Recent reading
Oct. 30th, 2018 06:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaTusen år i lappmarken by Lilian Ryd and Tomas Cramér (2012) [A Thousand Years in the Lapp Marches, only in Swedish]
About the Sami people of northern Scandinavia, from a historical perspective. (Lapp is an older Swedish word for Sami.) Super interesting! I knew some of this, mostly from the last hundred years, but I didn't know the history before that, and it's quite surprising to me. So basically the Sami people lived as hunters and reindeer herders in northern Scandinavia for at least two thousand years. They were not an isolated people at all, but traded and paid taxes for at least the last thousand years. And their status was actually quite high for many hundreds of years--they paid lower taxes than farmers, they didn't have to be drafted as soldiers, they had a monopoly on hunting and fishing rights in northern Sweden (in southern Sweden that monopoly was held by the nobility), there were Sami judges in the judicial system. Compare this to other minority people like Jews, who were basically not allowed to exist in Sweden for hundreds of years.
Anyway, this was not because the state wanted to be nice to the Sami or anything, it was because they were valuable to the state. The fur trade was very lucrative, and the state was dependent on Sami reindeer transport in the winter in northern Sweden. Also, perhaps most important: if the Sami villages paid taxes to the Swedish state, then Sweden could claim those lands as Swedish. Borders shifted back and forth, and if you taxed the Sami too heavily then maybe they'd up and negotiate lower taxes to Norway instead. This all broke down in the late 19th century. The borders were now fixed, and industrialization was underway. Suddenly all those choppable forests and dammable rivers and mineable metal ores were far too tempting, and the state ignored previous ownership relations and said that the state owned all those lands. Along with this came some rather horrible race "biology" to justify it. At the same time, large companies were also busily ignoring previous ownership relations, stealing forest land from lots of smallholders, Sami or Swedish didn't matter. Primitive accumulation of capital...
This explains why Sweden will never sign ILO convention 169. The reasons are entirely economic--the state does not want to risk losing those mines and forests and electric dams. I do admit that the legal stuff is a bit beyond me--one of the authors is a lawyer who represented Sami people in various court cases. He says that ownership relations can't be changed by decisions in parliament, only in court, and that this is why the change in ownership was wrong? Anyway, the Sami claim to ownership was because their villages paid taxes for the land.
Anyway, the situation now is weird and hard to fix. Like, only Sami are allowed to keep reindeer in Sweden now. But not all Sami can keep reindeer--you have to belong to a "sameby", which you only do if your parents were reindeer herders (this is because of state regulations in the early 20th century). And those who are now in a sameby want to protect their privileges. What would it mean to give the land back? It doesn't seem fair that the sameby should have it. And there's been lots of intermarriage, so it's not obvious who is Sami and who isn't. What about a Sami person whose parents moved to Stockholm and who has lived there their whole life (there are lots of those)? And compare that to someone living in a northern village who isn't Sami but whose relations still lived there for a long time? Who has the right to influence what happens locally? What about the land that companies stole from local people, Sami or not? ...yeah, I only have questions, not answers. Cultural heritage was definitely lost and that's still happening (this is true not only of the Sami but of other older ways of living in Sweden).
Min europeiska familj: de senaste 54 000 åren by Karin Bojs (2015) [in English as My European Family: the First 54 000 Years]
The movements of people in Europe in the last 54 000 years, as seen through the lens of the author's own DNA tests (she's related to all the major groups). It starts with the children of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in the Middle East, whose DNA is still with us today. Then the extinction of the Neanderthals and the migration of Homo sapiens into Europe, the migration of farmers from the Middle East bringing agriculture about 7 000-8 000 years ago, and then the migration of the Indo-Europeans from about 4 800 years ago. It really puts our own time into perspective! If our technological culture lasts ten thousand years (like the Gravettian, 33 000-22 000 years ago) then we're talking. (It totally won't.) Oh, and also--apparently the Europeans of that time had dark skin and hair and blue eyes, which is not how they're usually portrayed.
