[Im reading this article which refers to the Sami as being an indigenous people of Europe.](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sami) so if the Sami are indigenous, where are the non-Sami indigenous to?
[Im reading this article which refers to the Sami as being an indigenous people of Europe.](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sami) so if the Sami are indigenous, where are the non-Sami indigenous to?
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Sami and swedish people are both indigenous to sweden
I often think about this and I think the discussion is a bit stupid. My family may very well be descended from vikings and even further back than that but because im from southern sweden im not considered native? I guess everyone south of dalälven is danish? Or german? …. stupid…
The Swedes pushed up from what is today Germany when the ice withdrew from the last ice age and the sami pushed in from what is today Russia/Finland both groups are Indigenous to Sweden.
Both are indigenous. The reason they consider the sami “extra indigenous” is because the Swedish state was created “over their heads” (as in, the hegemonical power of the swedes just took sway over their part of the country, them willing or no).
Goths and swedes are indigenous to southern half of sweden, and the sami are indigenous to the northern half.
The Sami people are indigenous to northern Scandinavia, whereas the kingdom of Sweden was created by peoples indigenous to other parts of what became the country Sweden.
As many have all ready pointed out – the Swedes are as- or *arguably more* indigenous to Sweden since the northern part of present-day Sweden (i.e. where the Sami people resides) was incorporated in the 1500s. The nation state of Sweden grew from the historic lands of the Sveas and Goths – where only ever the ancestors of present-days Swedes lived.
Referring to Sami people as “the indigenous people of Sweden” is kind of like referring to the aboriginals of Australia as the indigenous people of England (due to Australia being colonized and incorporated into the British realm).
In today’s political climate, the Swedish people *does not exist*, due to this, the Sami have been given the title of “**the** indigenous people of Sweden”.
Swedes moved north with the ice melting 10 000 years ago. The samis arrived from east around the time of the birth of Christ. They are indigenous in the sense that Sweden as a state was founded after their arrival but ethnic swedes were in what today is Sweden way before the samis.
Sami people are only indigenous to the northern half of Sweden – and in particular to the north Swedish inland. In the coastal areas of northern Sweden, Finns are indigenous as well.
In the southern half of Sweden, the indigenous populations are a mix various North Germanic peoples.
Central Sweden around the lake Mälaren is the home of the original ethnic Swedes.
Further south around the lakes Vänern and Vättern is the home of the Geats and the Goths, with the Gutes on the island of Gotland and Norwegians along the coast in Bohuslän.
In Scania furthest to the south, the indigenous population is a mix of Danes, Heruli and Langobards.
Nowadays though, all of these once very different North Germanic ethnic groups have more or less been fully culturally amalgamated under the name of “Swedes” and are seen as a single cohesive majority population, while only the Sami and the Finns have been able to thoroughly hang on to their own separate culture and identity as minorities.
Classifying only the Sami and not the North Germanic people as indigenous is simply a way of protecting them from losing their separate identity and culture as well.
I think it also has to do with keeping traditions and culture from back then to this day.
The Sami people have been colonized to an extent which makes the indigenous label very fitting, regardless of “who came first”.
* Their religion has been erased from history
* Their languages (yes there are several) were “criminalized” for many years. Children would be abducted to “schools” where they would be beat and abused for speaking the only languages they know. Today many of these are almost extinct.
* Their land was simply taken as property of the state.
* Forced relocation.
* Their way of life has been, to a large extent, destroyed from the state exploitation of natural resources.
* Heavy racism, including a dark chapter of Swedish history when they were the subjects of [state sanctioned nazis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Institute_for_Racial_Biology).
* Human remains (skeletons) being robbed for “research” and put in museums
So even tough the Sami people weren’t “first” to what we today call Sweden their history very much mirrors the experiences of indigenous people everywhere. Many Sami probably find it easier to relate to the indigenous people of Brazil or Canada rather than Stockholm city boys.
Sweden is a peninsula consisting of several different indigenous people, and the SAMI are not limited to the geographical borders of Sweden.
Other people lived in the south of Sweden, norway and Denmark, that are not SAMI, they migrated across the ice during the ice age.
Sweden with its current borders did not exist, so it yields more results if you search for people of the scandinavian peninsula.
https://sciencenordic.com/archaeology-forskningno-society–culture/first-scandinavians-came-from-north-and-south/1453083
What people refer to as “indigenous Swedes” is the result of several big waves of immigration. First there were different groups of hunters and gatherers who entered Scandinavia about 15,000 years ago, then came the farming culture about 6,000 years ago, and then the Yamnaya culture brought horses and wheels about 5,000 years ago. Genetically, modern Swedes are mostly related to the Yamnaya people. We have very little in common with the original dark-skinned hunters.