Jokkmokk

In the last post, I explained that a “Sameby” is an organization that federates some number of reindeer herding outfits, and said I would expand on that in the next post, so here goes.

There are in Sweden 51 “Samebys” (the Swedish plural is Samebyar). Jokkmokk is home to five of those “Samebyar”. To give an idea of the scope of these outfits, the largest of the five is Sirges Sameby which is also the country’s largest with 15.500 reindeer under management, about 100 individual herders/families, and 5,200 sq miles of grazing land. The second largest one is Tuorpon Sameby with a herd of about 9,000 heads, about 47 individual herders, and 5,100 sq miles of grazing land. These two are “Mountain Sámi” outfits. The other two are “Forest Sámi” outfits and so are smaller.

The Sameby is a registered business entity in its own right just like every herd belonging to it are as many separate businesses. The main functions of the Sameby is to provide common infrastructure such as the fencing used at the separation of the herds. In Lapland, they don’t use fencing to control grazing or the regular movement of the herds. The reindeer migrate from mountains to the lowland forests and back up essentially on their own. The herders follow the reindeer and on occasion push and prod them as need be but never fence them in except for twice a year: The annual marking of the younglings born earlier in the year and the fall slaughter. On those two occasions, mobile fencing is used to control the reindeer. These fences are used for all the reindeer herds and so as a common good is provided for, and managed by, the Sameby. The Sameby also manages hunting allocations such as the number of moose each herder will be allowed to kill in any given year. The distribution of grazing land among the herders as well as the fishing rights also fall under the Sameby. Essentially anything that, in the regular herding and hunting/fishing life, affects more than one herder is the purview of the Sameby, the “common good”. In this respect, the modern Sameby parallels the ancient Siida council. The one defining difference though is that in the old system, it was the Siida that was the owner of all the reindeer while in the Sameby the herds are owned by the individual herding families. This is a distinction that has had an impact on the culture and, some say, fostered a lower level of solidarity between the Sámi today than in the past. Having said that, the Sámi culture, till this day, remains very communal, collegial, and with exceptionally smooth conflict resolution. All issues facing members of a Sameby are resolved by the council which has a leader, a kind of first among equals. There again there is a clear parallel with the old Siida structure that was led by a council “chaired” by a Siid’ja. There is no formal title for the Sameby “chief” but I have seen some journalists in the Lapland local press refer to the leader of the Sirges Sameby as “the chairman”. The selection criteria for a council chief is that he has a good sense of justice as he makes decisions for the entire group and arbitrates a fair amount of fishing/hunting/land right issues. Some Sámi have told me that that the really defining quality is diplomacy, which given the function is not too surprising.

Other than the few days that the reindeer spend inside fencing (as mentioned above), the rest of the year the reindeer are truly “free free-ranging” i.e. they are free-ranging with no fences. The Sámi will say that that’s the real difference between semi-nomadism and cattle ranchers, that the first follow and manage animals that feed themselves while cattle feed has to be managed and provided for by the rancher.

Here a couple of pictures I took on a hike northeast of Jokkmokk (click to enlarge):

This guy stumbled into me on my hike. He was with a few more but the scampered off while curiosity was stronger than the self-preservation instinct. This is a well-known fact about reindeer and why in the past reindeer hunters would be so successful using decoys to attract the curious reindeer. 

There are just about infinite quantities of lingonberries and blueberries in Lapland.

A couple of the many thousand lakes in Lapland.