The fight against the Norwegian state

Per-Anders Nutti has fought against the Norweigan state his whole life. Photo: Ellinor Friström

The Saarivouma Sámi are citizens of Sweden but have long migrated to their winter grazing lands in Norway. As the years have passed since the Nordic borders were drawn up, the Saarivouma Sámi have lost much land. For generations, they've had to fight against the Norweigan state for their right to the lands their ancestors used before them.

Per-Anders Nutti has been the chairman of Saarivouma village since 1998 and has grown up fighting against the Norweigan state his whole life.

“I grew up in this with the Norwegian court, my father was around when Altevanndommen was about to start, and that was in the early sixties, so I have had these high men running around us since childhood,” Nutti says.

The Saarivouma Sámi are currently fighting against the Norweigan state to get exclusive rights to their summer grazing area in Troms, which is used by Norweigan Sámi during the winter.

“It’s our ancestors that have used these areas, hundreds of years back,” Nutti says.

“So we have said as such from the Sámi village, that we are the only ones who are allowed to use these areas, and that is because of the reindeer's best. Because if someone else is allowed to graze in these areas with deep valleys and high mountains, then you destroy the pasture for the summer season, because then you stomp down the snow and before it thaws, the summer has gone quite far, and then there is no fresh pasture for our reindeer”.

To understand why different Sámi have been pitted against each other for grazing land, you would have to go back to when the borders between Sweden, and Norway were drawn up in the middle of the 18th century. To ensure the nomadic Sámi could still move freely across the borders the Lapp Codicil of 1751 was ratified by the two states. When Sweden lost Finland to Russia in the Finnish War, the Lapp Codicil lost its value along the Finland-Norway border. As the border between Norway and Finland/Russia was officially closed, it caused great trouble for those Sámi who needed the forests in Finland for winter grazing. Swedish Sámi could still move across the Swedish-Norweigan border. But as the competition for pastures grew, the Norweigan state became increasingly determined to stop the Swedish Sámi from doing their traditional migration across the border. As the years passed, the Saarivouma Sámi lost their right to cultivate much of their lands. The worst year was 1972 when Sweden and Norway signed a new reindeer grazing convention, which resulted in them losing around 70 % of their land. But only four years previously, the Saarivouma Sámi had won a ruling in Norway’s Supreme Court in the so-called Altevanndommen. It stipulated the Saarivouma Sámi had built up strong civil rights to reindeer grazing in these areas through ancient tradition.

In 1984 the Saarivouma Sámi got back a little bit of the land they lost in 1972, and the Norweigan state decided to put up a fence to keep the Saarivouma Sámi’s reindeer from crossing over the new border. But it turned out to be an impossible task to do over the high mountain Alps and deep valleys.

“There is no fence, there are no natural boundaries, but they just set a border, and when a reindeer crossed over that border, we’ve had to pay grazing fees,” Nutti says.

“So we’ve paid grazing fees in hundreds of thousands of kronor ”.

In 2005 the Reindeer grazing convention from 1972 expired, and the Swedish Sámi managed to persuade the Swedish government not to ratify the new convention. This should have triggered the old Lapp Codicil from 1751, but when Sweden refused to ratify the new convention Norway created its own law, which essentially replaced the 1972 convention.

“But we did not accept it, not our village anyway,” Nutti says.

“So we moved with our reindeer into that area that we had lost before 1972, but then there was an outcry from the Norwegian side that we were going against their law”.

The Saarivouma Sámi have lost their case for exclusive rights to their current grazing land in both the first and second instance but have appealed to the Supreme Court in Norway and are awaiting the final decision at the end of May.

“I see an end to it eventually, but it has taken almost my whole life,” Nutti says.