Friday, June 15, 2007

New blog on the Saami

I just ran across a fairly new, but so far very informative blog on the Saami people: The Saami - Samer - Det Samiske - Samisk. From the author:

Welcome to this blog that is mainly about the Saami people, my search for cultural identity and learning Saami and Kven history. My childhood in the Norwegian county of Finnmark made me well aware of cultural conflicts as well as racism. As for many others of Saami heritage the demonstrations in Alta in 1980 –81 increased my ethnical and cultural consciousness in spite the fact that everything about "the Saami" was taboo in the geographical area and family I grew up in. My approach towards a Saami identity has been gradual. First accepting that I am of Saami, that was the hardest part because of strong denial in a norwegianised culture and harassment by other people, both by “closet-Saami” (i.e. people that want to hide their Saami heritage) and by non-Saami. Then about 15 years ago I started to gather some information, using the Internet, remembering what my grandparents taught me, and then joined some Saami groups as a passive member.
Before you click the link however, be warned that the blog has autoplay music. The music is nice, but if you're at work, you may want to turn your speakers off first!

2 comments:

Saami 6/17/2007 11:17 PM  

Thank you so much for the nice attention. It is interesting to see how much effort and interest you have for genealogy. As you can see in my blog I have listed some genealogical sources in the Nordic countries and one for Russia. During the last couple of years I have done some research myself too and with some help from experts. It is highly recommendable and interesting too. I learned that most of my ancestors were Saami and even if most are Norwegian Saami some were Finnish and Swedish as well. I come from an area where there are 3 national borders, one with Russia and one with Finland. I have some Russian names in my Saami family as well, but have not started to explore those families yet. As with most people in the northern Nordic countries there are also a few Kvens as well, they came from Finland to my family, but new research have taught us that the origin of the Kven people is in different places of West Siberia.
If you follow my blog I will write about the old migrations of the Saami people from the Ahrensburgian reindeer hunter culture, it is not so very interesting for genealogist as such since this is about Palaeolithic migrations. Today they have been able to trace this old Germanic culture all the way up to the arctic seashores of Finnmark. I look forward to learn more about it, as the new research continues both after the Russian researchers have joined in, the interest within Sweden for what they call “Grop Keramisk kultur” and from the studies of old DNA that will be done in the near future. I have added some links about these topics in the side element section of my blog under history. From Saami

Christina | AmiExpat.com 6/19/2007 1:46 PM  

@saami: I think your blog will be of interest to genealogists, because most of us are also interested in history and culture (I even worked at a demographic research institute for a while). I think it will be especially of interest to anyone of Saami descent who wants to learn about their roots!

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