Harald Eidheim’s research while affiliated with University of Oslo and other places

THE present data and analysis concern the changing relations between a reindeer herding unit of some nomadic Lapps and the households of a fjord community of West Finnmark (northernmost Norway). I want to show how the nomadic unit (sii'da) encounters new social restrictions when, in order to maintain optimal ecologic adaptation, it needs to maintain crucial friend-guest relations with the Coast Lappish population of the fjord community whose systems of values has recently changed. The native theory of both the nomads and the sedentaries is that the relations in question were once of a "harmonious kind" and part of a larger social pattern, but that at the present time they are "chaotic and conflict-loaded." I will try to give an analytical explanation of this situation. The general cyclical pattern of the annual movement of the Lappish herding units is a consequence of the ecological adaptation of the reindeer, but this pattern is modified through generations by decisions taken by the reindeer owners. In our particular area, the herding units move each spring from winter pastures in the interior (near to the Norwegian-Finnish border) to summer pastures on islands and headlands along the coast of West Finnmark and return in the autumn. The length of the migrations varies from 100-200 kms. and most herding units spend 2 or 3 weeks on the spring move and some 8 to 12 weeks on the autumn move (Vorren 1962).

A growing number of verdicts in Norwegian courts have serious consequences for social relations and traditional institutions within Sami society. The point of departure in this article is a court case concerning the legal rights of settled Sami to have their own earmarks, i.e. to own reindeer. According to Norwegian law, this is an exclusive right for the registered pastoral Sami. Settled Sami have always owned reindeer and they are kept by the pastoralists. This arrangement epitomizes an old Sami cultural institution called verddevuohtta which constituted and reproduced reciprocal relations of exhange between sedentary and pastoral Sami. Thus the earmarks can be seen as a communication system through which social and economic relations are expressed. By making it legal to take part in and develop such relations, Sami community is weakened. The verdict in the reported case illustrates how Norwegian law splits an important Sami institution, since it forbids one aspect of it - namely the right to have your own earmark. The court case illustrates how Norwegian legal practice is self-fulfilling, because legality is only given to concepts and categories which are adapted by Norwegian law.

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