Vaino Tanner and the discourse on racial difference

The article charts a previously lesser-known aspect of research on the Skolt Sámi by Väinö Tanner - his ideas on the Skolt Sámi as a race. Tanner’s place in the scholarly field of racial theorizing and the discursive resources on which he relied are examined. One inspiring contemporaneous discourse was the Finnish hygienic discourse and the improvement of the nation’s health, towards which Tanner leaned. He reproduced aspects of the more aggressive eugenic discourse articulated by his ethnic peers, the Finland-Swedes, but the discourse on their racial superiority was unusable, given the agenda of his book, to elevate the Skolt Sámi in the racial hierarchies. The economic organization of society was decisive for Tanner, rather than race, making him a social evolutionist.