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.