“The Stranger Within” : Representations of Sámi in Norden in 19th-century Swedish Natural Scientific Works

Acknowledgements:• Karl Staaff’s Foundation, Uppsala, Sweden• Professor S. Sörlin, History of Science and Technology, KTH - Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Ph.D. Karin Granqvist, Sweden

Seashore in Norway. Photo: Karin Granqvist

”Kaisepakte”, mountain, SwedenPhoto: Karin Granqvist

Göran Wahlenberg (1780-1851)

Lars Levi Læstadius (1800-1861)

Sven Lovén (1809-1895)

Axel Hamberg (1863-1933)

Representations of Sámi in Works by Natural Scientists:

Axel Hamberg’s area of research

Lars Levi Læstadius’ research area

Sven Loven’s research area

Göran Wahlenberg’s area of research

Bottom of mountain lake, SwedenPhoto: Karin Granqvist

• Clothes• Dwellings• Customs• Food• Tools• Language(s)• Origin

Themes of Interest for Natural Scientists

Anthropology & Ethnology

Evolutionary Process & a Society’s Social Status

• Savagery• Barbary • Civilisation

Anthropological and ethnographicals studies placed people at different stages on that scale: portable dwellings such as tents indicated a ’low’ stage; ploughs and stationary dwelling (houses) were markers for a civilized life style; languages categorised people according to origin.

Mountains in SwedenPhoto: Karin Granqvist

Topics that Reinforced the Idea of Evolution

Seashore, NorwayPhoto: Karin Granqvist

were Studies of Sámi’s Nature and Disposition

Lovén:• Sámi’s good sense of locality was a product of their close contact with nature• They led a poor life, but it was suited for them – and they alone

Wahlenberg:• Sámi had bad and low moral• In business were they greedy and stingy• They cheated and could never be trusted• They had good sense of locality

Læstadius:• Sámi were biological predestined to a life as reindeer herders – other life styles would make them perish, and they would be extinct

Hamberg:• Sámi were lazy and weak, and never showed any type of stamina or endurance• His Sámi assistant Lars Nilsson Tuorda was describe as very competent (poster 1214)

Representations of Sámi in 19th-century Natural Scientific Works

•Exotic and picturesque (and/or)

•Racist and condescending

Mountains in afternoon sun, July, SwedenPhoto: Karin Granqvist

19th-century Theories when Representing Sámi

Cover of new edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ”The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”

• 19th-century theories on ”duality” of Man: most famous example is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in•Robert Stevenson’s novel from 1886

• Similar theories got to be lamented with Charles Darwin’s theory on the evolution

Helped explain theories on ’the Others’; ’the Stranger within the nation’, ’the savages in the civilisation’ such as the Sámi

Results of the Theories

• Duality of man was, in the scientific context, suggested not to be found in the single individual(s) – like in the case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – but amongst people of a larger group, such of a nation or a continent with a non-homogeneity population.

• Representations of Sámi – based on the idea on duality of Man– could also be set in the context of the nation where the Sámi’s existence was appointed to be ‘the other side’ of the nation.

• The theory on the Evolution emphasised the location of the Sámi outside a civilised nation The Sámi as Stranger

Mountain ”glaicer lake”, SwedenPhoto: Karin Granqvist

Impact on the Swedish Industrialisation

•Sámi core areas held natural resources: forests, ores, rivers and a designated ’wilderness’

ForestryMining industryHydroelectric power plantsNational parks, such as Sarek in 1905

The making of the industrialisation in the NorthThe Making of the Industrialisation in the North

Similarities with the colonisation of Africa in the 19th

century The African was seen as ’no one’

’No one’ inhabited the area, therefore colonisation met no obstacles because no one was in the way

The Nordic countries turned their colonisation towards their northern regions. The Sámi had been represented as excisting outside the nation the exploitation of the North was made in a designated ’inhabited’ area.

Mountain ”glaicer lake”, SwedenPhoto: Karin Granqvist

The 19th-century representations of Sámi as “The Stranger”, “The Other” and a Swedish-Nordic “Mr Hyde” – that can be found in 19th-century natural scientific works – placed Sámi ‘outside’ the nation. Therefore was, on an ideological level, no one in the way in Sámi core areas when the exploitation of natural resources in the Swedish and Nordic North started and advanced.

Conclusion

Seashore, NorwayPhoto: Karin Granqvist