Introduction. From depictions of race to revitalizing a people: aspects of research on the Sámi in Finland and Norway

This special section of journal “Arctic and North” is based on the results of international workshop “Research on the Sámi over three centuries”, which was held at the Tromsø University Museum on 22^nd of November 2014. It provides a novel perspective on Nordic scholarly production and discourses on the Sámi by casting a critical light on several actors and research institutions. There exists very little research on this topic that has an international take on the subject-matter. Transnational and cross-national studies have not yet been undertaken, but the articles published now provide a foundation per se to compare national ways of studying the Sámi. This genre calls for a cross-national study of scholarly networks and the way in which individual books and other research materials ‘travel’ across time and borders in citations, in their reception and in critiques [1, Dear P., p. 203; 2, Simon J., pp. 251–252].

In this special section, “Lappology” is used as a term referring to the multi-disciplinary body of research on Sámi culture and society written between the late nineteenth century and the 1950s, approximately, when an early transformation took place. Lately, the term has fallen into disfavour due to the outdated choice of ethnonym and the Sámi critique of the colonial production of knowledge. We are conscious of its potentially pejorative connotations towards the object of study, but we use it as the title of a research genre that, in choosing the term, considered it neutral and unbiased, relaying on the scholarly practices of the time (cf. “Eskimology”). In one sense, the politics behind the term is what most of the articles are implicitly dealing with and we do shed a critical light on the genre, its transformation and ultimate disappearance. The term has been substituted by the more ‘politically correct’ term “Sámi research”. Lappology has not yet been thoroughly studied and different kinds of studies are sometimes lumped into this category unjustifiably. In addition, it has been customary in research into Lappology to define the term as covering all of the Nordic research communities, but then to concentrate on national Lappologies [e.g. 3, Seurujärvi-Kari I., pp. 58–60].

This sociological approach to the history of science, with an interest in the soci(et)al in science, has been relinquished only very recently, at the turn of this century, in favour of historical approaches interested in the impact of science on society. In order to be historical, the direction of analysis should be in the implementation, the impact of science in historical settings, as one of the explanatory factors, especially in the field of politics, rather than focusing on the socio-political frames that influence the production of scientific knowledge. The ways in which scientific knowledge has been encountered, managed and represented, attempts to build national identities with it, and reactions, reflections and responses to it, have become a central theme in the history of science. The focus has shifted to the ideas and results of science, to science as a set of concepts, practices, technologies, social and institutional relationships, values and ideologies embedded within society [1, p. 198; 10, Gouyon J.-B., pp. 37, 39; 11, Ryymin T., pp. 13–14 et passim; 12, Skålevåg S.A., pp. 265–266, 272, 283]. Sámi research offers numerous possibilities for this more recent approach — its level of implementation varies from state to state; from Norway, where studies of law are routinely and rather successfully referred to and applied in bargaining Sámi rights, to histories of near-non-implementation within the state of Finland. In both cases, Sámi research and its implementation have become a site of contestation. In this special section, nation-building is one of the aspects grasped, following this recent trend.

All the articles in this section share the starting-point, implicitly or explicitly, that research is to a great extent an exercise in the power of definition, both in constructing the “researching self” as well as the object of the scholarly activity, the Sámi. Research is a discursive practice: rather than strictly reflecting reality, science is entangled with social and political relations, and involves an ideological and discursive construction of the object of its enquiry. These relations can be traced historically and studied as context-specific to the research. Many articles in this section share an interest in studies on race, where this constructivist aspect of research is blatant and has had practical social consequences: research actively produces its subject, e.g. a racial difference between the majority and the Sámi. Knowledge produced consists not merely of facts, but also emergent property between and among differently-positioned individuals, including the researcher, which can be used discursively and analysed. Scientific discourse has produced many competing ‘truths’ about different races, for numerous purposes, to give politicized meanings to distinctions between different parts of the world, as well as classifying and distinguishing differences within colonial populations [13, Gunaratnam Y., pp. 7–9].

Concerning the researcher, both scientific and lay research hierarchized, positioned and defined the Sámi as the lowest, and the results were diffused back into society, producing pleasant subject positions for the members of society majorities. The withering away of race as an explanatory factor in Sámi studies after the Second World War was no less dependent of societal discourses, just as its implementation was in research before the Second World War. Only the article by Veli-Pekka Lehtola attempts to shed light on the whole dialectical cyclus of the circulation of knowledge, from its production to its dissemination and reception, but all the articles deal with the aspect of research that involves addressing and finally problematizing the powers of definition which the researchers possess.

