Meeting the Swedish Sámi: A Lost Nomadic World, Timeless Wisdom
Twenty hours later, my feet finally touched down, sinking into the deep snow of Lapland, northern Sweden. It was seven in the morning, and the skies above Jokkmokk had yet to fully brighten, yet the glare reflecting off the surrounding white expanse was already sufficient to make out the silhouettes of the nearby trees.
The landscape lay in stillness, the only break in the quiet a modest stir of activity at the small railway station, sparked by our train’s arrival. Most of the passengers were headed to Jokkmokk for the 418th Sámi Market.
The Sámi are an indigenous people who inhabit the northern reaches of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Their way of life has been profoundly shaped by the geography of the Arctic. For millennia, nomadic reindeer herding has been their means of adapting to the unforgiving climate and its seasonal shifts. Today, whilst the majority have transitioned to a settled lifestyle, those historical nomadic traditions continue to play a vital role in shaping their culture and identity.
A deep blue cap adorned with the distinctive coloured stripes of Sámi tradition—waiting for me at the station was John, a Sámi friend of my undergraduate professor. Against the backdrop of his hat, his face appeared as pale as snow. John approached with a wave, his feet clad in reindeer-hide shoes. He was slight of build, yet his lively vigour showed no sign of his seventy years. I broke into a jog to meet him and shake his hand.
Before setting off to his home, John wanted to show me the area’s first notable sight. He walked five metres away, pointed to a stark white board before us and said, “Look! Here’s our visitor information board.”
The cold was so biting that a sheet of ice had completely glazed over the board, obscuring everything. Still, his peculiar sense of humour brought a touch of warmth to the minus-twenty-degree chill.
I. The Reopened Sámi Market
“You must return in the summer! We’ll go fishing by the mountain lakes and hunt moose!” He looked at me, his eyes alight with anticipation for the warmer months.
After reaching John’s cabin, dropping off our luggage, and greeting his girlfriend Lisabeth, we headed straight for the market. The Jokkmokk Market begins on the first Thursday of February each year and lasts for three days; today was the opening day.
Aside from the trading, more than sixty cultural and artistic events centred on Sami heritage take place simultaneously. It is said that this market tradition, unbroken for over four centuries, was held online for only the two years of the pandemic. This year marks the first return to an in-person market since the outbreak.
John told me that the fair was not originally established for trade or cultural exchange. Rather, it was set up by the Swedish crown to strengthen control over the northern population. In the early 17th century, the Swedish monarchy established permanent markets near Sámi winter settlements across Sámi territories in Lapland on both sides of the Gulf of Bothnia. These were used for registering inhabitants, collecting taxes, holding court, and conducting missionary work. More than four centuries on, this market has become a vital hub for Sámi cultural exchange.
I followed behind John as he wove through the crowd at the fair, spotting Sámi youths in traditional dress all around. John would periodically stop to exchange greetings, as though he knew everyone in sight. It felt remarkably like walking through a rural market in my hometown in Anhui with my parents, where you’d inevitably run into relatives at every turn. Sure enough, they were all his cousins—some thirty of them in total—hailing from every corner of Lapland.
Some were selling handcrafted Sámi silver jewellery at the market; others were trading dried reindeer and moose meat from their own hunts. A few worked in writing, just like John. Some were employed by television stations promoting Sámi culture, while others were renowned musicians specialising in Jojk, the traditional Sámi vocal style. Even the reindeer train that had been parading through the market for decades was run by his cousin’s family, who worked as reindeer herders… I have to admit, at that moment, I truly felt the power of cousins.
It is easy to see from their professions that a people once defined by a nomadic reindeer-herding lifestyle have now woven themselves into every sector of Swedish society. According to estimates, of the 80,000 to 100,000 Sámi people living today, only 10 per cent still work in reindeer-related occupations. Without traditional dress, it would be nearly impossible for a passerby to tell who is Sámi and who is Swedish.
II. Fishing and Hunting: The Sami Culinary Heritage
Serving meat with jam is commonplace in Sweden. I wasn’t keen on it at first, but I soon grew accustomed to it. The bright, sweet-and-tart preserve not only balances the richness of the meat but also cuts through any gamey flavour, creating a wonderfully harmonious experience.
The moose we ate was hunted and brought back by John himself from the mountains last year; it weighed over three hundred kilograms. Five hundred years ago, the Sami people of Jokkmokk still made their living through hunting, fishing and foraging. Because of the stark seasonal changes, they lived a semi-nomadic life, moving to follow food sources at the right time and place. Later, southern agricultural expansion levelled vast swathes of forest, taking the Sami’s land. Coupled with government taxation, this pushed them towards reindeer nomadism, as it offered a better way to earn the income needed to pay their taxes.
The Sami once migrated alongside the reindeer herds, but most herders now maintain mountain settlements. Traditional transport like skis has long been replaced by snowmobiles, all-wheel-drive vehicles and helicopters, and the reindeer industry has become highly modernised. Although the moose we ate was wild, wild reindeer disappeared from Sweden in the early twentieth century. Today, Swedish herders manage a herd of around 260,000 domesticated reindeer, of which approximately 50,000 are slaughtered annually for meat, hides and craft materials.
