Sámi Culture & Beliefs

The Sámi are an Indigenous people whose homeland, Sápmi, stretches across northern

Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. Historical and archaeological

evidence demonstrates that Sámi communities have long inhabited the same regions where many of their settlements remain today [1]. Currently, the Sámi population is estimated at around 50,000 – 60,000 in Norway, 20,000 in Sweden, 8,000 in Finland, and 2,000 in Russia [2].

Within this population are several distinct subgroups, each with its own language and cultural traditions. However, the intense colonization that accelerated in the mid-19th century led to widespread cultural loss, including the erosion of Sámi languages, which many no longer speak as their mother tongue [3]. The Sámi were granted official designation as Indigenous peoples in Norway, where my family is from and still live, in 1990 through the ratification of ILO Convention 169 [4].

As a Sámi-descended North American woman, I am exploring how recreating and performing ritual influenced by Sámi spiritual practices can help other Sámi descended women reclaim their cultural and spiritual heritage.

The Sámi parliament was established the year prior, in 1989, and has worked to guarantee equal rights to Sámi peoples since that time. While many Sámi peoples live in major cities today, many families or communities (siidas), continue their traditional livelihoods of reindeer herding, fishing, hunting, and crafting [5].

The continuation of these traditional livelihoods is often impeded, however, as they require

access to ancestral lands, enough space for reindeer grazing and migration, and access to

waterways that are continuously contested by the colonial nation-states [6]. This infringement upon the Sámi’s right to exist upon their lands is not new, however, and is reflective of a colonial past that stretches into the future and continues to touch even those of us living in diaspora.

Beginning in the late 1800s, Norwegian and Swedish authorities implemented harsh

assimilation policies designed to “civilize” the Sámi. These measures targeted nearly every

aspect of Sámi life: banning traditional religious practices, placing children in boarding schools that erased Sámi language and history, restricting land ownership to those who abandoned Sámi names, and imposing patriarchal laws that diminished women’s roles in their communities [7]. Borders were closed to siidas, preventing families from following reindeer migrations and seasonal cycles. Over time, these policies led to forced relocations, the fragmentation of families, and the permanent severing of many Sámi people from their ancestral lands and loved ones [8].

Culture, language, connection to the land, and spiritual beliefs and practices were

demonized and likened to devil-worship [9]. Soon, it became taboo to speak of these practices and, further still, to identify oneself as Sámi. [10] For many, it became easier to ‘pass’ as Norwegian or Swedish, for example, to avoid racism, persecution, and loss of livelihood. Sacred practices and rituals became lost, spirituality became hidden, and it would take many years before younger generations would step into the activist spotlights with the hopes of reclaiming this loss [11].

The word causes cultural vibrations that bring up from the depth of one's soul of finally being able to recognize the way back home.

As Kaarina Kailo argues, “we are now aware that one of the colonial techniques for destroying women’s and native peoples’ own expressions of spirituality and power – their cultural property – has been to destroy their symbols, their language, and/or to rename their realities by recasting their sacred objects or deities in negative terms. Material dispossession and discursive denigration thus go hand in hand.” [12]

It is no wonder that by the time my grandfather and his family emigrated to the United States in 1951, they solely identified as Norwegian.

Sámi in North America

The North American Sámi movement was – and is – a movement towards cultural recovery and continuity of Sámi heritage in the United States and Canada. According to the Sámi

Cultural Center of North America, the early 1990s saw the spark of a movement to reclaim Sámi identity in North America in which “Sámi began to find each other and learn more about their history and culture and to reconnect with relatives in Sápmi. The movement was inspired by two publications: Báiki: the International Sami Journal, that has been publishing since 1991, and Árran, a newsletter that began in 1996.”[13]

The word Báiki speaks to the heart of the North American Sámi movement. It means the home you always bring along. [14] Báiki’s first publication in 1991 sparked a re-awakening among Sámi-descended North Americans and has subsequently led to a wide range of cultural activities.

Thanks to Báiki’s founder, Faith Fjeld, Sámi descendants across North America began to remember and reclaim their culture and heritage. Siidas, festivals, exhibitions, museum activity, campouts, language and traditional handicraft courses, and more all began to develop and flourish. Indeed, “the Sámi North American community has found many creative, positive ways to connect, share, and learn together and undoubtedly will continue to do so in the future.” [15] This level of community organizing encompasses the spirit of báiki as Sámi descendants created their home wherever they went.

Harald Gáski, a Sámi activist and writer, echoes this feeling that many Sámi descendants

were (and still are) chasing with his words written in Báiki’s first publication: I suppose that a Sámi word can create in the minds of Sámi Americans the feeling of a long-lost language and a culture that was never allowed to emerge to the surface. The word causes cultural vibrations that bring up from the depth of one's soul of finally being able to recognize the way back home. No more thoughts of being lost or of not really belonging anywhere. Knowing the way one has walked and, if necessary, the possibility and capability of finding one's way back brings the pieces back to a whole. [16]

The movement and its subsequent cultural creations were just one step towards the wholeness Gáski spoke of for Sámi descendants.

what do the Sámi believe?

