Unrest has been smouldering in the Nordic countries for years over the rights of the region’s oldest peoples. Let us begin with Sweden: the conflict between Sami communities and the Swedish state forestry giant Sveaskog is one of the sharpest present-day legal and environmental battles in the Nordic countries. The Sami are fighting Sveaskog in the courts using the legal principle of “since time immemorial” (urminnes hävd) in order to stop clear-cut logging and protect reindeer pastures.
The litigation with Sveaskog
Sveaskog is the largest forest owner in Sweden and manages enormous areas in traditional Sami territories in the north of the country. The legal and practical conflicts amount to a direct collision of rights. Swedish law gives Sveaskog the right to manage state forests, while Sweden’s Reindeer Husbandry Act guarantees Sami communities the right to graze reindeer. The clear-cuts carried out in this Sami area destroy old forests and the tree lichens that are the reindeer’s only food in winter.
Historically Sveaskog was obliged only to consult the Sami before logging, and the company often ignored Sami objections, because the Sami had no right of veto. Sami communities therefore increasingly bring claims in court or stage physical protests, demanding that felling be cancelled altogether. The position of Sami communities in the courts improved significantly after the historic Girjas judgment, which changed the country’s case law in favour of indigenous rights.
A step back into history
Nordic relations with the Sami have, since the 19th century, passed through aggressive colonisation, the seizure of resources and forced assimilation.
In Sweden, during the expansion of the 19th century, the state tightened its control over the northern territories, promoting agriculture and logging. Sami land was declared state property. A policy was introduced whereby only active reindeer herders in official communities were legally recognised as Sami. That stripped the rights from those who lived by fishing or crafts. Sami children were sent to boarding schools where they were forbidden to speak their native language.
In Norway, from the end of the 19th century right up to the end of the Second World War, the state pursued an aggressive assimilation policy known as “Norwegianisation”, or Fornorsking. The Sami language was strictly forbidden in schools and in public. In order to buy or keep land, the Sami had to adopt Norwegian surnames and prove that they spoke only Norwegian in daily life.
In Finland, Sami territories were in a similar way sometimes subordinated to the economic interests of the state forestry company Metsähallitus. Although the Sami were later granted cultural autonomy in Finland, their real power to decide on the use of state forests and land historically often remained subordinate to the state’s financial interests and to timber extraction.
A chain of conflicts
Both in earlier times and in recent years several loud conflicts have flared up and drawn international attention.
The Girjas court case, running from 2009 all the way to 2020, became the greatest legal victory in Sami history. The Girjas Sami community sued the Swedish state for the right to control hunting and fishing in its territory. Sweden’s Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Sami, recognising that their rights have existed “since time immemorial” and that the state’s later laws cannot simply annul them.
The Luokta-Mávas conflict with Sveaskog broke out when the forestry company planned clear-cuts over roughly 700 hectares of ancient forest that the community used for grazing. It caused an international scandal and wide protests by defenders of nature. Elsewhere in Sweden’s Sápmi territory the Gállok iron ore mine project provoked enormous resistance. The government granted a licence to a company with British capital, despite the fact that the mine physically “cuts through” and, in effect, destroys the historic migration routes of the reindeer belonging to the Sami.
In Norway the loudest conflict historically was the Alta dispute in the 1970s and 1980s, that is, mass protests against the building of a hydroelectric dam on the Alta river. Although the dam was built in the end, the conflict awakened Sami political activism and led directly to the creation of Norway’s Sami Parliament. In our own time the Fosen wind farm scandal gained similar resonance, when Norway built Europe’s largest onshore wind farm on Sami grazing land. Norway’s Supreme Court ruled that the project violates Sami human rights, provoking prolonged protests in Oslo until the state agreed to financial compensation.
What is happening now?
Many consider that the greatest threat to Sami territories today is so-called green colonialism. In the fight against climate change the Nordic countries are building wind farms on a mass scale, installing fields of solar panels and opening new mines for the critical minerals needed to make batteries and electric cars. All these industrial projects require the expropriation of precisely the traditional Sami lands.
