What all do we know about the history of the Sami people?

What all do we know about the history of the Sami people?

Did they, for instance, ever join up with Scandinavian Vikings to raid Europe or Britain? (Marginally related: Were there even any Finnish Vikings?)

Did they have any type of warrior culture or do we know of any historical instances of the Sami people fighting in battles or how/what weapons, tactics and armors they might have used?

Did they participate in the Winter War in Finland against the Soviets during World War II? Are there any notable Sami soldiers from this time?

Basically, aside from their known animal husbandry with reindeer, what details do we know about Sami culture or its structure and specifically any history involving Sami warriors or soldies.

Also, before the modern period, did they look like most Scandinavian or Baltic peoples or did they have distinct physical features?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oeselians
youtube.com/watch?v=GQ0D-xBy2zc
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

> (Marginally related: Were there even any Finnish Vikings?)
people from finnish coast and estonian islands did exactly same thing in the same time and were even called "vikings" by the swedes. they mainly staid within the baltic sea though.

Do you have any sources on Finnish or Estonian "vikings", I'd much like to read s out them since they're so heavily overshadowed by Danes, Swedes and Norwegians.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oeselians

>Also, before the modern period, did they look like most Scandinavian or Baltic peoples or did they have distinct physical features?

In the middle ages it was believed that they had fox tails. Modern Saami often have almond shaped eyes, more asian than European, although they are also very pale and typically light haired. They were never known as a warrior people, but they were known for their powerful sorcerers who could bind wind and storms into knots in ropes, and then unleash said storms on their enemies. Also, they had a kind of magic based on singing which was said to bewitch the minds of animals and men alike. This, coupled with the fact that their lands are unsiotable for farming, meant that Norse people generally avoided them and there is little recorded conflict between the two groups until the modern period,where nationalism drove Norway and Sweden to attempt to deracinate the Saami and turn them into good productive taxpayers.

Finland has always had a different attitude towards the Saami, seeing them as "country bumpkins" rather than some exotic mystical race. It's notable that Finland also had a tradition of knot-magic and magical singing, as recoded in the Kalevala, tho ofc Finns were for the most part farmers rather than herdsmen, and they adopted Christianity fairly early while the Saami remained shamanistic until the recent past.

even if they weren't great warriors they were always seen as rather nasty people who were often bandits and liked to mind their own business. basically injuns of the fennoscandia. you guys should btw watch "mosku- lajinsa viimeinen", it's a movie about a finnish reindeer herder and forest ranger who lives in northern finland before, during and after the civil war and it's based on real events. i have no idea if it's ever been published in english translation though.

Yes, but the Saami didn't seek out Scandinavians to hassle, it was more a case of the Scandinavians gradually encroaching on Saami lands. So while it's certainly true that the Saami weren't pacifists, most of the trouble Scandinavians have had with them is basically the fault of the Scandinavians.

I'm not OP but I'll definitely be watching that movie you suggested. Saami are one of those peoples it's easy to forget about, but they have a whole bunch of interesting cultural shit going on and are well-worth the effort to study.

The Sami spent most of their time throughout history herding reindeer. There was never much of a warrior culture, tradition of soldiers, or even much war they participated in.

Interestingly, when the Nazis were in Finland, they took pity on the Sami, and did not harm them even when Finland attacked the Nazis. However, as the Nazis were ejected from Northern Finland into northern Norway, when the Soviets invaded northern Norway, the Nazis indiscriminately killed and destroyed the property of everyone, including the Sami, and pretty much levelled every settlement in northern Norway.

The stark difference is very odd. The Norwegian Sami were no more likely to fight the Nazis than the Finnish Sami were. The Sami property would also be of very little use to the Norwegians or invading Soviets. But the Nazis showed benevolence to the Finnish Sami and cruelty to the Norwegian Sami. The reasoning for this isn't really obvious, except maybe to keep anything useful from the Soviets, but the Sami didn't really have anything useful.

The majority of Sami live in Norway. These Sami have been mixing with Norwegians since the two grouos were in contact. Thus, the majority of Sami have at least a bit of Norwegian genetics, going back hundreds and hundreds of years. Similarly, almost all Norwegians in the north have a little Sami genetics.

Norway has by far the most Sami. After them, America actually has as many or slightly more Sami than Sweden due to immigration, historically and in recent years. Finland has very few Sami, and Russia has even less, about 1k.

