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 without hedging that over 60% of Sámi in Finland live outside the Sámi homeland, in towns and cities further south. A culture is not a postcode.

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 rather than a loose word for the north. 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. It is the most direct way to get the history from the people it belongs to, in their own words and not a tour guide’s paraphrase of them.

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. These five are theirs, not ours:

• Private people do not wear Sámi dress, the gákti, for tourists. It is worn at genuine celebrations and in daily life, not staged for visitors, so treat an offer to “dress up” as a Sámi as a sign to ask more questions, not to book.
• 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, not a backdrop you can wander into.
• Favour Sámi-run products and services, including handicraft (duodji) bought from Sámi makers themselves. A generic souvenir shop is not that.
• 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.

One thing we looked for and did not find: a single published register of which tour operators are Sámi-owned or Sámi-endorsed. The Sámi Parliament’s own tourism information points to its Saamelaismatkailu resource instead. So ask an operator the question directly, and expect a straight answer to it.

What people get wrong

The word first. The correct name is Sámi, and it is the one this site uses throughout. The older exonym still turning up in travel writing is not a shorter form of it, and it was never a name the Sámi chose for themselves.

Then the map. “Lapland” and the “Sámi homeland” are not the same place: most of Finnish Lapland, Rovaniemi, Levi and Ylläs included, is outside the 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. Nobody keeps them as props.

And then the photograph. The Sámi Parliament’s own guidance is blunt that private individuals do not wear Sámi dress for tourists, so a staged photo opportunity in traditional dress is exactly what those 2018 guidelines were written to stop. The last confusion is a smaller one with the same shape: “Sámi-inspired” describes a style and “Sámi-owned” states a fact, and only one of them is a thing you can ask an operator to confirm.

What we do here, and what we will not

A note before the button below, because a button on this page of all pages deserves one.

Everything above is the Sámi Parliament’s, Siida’s or Sajos’s own published words. We have quoted them, linked to them, and added nothing. We sell no Sámi experience, we certify no operator as Sámi-owned, and no one named on this page pays us anything.

What we do is plan trips. If you ask us for one we will write it, and where it touches the Sámi homeland it will send you to the Sámi Parliament’s guidance and to Siida’s front door, because those are the right destinations and a product would not be. If a planner is ever unsure whether something is ours to recommend, the answer we give is the one on this page: ask the people whose culture it is.