The Sami—living conditions and health

Abstract

The aim of this Special Issue is to show the diversityof living conditions among the Sami and their consequences on the health and rates of disease among this population living in the Sami areas of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, often referred to as Sápmi. There has been a renewed interest in the Sami or Laps, as they were referred to some decades ago. Historically, relatively few studies have been carried out for a variety of reasons. In all countries assimilation policies removed the focus on ethnicity, and scientific studies often neglected the mixture of different ethnic groups in the Sami areas. In addition, the Sami in Norway still have a collective memory of when their skulls and bones were measured in the 1920s and 1930s as part of the eugenic theories (1). Lastly, ethnicity is not usually registered in the Nordic countries, and the national register information is not always available for scientific use.