From “Lappology” to Sámi studies

Exoticism attracted numerous researchers and authors to Lappmarken from early on, resulting in a body of writing on the wild and primitive Sámi, the powerful sorcerers of the north. Lapponia (1675) by Johannes Schefferus was the first monograph on the Sámi and is considered a scholarly work in its approach and quality. Based not only on ancient and repetitive medieval sources but also on reports by contemporaneous clergymen, Schefferus pioneered depictions of Sámi history, for instance. As the agricultural settlement of Lappmark regions increased during the eighteenth century, the expert gaze became more stringent in two senses: firstly agricultural, as southern peasant settlement was used as a contrast to the Sámi culture, the latter compared unfavorably with the former. Secondly, economic interests carried more weight as the states grew stronger [14, Lehtola V.-P., pp. 16–17].

The Lappologist K.B. Wiklund described the research interest in the following manner: During the eighteenth century, the early structuring factor for an interest in the knowledge of the Sámi on the part of officials and scholars was the introduction and presence of Lapp-byer ² in various inland areas and island/coastal areas. This created the possibility of taxation, and establishing relations of power and Crown/State sovereignty. Knowledge about them was expanded in the eighteenth century by Peter Schnitler, who focused on pasture areas and described the organization of Sámi villages up to that time in great detail, as well as charting the tax lands ( skatteland , or just land ). The focus was on external factors, which defined what are now called siida , and which was juxtaposed with the “Territorio” of the kingdoms, within which the tax lands existed. The structuring term was bye , or Lapp-bye (“village” in old Swedish), originating from Swedish tax documents and the administrative needs of the officials. A knowledge of the spatial organization and whereabouts of the Sámi, important knowledge due to increasing competition concerning land and resources, was in high demand among Crown/State officials [15, Wiklund K.B., pp. 16–55].

The scientific level of this genre of research varied from ‘proper’ academic research to numerous amateur undertakings. Lappology was religiously and politically inspired. In the nineteenth-century Grand Duchy of Finland, for example, state officials were increasingly interested in the resources and productivity of the northern region. Simultaneously, numerous researchers with increasingly diversified disciplinary backgrounds entered the north, sharing

different kind of interests in knowledge as well. Ethnographers’ interest, for example, focused initially on a comprehensive depiction and later on a synthesis of Sámi culture, while the gaze evolved in a social evolutionist direction, an ideology touched upon in many articles in this special section. As a result, the scholarly field became more diversified in its research interests and a genre of research, later defined as “Lappology”, began to emerge [14, Lehtola V.-P., pp. 16–17].

When Professor Olavi Korhonen was studying Swedish scientific dictionaries at the beginning of this century, he noticed that in 1939, lappologi was known as a colloquial expression denoting research on “Lapp language, customs, etc.” But Lappology was no longer included in the 1998 dictionary of scientific terms. ”Is Lappology dead?” — asked Korhonen, and answered that as a term it is dead, because it is mostly understood negatively. Furthermore, Sámi cultural research has expanded so much that a single term is not enough to describe the whole field. “This does not mean, however, that the subject matter contained by ʻLappology’, i.e. accumulating knowledge of the different areas of Sámi culture, has changed.” [16, Korhonen O., p. 15]

According to Svenska Akademiens ordbok , the term lappologi in Swedish occurred in 1929, when Väinö Tanner used it in his study on the Skolt Sámi.³ Here, Tanner used Lappology as a somewhat negative term: “By disregarding geographical aspects, Lappology has often led to excessive generalizations, mostly in abstracto , and significant issues have therefore remained on the borderlines of intuition.” In Tanner’s view, these included the stereotypical notion that nomads were the core and elite of Sámi culture, while coastal and forest Sámi were commonly considered degenerate descendants of their culture [17, Tanner V., p. 8]. In Norway, however, Kristian Nissen, a friend of Lapland, used the concept of Lappology as early as 1928. In the preface to J.K. Qvigstad’s commemorative volume, he mentioned that Qvigstad’s children did not adopt their father’s “special interest, Lappology” [18, Nissen K., p. 11]. Nissen used a corresponding term in his letter to T.I. Itkonen in 1928.⁴

In fact the prehistory of the concept of Lappology dates at least a few decades further back in time. K.B. Wiklund used the word lappolog (a Lappo-logist) as early as 1909 in his book Lapparnes sång och poesi. He used it in inverted commas when he wrote a negative appraisal of Sámi priest Anders Fjellner’s poetic work Beaivvabártnit (Sons of the Sun) and stated that even “a slightly adept Lappologist” could easily find countless errors in Fjellner’s texts [19, Wiklund K.B., p. 54]. Sverker Sörlin and Lars-Gunnar Larsson have emphasized that K.B. Wiklund used the term to denote pervasive Sámi research, covering Sámi history and language, as well as culture. In his appraisal of later researchers, Wiklund considered that Björn Collinder’s concentration on just one field of study was one-sided, while he approved younger researchers such as Israel Ruong, Nils Erik Hansegård and Olavi Korhonen as “genuine” multi-disciplinary Lappologists [20, Sörlin S., pp. 96– 97; 21, Larsson L.-G., pp. 33–55].