In Sweden, after the Girjas victory, other Sami communities too are suing the state in order to take over hunting and fishing rights in their territories. That has created great tension in society, with growing hostility towards the Sami and threats from local Swedish hunters as well. The Swedish state still refuses to ratify International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 169 on indigenous rights, which would give the Sami greater legal protection.
In Norway legal disputes run even across national borders. The European Court of Human Rights put an end to a 50-year border dispute in the so-called Saarivuoma case, rejecting a Swedish Sami community’s claim against Norway for the right to use historic summer pastures on the Norwegian side freely. After the Fosen scandal the Norwegian government is now trying to find a legal balance between developing wind energy and respecting indigenous rights, in order to avoid new litigation.
In Finland the situation sharpened when the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) took a legal decision in favour of Finland’s Sami. The international committee recognised that the Finnish state’s forest management practice and timber extraction directly threaten the survival of Sami culture and of the traditional way of life. That decision is now forcing the Finnish government and the company Metsähallitus to review their logging policy in the northern regions of the country in legal terms.
The legal precedent: Girjas
The Girjas Sami community’s litigation against the Swedish state lasted more than ten years and ended with a historic Supreme Court judgment in 2020. The case fundamentally changed the understanding of indigenous rights in the Swedish legal system.
At the root of the conflict was a 1993 decision of the Swedish parliament which stripped Sami communities of the exclusive right to regulate hunting and fishing on their traditional lands above the so-called “cultivation limit”, odlingsgränsen. State institutions began selling hunting and fishing permits to anyone interested. The Girjas community argued that such a step violates their historic rights, since the Sami had managed this land for centuries before the Swedish state came into being.
In court, Sami lawyers and historians used the legal concept mentioned above, “since time immemorial”, urminnes hävd. They proved that the Sami had used this territory continuously and undisturbed long before the 17th century. The Swedish state, for its part, defended the position that the land legally belongs to the state and that it therefore has the right to dispose of the resources as it sees fit.
The Supreme Court judgment and its consequences
Sweden’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favour of the Girjas community. The court recognised that the Sami have the exclusive right to manage hunting and fishing in this territory and that the state has no right to issue permits without their consent.
The judgment set off an enormous chain reaction, because it created a precedent for other communities. The Girjas victory opened the way for dozens of other Sami communities to claim the same rights through the courts. It should be stressed that the decision also provoked a sharp counter-reaction from local Swedish hunters and anglers, who lost free access to the forests. It even set off a wave of racism on social networks and attacks on reindeer herds. To head off hundreds of new court cases, the Swedish government set up a special commission of inquiry tasked with reviewing all the legislation and deciding how hunting and fishing rights can lawfully be transferred to the Sami in other regions as well.
The Gállok, or Kallak, conflict: the fight against mining
Gállok (in Swedish Kallak) is an area not far from the town of Jokkmokk in northern Sweden, where rich deposits of iron ore have been discovered. The conflict has become a symbol of the collision between industrial interests and indigenous peoples’ rights to their own environment.
The British company Beowulf Mining and its local subsidiary Jokkmokk Iron Mines spent years trying to obtain a licence to create an open-cast iron ore mine in this territory. The Sami communities Jåhkågasska tjiellde and Sirges objected categorically. Gállok lies right in the middle of the two communities’ winter pastures and the migration route the reindeer use to move between the mountains and the forests. Building the mine and the infrastructure it needs, roads and power lines, would physically cut these territories in half.
The conflict reached its climax in 2013, when activists, Sami and defenders of nature from all over the world set up protest camps and physically blocked the company’s machinery from reaching the site to drill samples. The police removed the protesters using force, which caused wide resonance in the media.
After nearly ten years of hesitation, the Swedish government granted the company an exploration and extraction licence. The government justified the decision by the need to provide jobs in the region and to supply the European market with the iron ore needed to produce “green steel” without carbon emissions.
