Framing Sami Entanglement in Early Modern Colonial Processes: Ethnohistorical and Archaeological Perspectives from Interior North Norway

Abstract

Emerging Sami archaeologies have overlooked the colonial processes of the Early Modern period. Although Sami agency is emphasized, symmetry, and reciprocity are set as the default mode of Sami social relations with Others, inhibiting study of asymmetrical colonial processes. Early Modern Sami agency was constrained by asymmetries in the articulation between state institutions and Sami practical-production activity. Practice theory grounds a discussion of how the Swedish state enrolled the Sami in its sovereignty project using restrained forms of coercion that produced semiconsensual hegemonic relations. Taxation data for two inland Sami districts in present-day north Norway suggest potential constraints experienced by Sami house-holds in meeting state demands. Hegemony was established when the intrinsic values of Sami practical-production activity became entangled with the extrinsic rewards and constraints of state extraction strategies and commercial activities. Archaeology can provide insight into the material outcomes of colonialism that are inaccessible to historians.