In a letter to Ernst Manker in 1933, Wiklund referred to Lappology as a certain kind of passion, even a scientific Lapland mania that carried him away: “when you have once been entranced by Lappology, you can no longer sit back and tinker with your — ultimately perhaps quite futile — scientific trifles, but on the contrary you have to deal with important social issues, whether we want to or not [...] where you really have to get to work with white knuckles” [22, Karlsson C., p. 29].

Nowadays, the term Lappology carries connotations of cultural imperialism and social evolutionist thinking, not to mention the burden of the more sinister advances in comparative physical anthropology. Amongst others, ethnographers, folklorists, historians and geographers all aimed to contribute to the nation-building processes of their time by means of their scholarly production [23, Mathisen S.R., pp. 104–105]. In synthesizing, descriptive and systematizing studies, the research material, and in some cases the research results as well, were created to suit the needs and world-views of the researcher. This happened at the cost of understanding the internal rationale of the Sámi societies [24, Sergejeva J., p. 181]. In general studies, the Sámi were often viewed as possessing a lower cultural value, less sophistication, and they were separated from the economic and political progress of society in general. In Norway, the scholarly gaze turned from being patronizingly positive to condescending and negative towards the Sámi from the 1870s onwards, with diffusionist and social evolutionist ideology used as a means of creating academic legitimacy; physical anthropology, undertaken by Halfdan Bryn and by Kristian and Alette Schreiner, amongst others, was used as a methodological approach in constructing a Norwegian identity and superiority [3, Seurujärvi-Kari I., pp. 58–60; 25, Pentikäinen J., pp. 9–10; 26, Eyþórsson E., pp. 27–41].

By comparison with the research on the Sámi carried out in Norway, Finnish Lappology exoticized and displayed an interest in philology and the Sámi adaptation to the harsh natural environment, but as shown by Kylli, Lehtola and Nyyssönen, the Norwegians did not possess a monopoly on social evolutionist approaches. The Finnish critique of “Lappological” approaches emerged at approximately the same time as in Norway, during the 1950s. According to the critics, Lappologists had bypassed the real (as in, Sámi-defined) Sámi cultural spheres, or language groups, as a focus of study, while the national borders had been allowed to limit the scope and classification of research material. Sámi opinions and perspectives had been marginalized: the demand that Sámi scholars should participate in research on Sámi culture had become commonplace by the 1970s, aiming to ensure that Sámi belief systems, attitudes, etc. would guide the analysis of Sámi culture. A more profound shift towards Sámi research took place only at the end of the twentieth century, though, when the Sámi themselves began to take research into their own hands, as Irja Seurujärvi-Kari has explained. Quite recently, as in this special section, Lappology in the broad sense of the word has evolved into a research object in its own right [3, Seurujärvi-Kari I., pp. 57–58; 24, pp. 181–182], constituting part of the process of efforts to understand the history and mind-set of majority societies.5

The transformation was tightly interwoven with the rise of ethnopolitical activity among the Sámi. One of the fields in which Sámi resistance and ethnopolitical advocacy became visible was in academia. Sámi issues have entered text books, curricula and teaching, the sites where aspects of power, in stressing and blocking knowledge systems, are evident. The partial victory that the Sámi movement can point to has resulted in research projects, work positions, new recruitment policies, new research themes and new ways to pursue research. This has changed the Nordic academia as well — three universities (Umeå, Oulu and Tromsø) each boast a centre devoted to Sámi studies; one university college has created a Sámi-speaking campus in Kautokeino; and less continuous research projects in the Nordic universities on Sámi matters are too numerous to be mentioned here. The break-through is far from total, however. The legitimacy of post-colonial and indigenized theories, epistemologies and aims of research, in particular, are continuously labelled as particularistic, biased and essentializing [27, Junka-Aikio L., passim; 28, McGovern S., pp. 20–22]. There are numerous agents uneasy with the idea of turning academia into a field of indigenous voice, advocacy and resistance, leaning partly on the old discourse of ‘objective’, non-political scholarly knowledge production. The marginalizing effect of this discourse on postcolonial theorizing and other advocacy-aiming approaches may, however, be criticized as being no less political, with regard to its silencing effect and the prioritization of ‘Western’ epistemologies and voices.

