Finland
SÁMI HOMELAND & ERÄMAA One of Finland’s 19 o²cial provinces, the wild and sparsely populated Lapland ( ‘Lappi’ in Finnish) stretches north from just below the Arctic Circle at the port city of Kemi. The vast area of Lapland also crosses Sweden ( ‘Lappland’ in Swedish), Norway ( ‘Finnmark ’ in Norwegian) and northern parts of Russia. Though it spans 30% of Finland’s land area, Lapland is home to just 3% of its population, meaning there are as many shaggy, good-natured reindeer in this beloved subarctic region as people. Finnish Lapland is homeland of the Sámi, the only indigenous people within the area of the European Union. Located mostly in northernmost Lapland, the Sámi have a rich cultural heritage and speak three languages, all of them rooted in a reverence for nature. Approximately 10,000 Sámis live in Finland out of an overall population of 5.5 million. The Sámi Museum Siida and Sámi Cultural Centre Sajos in far-north Finland
celebrate the strong connection the Sámi people have with their traditional homeland of Sápmi (the preferred Sámi name for the region). This relationship with the outdoors and reverence for natural resources has long extended to non-indigenous Finns and is best understood in the Finnish term for wilderness: erämaa , which translates to ‘the land of erä ’ (nature’s bounty). It typically refers to the untamed and untainted wilds that today are represented by national parks and other protected areas, including Lapland’s ‘ erämaa-alueet ’ (‘wilderness areas’) that preserve both nature and traditional Sámi culture. The concept of erämaa became a symbol of Finnish nationalism in the 19th century — the nation declared its independence from the Russian empire in 1917 — and was championed by painters, writers and musicians as a cornerstone of Finnish identity.
SÁMI SHAMAN LAPLAND, FINLAND
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