Encountering different territorialities: political fragmentation of the sami homeland

Territoriality is approached in this paper by examining the changing relationship between the small group of indigenous Sami people and the nation–states in which they reside. The Sami have for centuries been a geographically peripheral northern group, but they have nevertheless experienced altering conditions of state border demarcations and nationalistic ideologies. The flexible system of Sami villages, siidas, has had a fundamentally different approach to territoriality than the states with their fixed boundary conception. This difference is discussed by using three case studies from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The examination indicates that it is possible for these different territorialities to meet and co–exist if the state’s interests are not compromised. Furthermore, it suggests that the northern region–building processes, such as Barents and Northern Dimension, could benefit from such a flexible territoriality approach.