Dating Reindeer Pastoralism in Lapland

Abstract

The origin of reindeer breeding has been the subject of much intensive and often heated discussion among Lapp scholars. Yet, not until 1933 with the publication of the Norwegian judge and man of letters Erik Solem's Lappiske Rettsstudier was it clearly demonstrated that the origins of reindeer breeding and the beginning of full-scale pastoralism in Lapland are two distinct problems. From an ethnological viewpoint the distinction is notable; sociologically this delineation is critical to an understanding of the relationship between full-scale pastoral economy and key social changes that have emerged in Lapland. Yet, despite an enormous volume of documentation and interpretation, the precise chronology of the hunting-fishing, reindeer breeding, and full-scale pastoralism phases in Lapland have not been fixed with even near-exactitude. It is the purpose of this paper to examine major attempts to resolve the time sequence of Lapp reindeer economy and to suggest a greater time depth than has been given heretofore for the development of full-scale reindeer herding, i.e., reindeer pastoralism. The differentiation between the intensive phase of herding during which animals were important essentially for their milk and as