Conflicts Over the Repatriation of Sami Cultural Heritage in Sweden

Abstract

More than 400 years of colonization and assimilation policy by the Nordic states has created a new situation for Sami culture. Over this long period the Sami heritage has become thoroughly marginalized, but today the more overt conflicts that we find elsewhere in the world between colonizing states and indigenous peoples have diminished. Such conflicts are, perhaps, more characteristic of an earlier stage of the colonial frontier, and they have been replaced by post-colonial forms of consensus. Despite the shared experiences of the Sami in their recent history, some important differences have emerged between Nordic states in how the Sami heritage is perceived and how it is managed. Much more than in Norway, the dominant attitudes of the Swedish state continue to echo the discriminatory attitudes of the past, but in a more restrained way. This continuity of attitudes is demonstrated here using examples of current policies and practices. Particularly in Sweden, there are continuing conflicts between nationalism and the Sami world view, but I argue that these old conflicts are no longer the main problem in Scandinavia. Instead, scholars, Sami leaders, and others concerned with heritage in the north are finding common cause in opposing what we might call the ‘wilderness assumptions’ of policy makers in the south, especially within the neo-liberal Swedish state. These assumptions have been reinforced by the restructuring of state finances, and they are now leading towards neglect of northern cultural heritage and its associated institutions, particularly museums. These assertions are supported using examples from various museums and through case studies of the repatriation of Sami cultural objects such as drums and siejdde-stones, and the continuing problems with Sami skeletal remains.

Keywords:

• Sami cultural heritage
• Sami graves
• Sami drums
• Swedish museums
• Repatriation
• Wilderness assumptions

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was given in 2007 at a meeting at the Siida Sami Museum in Inari entitled ‘Recalling Ancestral Voices – Repatriation of Sami Cultural Heritage’. For this version I thank Dr Tim Bayliss-Smith, University of Cambridge, Dikka Storm, University of Troms⊘, and Anne Murray, the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm, for various comments on the paper and for linguistic corrections, and Anna-Karin Lindqvist for help with Figure 1.