This section

University lecturer Ritva Kylli focuses on Anders Andelin, a relatively little-known Finnish priest who studied the Sámi in Finland and who worked in Finnish Lapland during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Kylli describes how novel ideas of the time were reflected in the writings of Andelin, who was a contemporary of e.g. Charles Darwin (1809–1882). Finns regarded the Sámi as a lower, dark race, and priests and other officials wanted to document their culture because they considered the Sámi as a people heading inevitably towards extinction. The priest wanted to prevent the extinction of the Sámi by teaching them a civilized, Finnish way of life: according to another priest, E.W. Borg, the Sámi had the potential for development — as long as it happened under the watchful eye of fatherly Finnish officials. Andelin’s writings of the time are also characterized by an attempt to portray the Sámi as stereotypical savages.

In knowledge production terms, the texts by the priests were treated as serious research, partly because of the absence of more ‘serious’ research. Already, these amateur texts were having a constitutive effect both on the research object, but also on the researcher. A priest was transformed into an agricultural counsellor, echoing the ecologically poorly-informed campaigns of agricultural civilization that were typical of that time. The dialectics of representation meant that each representation of the Sámi was always a self-representation of the (wished-for) ideal of the more capable and serious Finns. Kylli shows as well how the image of the Sámi was not produced in a vacuum, but was reliant on contemporaneous, even global discourses. What is also of interest is that as early as the nineteenth century, the research object, the Sámi, had the means and channels to express their condemnation of the images produced about them. Kylli also demonstrates how the reception of the scientific texts relies on the context in which they are read or heard.

The article by Professor Veli-Pekka Lehtola provides an in-depth overview of Finnish Lappological research on the Sámi during the 1920s and 1930s. The main focus is on the representations made of the Sámi in research and the circulation of this imagery in the Finnish public sphere. The main focus is on the Skolt Sámi, who aroused huge scholarly interest after the annexation of Petsamo to Finland in 1920. This era was permeated by the paradigm of racial difference and among the themes taken up in the article is the diffusion of racial ideas in the political, administrative and literary spheres. The circulation of knowledge was a process of simplification, vulgarization and transformation; it resulted in the most aggressive racialization of the Sámi, which also served the creation of the Finnish national identity. A critical look at Lappological research is undertaken, together with the multiplicity of this research. While some of this research had/has deservedly poor reputation, on some occasions this was to some extent unearned, as pointed out by Lehtola.

Unlike the other articles in the section, which study Lappology as a multi-disciplinary field, Professor Lars Ivar Hansen focuses on Sámi history and historical methods. The focus is also on the politics of Sámi history and research. Hansen presents some principal results of recent studies on Sámi history, utilizing a relational approach. Hansen takes up the issue of who is ‘allowed’ to write Sámi history, and who gets to do research on the Sámi. Nowadays, the democratization and instrumentalization of Sámi research in the service of the various societal-cultural needs of the Sámi is the main current in Nordic research, with a high level of expectation concerning the applicability of the research or unveiling of ancient circumstances concerning Sámi rights to their territories. This concerns both the desire to have Sámi history written in general and the realization of more delimited efforts to present situated accounts of Sámi cultural practices, traditions and experiences in relation to others. Hansen presents methodological considerations and recommendations concerning Sámi history. Hansen’s programme is demanding, requiring an arsenal of methodological competences and the in-depth usage of numerous source categories, i.e. the prerequisites of quality research.

Researcher Jukka Nyyssönen studies the racial thinking of professor of geography and one of the outstanding “Lappologists” Väinö Tanner (1880–1948). His article concentrates on one work, Tanner’s monograph on the Skolt Sámi, Antropogeografiska studier inom Petsamo-området. 1 Skoltlapparna (Human Geographical Studies in the Petsamo region. 1 The Skolt Lapps, 1929), which enjoys a reputation as a classic in the Lappological genre of research, due to its ‘Sámi-friendly’ stance. Tanner’s chapter on the Skolt Sámi race and its viability has, however, mostly been bypassed in research prior to this, since the subject-matter does not suit the positive image that he enjoys. Why did Tanner pursue knowledge on Skolt Sámi race and what did he actually write in this lengthy chapter? Tanner is studied against the background of the racial and hygienic discourses of the era: what kind of image was produced and what kind of racial position did he reserve for the Skolt Sámi? Which were the influential and provoking discursive resources that he reproduced and wrote against? The article aims to contribute an understanding into how complex societal and biographical background factors can confuse the identity politics in a researcher’s work. In addition to the inherent problems of the speculative race studies, more mundane issues, such as a lack of time for Tanner’s text to be edited, also add up as factors in the blurring of the end result.

