Sami flag
Just back from our “Midsommar” tour of Northern Sweden. A fascinating 3,500km trip and I learned a little more about the Sami peoples and their history. I had not known how coercive and oppressive it had once been in Sweden when the Sami religion and language(s) were banned. There are some 80,000 Samis today ranging across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
….. In 1913-1920, the Swedish race-segregation politic created a race biological institute that collected research material from living people, graves, and sterilized Sami women. ……
The strongest pressure took place from around 1900 to 1940, when Norway invested considerable money and effort to wipe out Sami culture. Notably, anyone who wanted to buy or lease state lands for agriculture in Finnmark had to prove knowledge of the Norwegian language and had to register with a Norwegian name. This and similar actions in Scandinavian countries, e.g., the sterilization of Sami women by Swedish authorities, are debated to be an act of ethnic cleansing, and perhaps a genocide.
We did not have too much rain but it was never very warm. Reindeer had calved (a little late this year) and the Sami were busy marking the new calves. While we saw many reindeer we only saw one moose (a large male) munching by the roadside but we were travelling too fast to get any good pictures. Midsommar itself was a very traditional Swedish experience in Sundborn.
Raising the Midsommar pole in Sundborn June 2012
June has been a cool month throughout Sweden (the coldest June in 92 years):
Temperatures have remained below average for the month, at just 13.3 degrees Celsius, compared with the usual 15.2 degrees, SMHI said.
For the month of June, Stockholm usually has an average of 5.3 days with temperatures above 25 degrees, but this year the high for the month was just 21.6 degrees.
That is only the second time since 1920 that the temperature has failed to hit 25 degrees in June in Sweden.
Tags: Sami, Sami peoples, Sundborn, Sweden
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