This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: For a long time, some researchers believed that the South Sámi population arrived in Central Norway in the 18th century at the earliest, and that Norwegian farmers were present long before the Sámi. This is known as the "hypothesis of late immigration." Now researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have delved into written sources from the Middle Ages and discovered clear traces of a South Sámi presence in Central Norway dating much further back.
Peter Sigurdson Lunga and Emil Mård Vaadal Eliasson, members of the research group Middelalderdidaktikk (Medieval Didactics) at NTNU, confirm this finding. Both researchers are historians at NTNU's Department of Teacher Education, and they published a special issue of the journal Historisk Tidsskrift (Historical Journal) focusing on traces of the South Sámi from the Middle Ages. Researchers from Germany and the Netherlands collaborated with the NTNU team on authoring several analyses.
"A key finding across several of the articles is that a South Sámi presence is, in fact, well documented in written sources from the Middle Ages. This stands in stark contrast to the 'hypothesis of late immigration' that many researchers previously championed," says Lunga, who leads the research group. "South Sámi history was a living presence in the consciousness of the learned and the literate population during the Middle Ages.
This serves as strong evidence that they were physically present and played an important role," says Lunga. The texts examined by the researchers originated in Norway, Iceland and the Orkney Islands, and were written down between the 12th and 14th centuries. The researchers found traces of names and other concrete evidence of the Sámi—including, significantly, references within mythological origin stories.
The narratives concern their ancestry and geographical origins. The researchers focus specifically on origin stories that highlight South Sámi representation. Previously, the presence of the South Sámi in medieval texts was dismissed as a merely fantastical or fairy-tale element.
"The period from 1250 to 1650 is a gap in the research; no systematic study has been conducted regarding the South Sámi during this time. Relevant questions simply haven't been asked. We're examining the purpose of these origin myths and what they reveal about the era in which they were recorded," says Eliasson.
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