Religiously, the Sami did basically the same as Native Americans. They held onto Shamanism for a very long time, and when most converted to Christianity, they largely had their own sect that served to be a way to organize against the state. There was a Sami Christian religious leader who lead a revolt in Norway, for example.

There were some fighting between Finnish tribes and the Sami which eventually led Finns taking over Oulu region.

>The Sami spent most of their time throughout history herding reindeer. There was never much of a warrior culture, tradition of soldiers, or even much war they participated in.

However they DID have a tradition of "cattle rustling", ie, stealing reindeer from one another. This kind of low-level conflict favors cunning over brute strength, so most Saami folk heroes are sneaky and cunning like Odysseus or Crow,rather than forthright and warlike, like Herakles or Siegfried.

Scandinavian admixture in Saami is exaggerated and used as a memetic explanation for why they don't look 100% Yakut. Saami are overwhelmingly inbred and might have retained their genetic structure for millenia.

youtube.com/watch?v=GQ0D-xBy2zc

>In more recent years the use of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y-DNA chromosomal markers has offered the opportunity for clarification of the origin of the Sami. While their mtDNA haplogroup distribution overwhelmingly represents a subset of the European gene-pool, the most common Y-DNA haplogroup among the Sami is widely believed to be of Eurasian origin and very common among all peoples in Northeastern Europe. The second most common haplogroup is I, which is found almost exclusively among those of European ancestry.

>Three Y chromosome haplogroups dominate the distribution among the Sami: N1c (formerly N3a), I1 and R1a. The most common haplogroup among the Sami is N1c, with I1 as a close second. Haplogroup R1a in Sami is mostly seen in the Swedish Sami and Kola Sami populations, with a low level among the Finnish Sami. Tambets and colleagues suggested that N1c and R1a probably reached Fennoscandia from eastern Europe, where these haplogroups can be found in high frequencies.

This suggests that the Saami are largely aboriginal. Y-haplogroup I is the pre-European "nordic" lineage that is the origin of blonde hair and blue eyes, while N is the "urailic" haplogroup that I split off of after the migration from Siberia following the end of the ice age.

If you've ever wondered what the "Germanics" were like before the Indo-Europeans arrived, take a gander at the Saami.

>haplogroups

Only meaningful in the context of very large population sizes. Lithuanians have more of this same "Eurasian origin" haplogroup but over a magnitude less Asian admixture.

>Only meaningful in the context of very large population sizes

Like... the Saami? I don't understand what you mean here, are you denying that genetics is a thing?

>The divergence time for the Sami haplogroup V sequences was estimated by Max Ingman and Ulf Gyllensten at 7600 YBP (years before present), and for U5b1b1 as 5500 YBP amongst Sami and 6600 YBP amongst Sami and Finns. This suggests to them an arrival in the region soon after the retreat of the glacial ice.

Any way you look at it, the Saami are aboriginal. They've been in Europe for thousands of years longer than the Europeans have.

The women bite off The balls of reindeer as some form of castration or ritual.

It's like coinflipping. If you flip 3 times you can get 3 heads and multiply them to 1 million you have 1 million heads and no tails because they went extinct.
But if you start off by flipping 5000 times and multiply to 1 million you will have a roughly equal number of heads and tails.
Without law of large numbers backing you up you just can't say anything concrete about what it means to have a haplogroup at a high frequency.

It's not a time machine, no, but it's pretty accurate when taken alongside the archaeological and linguistic evidence.

Irish are 80% haplogroup R1b as are Basques and their common R1b ancestor lived under 6000 years ago but Irish people aren't particularly related to Basques it's just a random thing caused by cosmic coin flips favoring R1b in both Ireland and the Basque country.
I'd say that conclusively proves that haplogroups alone can't ever be evidence of a genetic relationship.

>haplogroups alone

Okay so thanks for sharing I guess. What does this have to do with this thread?

It means that you're wasting your time looking at something that's random and searching for explanations in it.

Okay, good thing I'm not doing that then?

let's see

>This suggests that

Seems like you are

The only waste of my time has been talking to you.

Hopefully someone smarter than you understood why you're wrong

Do you also post regularly in a certain general on /int/, by any chance?

men do that too. it's not a ritual, castrated reindeer just have better meat. and you don't bite them off, you just break their nerves and blood vessels with your teeth. this kills the testicle.