This is a difficult question to answer succinctly. It’s impossible to tell you what every

single person of any given culture believes. However, we can say that–traditionally–a Sámi

belief system centered around what we now call shamanism, animism, and a pluriversal

worldview. Raedieaehtjie is the primordial Father. Beaivi is the Sun Goddess –or the Sun

itself—, Máttaráhkká is the Great Mother Goddess or Ancestress and her three daughters are Sáráhkká, Uksáhkká, and Juoksáhkká. There are many other deities and being, of course, and many Sami activist, scholars, and community members are actively working to recover and reclaim lost and suppressed knowledge.

Like any society, there are a multitude of religious, spiritual, and non-religious beliefs–from

Christianity, Laestadianism, Judaism, and more! The list goes on. For myself, however,

recovering pre-colonial Sámi spirituality and practices is of great importance. Hence, why I am conducting my present work.

My Sámi Ancestress

As a Sámi-descended North American woman, I am exploring how recreating and performing ritual influenced by Sámi spiritual practices can help other Sámi descended women reclaim their cultural and spiritual heritage. Part of this work involves learning about, talking about, and teaching about Sámi myths, folktales, spiritualities, cultural and political movements, and more.

“We grow once we are buried,

not erased, as long as you will allow being buried

to mean that you embrace being raised as a tree.

You honeymoon with the sky. My family tree

is buried. I am digging it up.” [17] – Ron Riekki

Freia Serafina Titland will be presenting a Sámi myth, The Daughter of the Moon and the Son of the Sun this Tuesday, May 19th through ISM's Professional Speaker Series. To learn more and to register Visit:

BIO: Freia Serafina Titland is an award-winning filmmaker and artist with a passion for rituals, storytelling, and spiritual reclamation. She is a PhD candidate in Women's Spirituality, an adjunct professor of philosophy, and the director of both Lumina: a women's spirituality institute and the Divine Feminine Film Festival in NYC. Freia leads workshops on myth, women's HERstories, and more.

WORKS CITED

1 Faith Fjeld, “Who We Are: Sapmi,” in Báiki: the International Sami Journal (1991), 1.

2 Tove Mentsen Ness and Munkejord, Mai Camilla, “All I expect is that they accept I am a Sámi”: an analysis of

experiences of healthcare encounters and expectations for future care services among older South Sámi in Norway,”

in the Internation Journal of Circumpolar Health (2022): Vol. 81, 2.

3 Mentsen, Munkejord, “All I expect,” 2.

4 Mentsen, Munkejord, “All I expect,” 1.

5 Håvald Hansen, “Fishing Traditions on the Deatnu (Tana) River,” in RCC Perspectives, No. 4, Salmon Cultures:

Salmon Cultures Indigenous Peoples and the Aquaculture Industry (2012), pp. 22-27.

6 Hansen,”Fishing Traditions on the Deatnu River,” 22.

7 Adriana Margareta Dancus, “Sami Identity Across Generations,” in Journal of Critical Mixed-Race Studies: Mixed

Race in Nordic Europe (2022), 282.

8 Elin Anna Labba, The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow: The Forced Displacement of the Northern Sámi, translated by

Fiona Graham (2024), 22.

9 Heide, “Old Icelandic and Sámi Ancestor Mountains: A Comparison,” 34.

10 Siv Ellen Kraft, Indigenous Religion(s) in Sápmi: Reclaiming Sacred Grounds (2022), 10.

11 Gabriel, Kuhn, Liberating Sápmi: Indigenous Resistance in Europe's Far North (2020), 23.

12 Kaarina Kailo, “Gender and Ethnic Overlap/p in the Finnish Kalevala,” in Of Property and Propriety: The role of

Gender and Class in Imperialism and Nationalism (2001), 193.

13 “North American Sami Reawakening,” North American Sami Reawakening: Sami Cultural Center of North

America, accessed March 2, 2025, https://www.samiculturalcenter.org/awakening/north-american-sami-

reawakening/.

14 Faith Fjeld, “Who We Are: Sápmi,” in Báiki: the International Sami Journal (1991), 1.

15 “North American Sami Reawakening,” North American Sami Reawakening: Sami Cultural Center of North

America, accessed March 2, 2025, https://www.samiculturalcenter.org/awakening/north-american-sami-

reawakening/.

16 Harald Gáski, “Báiki: the home you always bring along” in Báiki: the International Sami Journal (1991), 1-2.

17 Ron Riekki, “My Indigenous Roots Have Been Buried,” in My Ancestors Are Reindeer Herders and I am Melting

in Extinction: Saami-American Non-Fiction, Fiction, and Poetry,