Did the Sami (also known as Laplanders) ever war with the Vikings, if so why?

by DapperJellyfish

I have some Sami and Norwegian heritage and would like to know more about the Sami people in general and their role in history.

This is my first post in AskHistorians, and I'm interested in a degree in History, so any info about that would also be appreciated!

Mediaevumed

Not war, per-se, as this implies a level of organization that wasn't really present. The Sami were largely tribal during the Viking period, when the major kingdoms of Scandinavia were beginning to form. Certainly there existed conflicts, and we know that Scandinavians received "tribute" from Sami tribes, presumably in exchange for not committing violent acts on them.

Check out this older [thread] (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11pa2c/what_was_the_relationship_bettween_the_vikings/) for some more discussion of the topic.

Also if you have access to a decent library you can find a pretty good intro to the topic by Inger Zachrisson in the book The Viking World.

[deleted]

Vikings were more of a profession than an ethnicity. Referring to the recent viking mass-grave in Dorset. Those "Vikings" were a rag-tag group of robbers from all over northern Eur-Asia. In that sense your question makes no sense, as there were most probably also Samis doing the Vikinging too, because Samis were not distinctly different culture at that time. They are basically just a random Finno-Ugric tribe who managed to maintain their nomadic ways to modern times.

  • Swedish researcher Ove Berg has found Finnic languages in Viking runestones, particularly in the area of Blekinge and Skåne of Sweden. He has written a book titled Runsvenska, svenska finska, referring to the indigenous Finnic people of southern Scandinavia.