Sámi people: the Indigenous people of Lapland

The Sámi people, the only Indigenous people in the European Union

That is the Sámi Parliament of Finland’s own description, and the homeland it belongs to, Sápmi, crosses four national borders: northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia’s Kola Peninsula. Across Sápmi the Sámi Parliament counts approximately 75,000 to 100,000 Sámi, depending on the method of calculation. In Finland its own figures put the Sámi population at about 10,000, and it states that over 60% of Sámi in Finland live outside the Sámi homeland, in towns and cities further south.

The Sámi Parliament, Saamediggi, is the representative self-government body of the Sámi people in Finland. It decides on matters concerning the Sámi languages, culture and status as an Indigenous people, and only Sámi people registered to vote can elect it. Its main office and parliament hall are at the Sámi Cultural Centre Sajos in Inari, a building whose form is drawn from a reindeer’s hide and from Sámi handicraft. Sajos also holds the Sámi archives, a library and the Sámi Education Institute’s classrooms, and it offers guided tours of the building.

Four municipalities, and most of Lapland is not among them

The Sámi homeland, as the Sámi Parliament itself defines it, is a legal and administrative area with set boundaries. It covers the municipalities of Enontekiö, Inari and Utsjoki, plus the northern part of Sodankylä around Vuotso village, and it includes a separate Skolt Sámi Area within Inari. Most of Finnish Lapland, including Rovaniemi and the fell resorts further south, sits outside it.

Three Sámi languages are spoken in Finland: North Sámi, Inari Sámi and Skolt Sámi. Inari Sámi is spoken only in Finland, centred on the area around Inari village, and the Sámi Parliament notes that its number of speakers is rising through sustained revitalisation work. All three carry legal status: the Sámi Language Act gives Sámi people the right to use Finnish or Sámi with public authorities, and the Sámi Parliament states that an authority must serve a Sámi speaker in Sámi even if that person also speaks Finnish. For destination pages inside this homeland, see Inari, Kilpisjärvi and Saariselkä, which sits in Inari municipality alongside Inari village itself.

An afternoon in Inari

Siida, the Sámi Museum and Nature Centre in Inari, is Finland’s national museum for Sámi culture and a regional museum for the wider area, with a permanent exhibition and an open-air museum of historic buildings. Sajos, a short walk away, is the working home of the Sámi Parliament and hosts guided tours of the building itself. Give the two of them an afternoon, and you hear the history from the people it belongs to, in their own words rather than in a tour guide’s paraphrase.

Lávvu and goahti, the tents searches call a Sámi tipi

One statement in the Sámi Parliament’s quiz for visitors reads “Sámi live in lávvus, the traditional tents”, in reservations at the edge of villages where visitors can stare and take photographs, and the quiz marks it false. To see a lávvu in context, go to Siida. Its open-air museum in Inari follows an 800-metre trail past nearly fifty historic buildings and structures, among them transportable pole tents, lean-tos, storage sheds and turf buildings, and it keeps a traditional canvas lávvu 10 metres across, with a fireplace and seating, that it hires out for events. The open-air museum’s 2026 season runs from 1 June to 27 September.

The goahti, kota in Finnish, is the other traditional dwelling. The Saami Culture Encyclopedia, in an entry written at the Institute for the Languages of Finland, describes permanent and temporary kinds: the permanent one, covered with bark and turf, is the older, while the easily moved version was used mainly by reindeer-herding Sámi. Its frame adds two semicircular wooden pieces to the poles for more room, and it is covered today with canvas, in earlier times with woven mats, reindeer hides or bark. The word is an old one. In North Sámi it is goahti, in Inari Sámi kuáti, in Skolt Sámi kueˊtt, and it is related to the Finnish kota.

The Sámi flag, and the days it flies

The Sámi Council calls it the flag of all Sámi, whichever country they live in. The 13th Sámi Conference adopted it in Åre, Sweden, in 1986, after a competition that drew 74 entries from 27 artists. The winning design was by Astrid Båhl from Ivgonvuonbahta (Skibotn) in Norway. It built on a flag already in use in Sápmi and added the green and the ring. Båhl called it “Saami are children of the sun”: the red part stands for the sun and the blue part for the moon.

The Sámi Council lists twelve flag days. For a winter visitor the one that counts is 6 February, the National Day of the Sámi People, which remembers the first Sámi national gathering, held in Trondheim in 1917; the University of Helsinki’s almanac office lists it among the Sámi flag days for 2027 too. Others on the list include 2 March, when the Sámi Parliament of Finland opened in 1996, 25 March, a traditional Sámi holiday, and 15 August, the day the flag was adopted in 1986.

What the Sámi Parliament asks of visitors

The Sámi Parliament adopted ethical guidelines for Sámi tourism in 2018, aimed at tourism operators and at visitors arriving in the Sámi homeland, to stop tourism that exploits Sámi culture or spreads incorrect information about it. Its own visitor guidance, published alongside the guidelines, sets out what that means in practice. The five points below are theirs:

• Private people do not wear Sámi dress, the gákti, for tourists. It is worn at genuine celebrations and in daily life, and it is not staged for visitors. An offer to “dress up” as a Sámi is a reason to ask more questions before you book anything.
• Do not approach or photograph reindeer without the herder’s guidance. Reindeer husbandry law in Finland forbids frightening reindeer, and the guidance is explicit: get to know reindeer only with their owner present.
• Traditional livelihoods, including reindeer herding, are part of a living culture you can see only as an invited, guided guest.
• Favour Sámi-run products and services, including handicraft (duodji) bought from Sámi makers themselves. A generic souvenir shop does not qualify.
• Respect people’s everyday privacy. The guidance asks visitors to enter the “sphere of domestic privacy” only as an invited guest, and to respect local communities’ use of their own land and its seasons.

We found no single published register of which tour operators are Sámi-owned or Sámi-endorsed, and the Sámi Parliament’s own tourism information points to its Saamelaismatkailu resource instead. Ask the operator directly, and expect a straight answer.

What people get wrong

Start with the word. The correct name is Sámi, and this site uses it throughout. The older exonym that still turns up in travel writing was never a name the Sámi chose for themselves, and it is no shorthand for Sámi.

Then the map. Most of Finnish Lapland, Rovaniemi, Levi and Ylläs included, lies outside the Sámi homeland’s four municipalities.

Then the herd. Reindeer herding is a livelihood before it is anything else, regulated by law and organised through reindeer herding cooperatives (paliskunnat). A herder’s animals are working livestock.

Then the photograph. The Sámi Parliament’s guidance says bluntly that private individuals do not wear Sámi dress for tourists, and a staged photo opportunity in traditional dress is exactly what those 2018 guidelines were written to stop. Last, the labels: “Sámi-inspired” describes a style, while “Sámi-owned” is a fact you can ask an operator to confirm.

What we do here, and what we will not

The facts above come from what the Sámi Parliament, Siida and Sajos publish themselves, quoted and linked. The framing and the advice around them are ours: where a line is a judgement, the judgement is our own, not the institutions’. We sell no Sámi experience, we certify no operator as Sámi-owned, and no one named on this page pays us anything.

Before booking anything sold as Sámi, check it against the Sámi Parliament’s guidance, start at Siida, and ask the people whose culture it is.