Sami communities and environmental organisations called the decision another act of “green colonialism”, in which climate goals are reached by sacrificing indigenous rights. The Sami immediately appealed the government’s decision to Sweden’s Supreme Administrative Court, and the court upheld it. The fight now continues through the next stages of environmental permits and technical approvals; the Sami communities have announced that they will use every legal and also physical means to prevent actual construction from starting.
The Fosen wind farm conflict in Norway
The Fosen conflict is one of the largest legal and political scandals in modern Norwegian history. It created a serious crisis in the country’s administration and radically changed investors’ attitude to renewable energy projects in indigenous territories.
The Norwegian state energy company Statkraft and its international partners built one of the largest onshore wind farm complexes in Europe, with 151 turbines, on the Fosen peninsula. The project was carried out in traditional Sami territories which local reindeer herders used for winter grazing. The Sami argued that the enormous turbines, which they consider noisy, and the infrastructure frighten the reindeer, making the territory unusable for the traditional way of life.
The litigation lasted years while the facility was already working and producing electricity. This time Norway’s Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Sami. The court recognised that the wind farm construction licences violate Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. That article protects indigenous peoples’ right to enjoy their own culture. The court declared the licences issued legally invalid.
After the judgment the Norwegian government reached an impasse and for more than 500 days took no real action. It did not want to demolish energy infrastructure worth hundreds of millions of euros that supplied the region with “green power”. That hesitation provoked mass protests in Oslo. Sami young people and environmental activists blockaded the entrances to Norwegian ministries, demanding respect for the rule of law. The crisis ended with the Norwegian prime minister apologising publicly to the Sami for the violation of human rights.
The government and the companies reached a financial settlement with the Sami communities. The Sami agreed that the turbines would not be demolished and would continue to operate until the end of their working life, around 25 years. In return they received enormous annual cash compensation, rights to additional alternative grazing territories and a guarantee that once the licence expires the land will be fully cleared and returned to the Sami.
A contradictory future
Analysing the events of recent years in Sweden, Norway and Finland, several fundamental conclusions can be drawn about relations between the Sami and the Nordic countries. Europe’s transition to climate neutrality stands in direct contradiction to indigenous rights. Nordic governments are trying to reach global climate goals, to build wind farms and open mines for iron, lithium and rare earth metals, at the expense of traditional Sami lands. The Sami are placed in a situation where the survival of their culture is sacrificed in the name of the “common good”. Sami communities have learned to use the mechanisms of national supreme courts and of international organisations, the UN and the European courts. The Girjas precedent in Sweden, the Fosen case in Norway and the UN CESCR decision in Finland prove that the courts increasingly side with indigenous peoples, recognising historic rights as taking precedence over the state’s economic interests.
The legal victories have heightened tension and ethnic polarisation at local level. Many residents of Nordic rural regions regard Sami rights as “privileges” that hold back economic development, restrict hunting and take away jobs. That produces a rise in racism and xenophobia towards the Sami.
The Fosen and Gállok cases serve as a warning to international investors. Energy and extractive companies will no longer be able to rely on state-issued licences alone. They will be forced to seek the free, prior consent of Sami communities under the FPIC principle at the very start of project planning. Otherwise the risks of litigation and losses running into billions will be too high. The Renmarkskommittén commission set up by the Swedish state will have to find a legal model for extending the Girjas judgment to the other Sami communities. That will require amendments to the Reindeer Husbandry Act and will most likely intensify the political battles in parliament. Finland will be forced to change the mandate of its state forest manager Metsähallitus in order to restrict clear-cutting in the north.
Future industrial projects in indigenous territories will no longer be approved without Sami financial participation. To avoid litigation, states and private companies will offer Sami communities the chance to become co-owners of wind farms or mines, or to receive a direct percentage of the profits, as has historically happened in Canada and Alaska.
Yet despite the gains, the Sami will continue to find themselves “under double pressure”. On one side, their way of life is directly threatened by global warming, which shows itself in unstable winters in Sami territories, layers of ice on the snow that prevent reindeer from reaching food, and generally harder grazing conditions. On the other, Sami land will continue to be threatened by projects that supposedly fight those very climate changes. This contradiction will remain the main source of conflict in the region.