Sweden is also home to the densest moose populations in the world. In Lapland, you can occasionally spot them wandering through the forests beside the roads. During the autumn hunting season, 250,000 licensed Swedish hunters head into the woods to harvest nearly 100,000 young moose. By spring, over 100,000 calves are born. Driving here demands extreme caution; you definitely do not want to cross paths with a four- or five-hundred-kilogram adult moose.
The following evening, John presented another wonderful dish at dinner: whitefish caught near Luleå. John’s greatest passion is fish; he loves both catching and eating them, a habit likely shaped by growing up by the river.
In Norrbotten County, where Jokkmokk is located, there are over 20,000 lakes stretching to thousands of kilometres in total length. The scattered waterways are home to brown trout and grayling; salmon can even be caught in the upland areas; while perch, pike and whitefish are the most common catches in the lowlands.
Today’s Sami no longer rely on fishing for their livelihood, yet the tradition remains deeply ingrained in some communities. For them, it also serves as a vital indicator of water quality and environmental health.
He seems more inclined to stick to traditional ways of eating, or perhaps his childhood experiences make him tread carefully when the subject of north-south integration comes up.
III. A Past Reluctant to Recall
On the first night, fifteen of us slept in a single large room. Not one of us managed to sleep; waves of weeping filled the space. I found myself crying, longing for the reindeer-hide mattress from the night before—it had been so much warmer. Naturally, I missed my family, too. But dwelling on it changes nothing. Those stolen nine years of childhood can never be recovered; they remain a shadow over my life to this day.”
He falls silent for a long while, his gaze uncertain whether it is fixed on the road ahead or the years behind. “Besides, I refuse to dwell in victimhood. Life doesn’t move forward if you cling to that mindset.”
Lisabeth joined our conversation, too, speaking of her grandmother.
She said the first time she saw a photograph of her grandmother was at an exhibition in Stockholm. As depicted in the film *Sami Blood*, the Sami people were once subjected to anthropological research by European nations including Sweden. At boarding schools, children were ordered to strip completely, line up, and undergo measurements and pose for photographs under the direction of researchers.
Lisabeth’s grandmother was among them. Yet rather than resenting it, she brushes it off with wry humour: “I just thought to myself, what are the odds of seeing my grandmother here? It’s rather strange…”
IV. Land and Resource Conflicts
Beyond racial discrimination, conflicts over land and resources have long persisted between the Sami and the Swedish government.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Swedish government seized vast tracts of land used by the Sami for grazing and hunting, repurposing it for agriculture. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Sweden’s forestry and mining industries expanded into Sami territories. These industrial activities frequently disregarded Sami needs and traditional land-use practices, devastating numerous forests and lakes.
In the last century, the Swedish government introduced regulations and policies aimed at controlling Sami reindeer herding, while simultaneously beginning to construct a series of hydroelectric dams on Sami land. One of these dams sits right at John’s doorstep.
This past January, a Swedish state-owned mining company discovered a massive rare earth deposit in Kiruna, near Jokkmokk, a critical component for new energy technologies such as electric vehicle batteries and wind turbines.
While most Europeans are celebrating the promise of a green transition, the local Sami are growing increasingly anxious, as mining operations will inevitably disrupt the traditional migration routes of reindeer. Furthermore, many Sami are deeply concerned about the potential pollution of local water sources by the mine.
Together, these historical and contemporary forces have profoundly and permanently shaped Sami life, cementing a deep sense of marginalisation and exclusion, while inflicting irreversible damage on the natural environment. Compounded by global warming, ecologically fragile regions such as Jokkmokk are growing increasingly precarious.
Lisabeth’s home village sits atop a vast expanse of permafrost. Over recent years, locals have noticed lakes within the permafrost zone continuously bubbling with methane and carbon dioxide—gases that intensify the greenhouse effect. Where climate change once felt like a distant concern to the community, it is now unfolding right before their eyes.
Unlike some modern Swedes who view nature as a pristine haven for sensory pleasure or a resource pool for industrial development, the Sámi and many other Indigenous peoples believe that nature’s ideal state is balance, and this balance is respected when humans engage with and utilise nature with restraint.
In recent years, Sámi Parliaments across various regions have formed alliances with environmental organisations and Indigenous communities to protest government land and resource development policies. Their actions include taking mining and logging companies to court to halt environmental degradation; opposing the sacrifice of their livelihoods in the name of the so-called green transition; and urging the government to ground land-use decisions in Sámi traditional ecological knowledge.
At the same time, the Sámi are actively employing media and artistic expression to communicate the importance of Indigenous culture and environmental conservation to the public.
V. Conclusion
The paradox of our industrialised path to sustainability reminds us that it is time to learn from the traditional ecological wisdom of indigenous peoples. Although the nomadic cultures of the past have long since faded, this worldview—advocating respect and restraint—can still point the way forward for us as we navigate today’s environmental and climate crises.
https://sweden.se/life/people/sami-in-sweden
https://www.laits.utexas.edu/sami/diehtu/siida/hunting/jonsa.htm
Unless otherwise stated, all images are provided by the author.
Editor: Ze’en