The sami people
The Sami are the indigenous people of the High North regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. In total there is about 80.000 samis - about half of whom live in Norway. Despite the fact that our modern society has challenged the ancient Sami culture numerous times, it is still going strong and is even experiencing a renaissance amongst the younger generations.
The Sami are descendants of nomadic people who settled in Northern Scandinavia thousands of years ago. To get to know the Sami people, it’s natural to start with their language. Or should we say languages. Because there are a grand total of nine(!) different, but closely related Sami languages in use today. Three of these languages are the predominant ones amongst the Sami in northern parts of Norway. Sami languages are members of the Uralic linguistic group of languages such as Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, and are very different from Norwegian and other language of Indo-European origin.