Evidence in archeological digs confirms they’ve been there for the last 10,000 years. Where they came from is not entirely clear. Very little is known about them until about 2000 years ago when the Roman scholar Tacitus mentioned them in CE 98 when he referred to them as “Fenni”. Ancestral DNA suggests that they originated from two movements of people: one moving north from the area of the Ural Mountains in east central Europe and the other migrating west from Siberia. Recently, their genetics have been combined with more modern Europeans as a result of expansion from western Europe.
Their homeland stretches from the very north regions of Norway and Sweden, east to Finland and along the coast of the Barents Sea in western Russia. They were a nomadic people, moving seasonally from coastal shorelines of the North Atlantic, Gulf of Bothnia and the Barents Sea. They called themselves “Sami” or some dialectic version of that name depending on which part of the north they were from. During the summer they tended fishing nets, eating fresh cod, herring, haddock and salmon. They would preserve sustenance by drying, smoking or salting the fish for use during the colder seasons of the year.
As winter approached, they would move inland and herd their reindeer stock to areas where the lichen they thrived on could be found underneath the snow. Though temperatures could be bitter cold, snow depth was not extreme, and nourishment could be gained with minimal to moderate effort. Reindeer meat made up a significant part of the diet, but they also hunted bear, moose, wolves, beaver and other animals both for sustenance and for the hides. Along the coastal regions of Norway, they also hunted seals through the pack ice.