Research fellow Lena Ingilæ Landsem examines how research into Sámi and Kven minorities during the period between 1979 and the mid-1980s at the University of Tromsø operated on a spectrum between science and politics. The national responsibility for undertaking research on Sámi and, later, Kven issues was placed on the University, which was established in 1972 with the purpose of becoming a research institution for the benefit of the region. Three factors which influenced the choice of themes, priorities and approaches to minority research in North Norway are discerned. Firstly, the period was marked by the case of the damming of the Alta-Kautokeino river in Finnmark County, followed by the Sámi struggle for their rights and political changes at a central level towards the Sámi population in Norway. What consequences did this political process have for research and for the academic environment in North Norway? The second factor is related to academic policies: scholars could benefit at that time from a minority-related research programme run by the Norwegian General Scientific Research Council (NAVF). Which arguments formed the basis for the research programme, which lasted for nine years? Which, according to scholars, were thought to be the relevant themes and focus areas within research on minorities? Thirdly, methodological and research political discussions concerning emic and etic research positions had begun in the 1980s, demonstrating different approaches to research into minorities. Was it the Sámi themselves, or also researchers belonging to the majority, who had the right to pursue research on the Sámi?

Extrapolating from Ingilæ Landsem’s findings, it may be claimed that the Sámi research launched at the University of Tromsø was mostly research-politically conservative in the cautious stress on ethnic relations, which eased up on the discussed ‘threat’ of an ethnically exclusive, emic, from-within approach. It became possible for majority researchers, too, to pursue the relational approach, which became the dominant approach (see also the article by Hansen), since this included intra-state relations in its scope and widened the choice of actors to include majority actors as well. Now even researchers of majority extraction were able to take an oppositional stance against state actors, a ‘fashionable’ position in the anti-imperialistic political climate of the 1970s and 1980s, as well as enjoying the moral superiority of subaltern research, which Sámi researchers could point to. The research ethos varies from country to country: historical research in Finland has remained more modest than the Norwegian, perhaps reflecting the perception of less colonial guilt on the Finnish side. Conversely, researchers reacting negatively to programmatic Sámi research are still more numerous on the Finnish side than in Norwegian academia. Here, an apologetic attitude is routinely taken in relation to the wrongs committed as a result of Norwegianization policies [30, Nyyssönen J., p. 377].

Although Ingilæ Landsem concentrates on the internal discussions within North-Norwegian academia, her case is illustrative of the changing power relations under which Sámi societal and cultural research were undertaken. Knowledge streams were earlier thought to be onedirectional, from the state/imperial centre/capital to (colonized) peripheries. It has been argued that knowledge production no longer originates from a single institutionalized site, or “knowledge base”, which makes state or colonial power operational: the knowledge streams, or circulation of knowledge, alter the material culture, cultural patterns and identities, within host states as well [31, Ballantyne T., pp. 128–129 et passim; 32, Ballantyne T., pp. 231–238]. In the Norwegian case, perhaps lacking an imperial scale, but not the state-periphery and majority-indigenous minority structures, the demand for knowledge changed: now the Sámi societies demanded scholarly knowledge concerning how to cope with the Norwegian presence and build their own society, with matching rights.

There is no longer necessarily a sharp division between dominant and subaltern knowledge systems — in the Norwegian case, Sámi knowledge systems are now, at least to some extent, included in the research agendas, due to changes both in the surrounding society, a (generational) shift in academia and a paradigmatic shift concerning the place the prior object of the study possessed in research design. The change is not straightforward, though: both fields, those of the state/society and of academia, have become more fragmented and operate within a power relation that is no longer straightforward in terms of power or resistance. Rather, they involve varying forms of agencies, entanglement, interaction, indigenous appropriation, adaptive knowledge production, the creolization of local knowledge systems, and overlaps. From a methodological point of view, the charting of this relationship requires detailed textual and empirical work, as well as a highly contextualized and situated analysis of power, agency and knowledge [28, McGovern S., pp. 14–19, 27].6 We hope a step has been taken in that direction with this special section.