About the Sami people of northern Scandinavia, from a historical perspective. (Lapp is an older Swedish word for Sami.) Super interesting! I knew some of this, mostly from the last hundred years, but I didn't know the history before that, and it's quite surprising to me. So basically the Sami people lived as hunters and reindeer herders in northern Scandinavia for at least two thousand years. They were not an isolated people at all, but traded and paid taxes for at least the last thousand years. And their status was actually quite high for many hundreds of years--they paid lower taxes than farmers, they didn't have to be drafted as soldiers, they had a monopoly on hunting and fishing rights in northern Sweden (in southern Sweden that monopoly was held by the nobility), there were Sami judges in the judicial system. Compare this to other minority people like Jews, who were basically not allowed to exist in Sweden for hundreds of years.
Anyway, this was not because the state wanted to be nice to the Sami or anything, it was because they were valuable to the state. The fur trade was very lucrative, and the state was dependent on Sami reindeer transport in the winter in northern Sweden. Also, perhaps most important: if the Sami villages paid taxes to the Swedish state, then Sweden could claim those lands as Swedish. Borders shifted back and forth, and if you taxed the Sami too heavily then maybe they'd up and negotiate lower taxes to Norway instead. This all broke down in the late 19th century. The borders were now fixed, and industrialization was underway. Suddenly all those choppable forests and dammable rivers and mineable metal ores were far too tempting, and the state ignored previous ownership relations and said that the state owned all those lands. Along with this came some rather horrible race "biology" to justify it. At the same time, large companies were also busily ignoring previous ownership relations, stealing forest land from lots of smallholders, Sami or Swedish didn't matter. Primitive accumulation of capital...
This explains why Sweden will never sign ILO convention 169. The reasons are entirely economic--the state does not want to risk losing those mines and forests and electric dams. I do admit that the legal stuff is a bit beyond me--one of the authors is a lawyer who represented Sami people in various court cases. He says that ownership relations can't be changed by decisions in parliament, only in court, and that this is why the change in ownership was wrong? Anyway, the Sami claim to ownership was because their villages paid taxes for the land.
Anyway, the situation now is weird and hard to fix. Like, only Sami are allowed to keep reindeer in Sweden now. But not all Sami can keep reindeer--you have to belong to a "sameby", which you only do if your parents were reindeer herders (this is because of state regulations in the early 20th century). And those who are now in a sameby want to protect their privileges. What would it mean to give the land back? It doesn't seem fair that the sameby should have it. And there's been lots of intermarriage, so it's not obvious who is Sami and who isn't. What about a Sami person whose parents moved to Stockholm and who has lived there their whole life (there are lots of those)? And compare that to someone living in a northern village who isn't Sami but whose relations still lived there for a long time? Who has the right to influence what happens locally? What about the land that companies stole from local people, Sami or not? ...yeah, I only have questions, not answers. Cultural heritage was definitely lost and that's still happening (this is true not only of the Sami but of other older ways of living in Sweden).
Min europeiska familj: de senaste 54 000 åren by Karin Bojs (2015) [in English as My European Family: the First 54 000 Years]
The movements of people in Europe in the last 54 000 years, as seen through the lens of the author's own DNA tests (she's related to all the major groups). It starts with the children of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in the Middle East, whose DNA is still with us today. Then the extinction of the Neanderthals and the migration of Homo sapiens into Europe, the migration of farmers from the Middle East bringing agriculture about 7 000-8 000 years ago, and then the migration of the Indo-Europeans from about 4 800 years ago. It really puts our own time into perspective! If our technological culture lasts ten thousand years (like the Gravettian, 33 000-22 000 years ago) then we're talking. (It totally won't.) Oh, and also--apparently the Europeans of that time had dark skin and hair and blue eyes, which is not how they're usually portrayed.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-11-07 12:37 am (UTC)Speaking of "how they were portrayed,"
http://kenniskennis.com/site/sculptures/Neanderthal%20Spy/
(no subject)
Date: 2018-11-07 08:07 pm (UTC)