Hunting by Early Modern Lule Sami Households

Jesper Larsson,Eva-Lotta Päiviö Sjaunja

doi:10.14430/arctic73281

Abstract

Hunting was one of three pillars, along with fishing and reindeer husbandry in the early modern Sami economy, and understanding of Sami hunting has increased during recent decades. However, most research has concentrated on time periods before AD 1600. After AD 1600 and the initial formation of modern Nordic countries, hunting ceased to be the backbone of the overall Sami economy but continued as an integral part of household economies. Our aim is to advance understanding of early modern hunting in northwestern interior Fennoscandia. Using source materials including court rulings and historical accounts, we set out from a self-governance perspective focusing on how actors solved resource distribution with regards to hunting. We show that ecological differences between mountains and forest impacted decisions about hunting. From the 1500s to the end of the 1700s, hunting led to the extinction of wild reindeer and depopulation of fur animals, while small-game hunting for subsistence continued to be important. In the forest region, strong property rights to game developed when skatteland (tax land) was established and hunting became a private enterprise. We suggest that the institution of skatteland was a response to changes in Sami economy, and the transition from collective to individual hunting was a contributing factor.

Highlights

Hunting was one of three pillars in the early modern Sami economy, which mostly was based on the use of natural resources
Most researchers have concentrated on time periods before 1600, which is about the time hunting ceased to be the backbone of Sami economy
The most noticeable physical divide, when it came to early modern hunting practices in Lule lappmark, was the ecological difference between the southeastern boreal forest and the northwestern Scandinavian Mountains, or Scandes

Summary

Introduction

Hunting was one of three pillars in the early modern Sami economy, which mostly was based on the use of natural resources. While previous research has addressed multiple aspects of early modern Sami fishing and reindeer husbandry, the focus on hunting has been relatively constricted (Josefsson et al, 2010; Bjørklund, 2013; Norstedt et al, 2014), partly because of the relative scarcity of hunting evidence in historical sources. Until the 1970s, Sami historiography was characterized by ethnographic perspectives (Tanner, 1929; Tegengren, 1952; Manker, 1960; Fjellström, 1962; Hvarfner, 1965; Henriksson, 1978). Hunting is the practice of pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife and can be divided into subsistence, commercial, and recreational hunting (Peterson, 2019) It has been of paramount importance for the Sami economy, especially until circa 1600. From the 1980s, archeologists and historians became involved in making the Sami visible as historical subjects, which included a scholarly interest in hunting, especially by archeologists

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