Hunting and Fishing in Sami Culture
Discusses the traditional hunting and fishing techniques of Sami peoples.
Wild Reindeer in Sami History
The Sami fully domesticated reindeer in the 16th century. Before this shift, families relied on hunting and fishing for survival. Their main quarry were the wild reindeer who moved in vast herds across Sápmi. Each spring, the herds fled biting flies on the plains by migrating up northern mountains. When winter set in, they returned south to warmer pastures. Mountain Sami people followed them on their annual journeys, taking deer as needed to feed their families.
Sami hunters were skilled archers and practiced from a young age. When possible, however, they preferred to trap reindeer. Pit-fall traps set along ancient migration routes captured reindeer each year. In other cases, hunters lured wild deer into corrals with their own tame animals. This pattern of life, repeated for centuries, gradually disappeared as wild herds declined.[1][2]
Other Game Animals of the Sami
Reindeer meat, hide, fur, and bone fuelled the daily life of nomadic Sami homes. But reindeer were not the only useful animals of Sapmi. Families also hunted bears, moose, wolves, beaver, fowl, and other animals. Along the coasts, patient men waited over holes in the ice for seals to surface. Forest Sami specialized in trapping squirrels, martens, otters, and other fur-bearing game.[3][4]
Hunting in Sami Culture
The Sami saw a divine spirit inside everything, from the arrows they fired to the creatures they hit. Hunting, the taking of life from a greater god, required due respect and worship. Men made sacrifices at sacred sites and kept their hunting gear at the back of the tent, the male living area. All meat was brought in through a back entrance, or "bear door." The back of the home belonged to Juksakka, the Bow-Woman, who decided which babies would be male. Outside, the god of the wilderness was Leib Olmai, the Alder Man, who appeared in the form of a bear.
Bears were a particularly sacred animal in Sami belief. Successful hunters brought the bear home to a special hut. Women did not enter the hut, and they only looked at the bear through brass rings. They chewed alder bark into a red juice, symbolic of blood, and spit it onto the hunters, the bear, their dogs, and the reindeer that had hauled them home. This ritual female cleansing may have served to balance the strong male spirit of Leib-Olmai.[5]
Fishing in Sami Culture
As important as hunting was to early Sami culture, many communities depended more on fish than reindeer. The Coastal Sami kept farms and set out for saltwater fish like herring, cod, haddock, and saithe. Further inland, families waited for spawning trout and salmon. Salmon are an especially important part of the traditional Sami diet. Today, Sami fishermen face challenges from overfishing, outside competition, outdated regulations, and climate change.[4][6]
Bibliography
Tilly Smith, The Real Rudolph: A Natural History of the Reindeer (Stroud: Sutton, 2006).
Christian Meriot, "The Saami Peoples from the Time of the Voyage of Ottar to Thomas Von Westen," Arctic 37, no. 4, (1984), 373-384.
Carl Von Linné, Lachesis Lapponica, or a Tour in Lapland, ed. James Edward Smith (London: White and Cochrane, 1811).
Michael P. Robinson and Karim-Aly S. Kassam, Sami Potatoes: Living With Reindeer and Perestroika, ed. Leif Rantala (Calgary: Bayeux Arts, 1998), 52-58.
Raven Kaldera and Galina Krasskova, Neolithic Shamanism: Spirit Work in the Norse Tradition (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 2012).
Mike Smylie, Traditional Fishing Boats of Europe (Stroud: Amberley, 2013).
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