About the Sami
The Sami are the only indigenous people of Northern Europe, historically inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions. The traditional Sami homeland is called Sápmi , formerly better known as Lapland, a term the Sami themselves consider derogatory. Sápmi is not a separate state but a transnational region stretching across the northern parts of four countries
In Norway it is mainly the Finnmark region. In Sweden, the northern provinces and mountain regions as far south as the town of Idre. The northern part of Lapland, the municipalities of Inari, Enontekiö and Utsjoki, belongs to Finland, and the Kola peninsula is governed by Russia.
In all, some 80,000 to 100,000 Sami live in the world. An exact figure is hard to establish, because official statistics by ethnicity are not usually collected in the Nordic countries. The largest Sami community lives in Norway, around 50,000 to 56,000 people; about 20,000 live in Sweden, some 10,000 in Finland and only 2,000 in Russia. Fewer than half of all Sami speak one of the Sami languages in daily life; there are currently 9 dialects in which the Sami converse.
A look back into history
The ancestors of the Sami arrived in the north of Europe immediately after the end of the last ice age, several thousand years ago, long before nation states were formed. Historically their way of life rested on hunting, fishing and reindeer herding. Historically the Sami lived and worked in family communities, or siida. These managed land, waters and resources collectively. From the 17th century the Scandinavian kingdoms and Russia tightened their control over the northern territories. In the 19th and 20th centuries the Sami faced aggressive state-wide assimilation policies: children were forbidden to speak their native language in boarding schools and Sami culture was marginalised. The turning point came at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s with the Alta conflict, the protests against building a hydroelectric dam on a river sacred to the Sami, which united Sami activists and forced the Nordic countries to recognise their rights.
Governance today
Today the Sami have no sovereign state of their own; their rights and culture are protected by international law and by special self-government institutions. Democratically elected Sami parliaments, Sámediggi, have operated in Norway since 1989, in Sweden since 1993 and in Finland since 1996. They have consultative and decision-making powers in matters affecting Sami language, culture, education and land rights. The Sami also have a parliamentary council, an institution which since 2000 has coordinated cooperation between the Sami parliaments of the three countries and which also includes representatives of Russia’s Sami. The Saami Council, or Sámi Ráđđi, was founded as long ago as 1956; it is a non-governmental transnational organisation representing Sami interests in all four countries and in international forums such as the Arctic Council.
The best-known Sami today
Although this northern people is very small, figures of Sami origin have gained international recognition in culture, music and public life.
The world-famous Norwegian Sami musician Mari Boine modernised the traditional Sami way of singing, the joik, combining it with jazz, rock and folk music. She is one of the most striking campaigners for Sami rights.
Fred Buljo is a musician and rapper who represented Norway at the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest as part of the group KEiiNO, introducing millions of viewers to joiking and to the Northern Sami language.
A famous representative of the Sami people is the film director Nils Gaup, whose 1987 film “Ofelaš” (Pathfinder) was the first feature film in the Sami language and was nominated for an Oscar as best foreign film. His son Mikkel Gaup is a well-known Sami actor who has also appeared in Lars von Trier’s film “Breaking the Waves”.
Sofia Jannok is a popular Swedish Sami singer, writer and activist who campaigns actively against climate change and the impact of mining on Sami reindeer pastures. Morten Gamst Pedersen is a well-known Norwegian footballer who played for many years in the English Premier League for Blackburn Rovers and for the Norwegian national team. He has Sami roots on both sides of his family. In Sweden, meanwhile, a very popular television presenter of Sami origin is Renée Nyberg.
Sami culture and their parliaments also inspired the Disney corporation in building the plot of the animated film “Frozen II” (Frozen II) around the Northuldra people. Sami representatives advised the film-makers extensively in order to ensure a respectful and accurate portrayal of the culture.
Sources: Nordic information sites, Greenpeace International and Sápmi information materials