and its speakers, did not inspire or adhere to Norway’s new domestic policy of National Romanticism after the country’s departure from Danish rule in 1814 (Trigg-Hauger, 2015). Within this Romanticisation, there was a schematisation of the North and South, as stated by Leerssen (2009, quoted in Stouggard-Nielsen, 2020, p.166)  the North was considered ‘frugal and cerebral,’ and the South was dubbed ‘sensual and opulent.’ This informed attitudes towards Northern Sami, with evidence of second level language shift shown by the 1882 census (Thorvaldsen, 2001), where the Saami people surveyed in the available towns were at least bilingual (Norwegian and Saami) or trilingual (Finnish, Norwegian and Saami). Relations across borders and languages were not in accordance with Norway’s desire for unity and would lead to eventual legislative changes continuing from late-19th century onward. In 1898, the Norwegian government revised its School Law meaning that Saami was no longer able to be spoken within school settings (Bucken-Knapp, 2003, p.105). The most egregious of efforts for forced assimilation was the Land Act of 1902 which asserted that land was only to be sold to Norwegian citizens, namely those who ‘[use] the Norwegian language for their everyday tongue,’ (Trigg-Hauger, 2015, pp.9-10) stripping Sami people of their livelihoods and homes. It is by these factors that Northern Sami language was minoritized in Norway, the desire for a distinct cultural identity encouraged an exclusion of all that did not adhere to this ‘romantic’ ideology. As a result, legislative measures were able to be administered with little objection and Saami speakers had little opportunity or incentive to speak their language meaning what was once social objection became a legal offence.

Reference List:

Bakró-Nagy, M., Laakso J., and Skribnik, E. (2022) “North Saami.” Aikio, Ante, and Jussi Ylikoski, The Oxford Guide to the Uralic Languages, pp.147-177.

Bucken-Knapp, G. (2003) ‘The Shifting Fate of Sami Languages in Norway’, in Elites, Language, and the Politics of Identity. Albany: State University of New York Press , pp. 99–124.

Stouggard-Nielsen, J. (2020), ‘Nordic Nature: From Romantic Nationalism to the Anthropocene’ in A. Lindskog (ed.), Introduction to Nordic Cultures, London: UCL Press, pp. 165- 180

Thorvaldsen, G. (2001), ‘Norway- The Historical Data Centre’ in L.Y Dillon (ed.), Handbook of International Historical Microdata for Population Research, Minnesota: Minnesota Population Centre, pp.179-206..

Trigg-Hauger, I. (2015), ‘Changing existences in Norway, 1855 to 1914: Sami and Reisende Identities Post-National Romanticism’,  University of Oslo, pp.2-18.

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