Sami culture and the mapping of marine biodiversity

Abstract

The article explores whether marine biodiversity mappings can contribute to the mapping of the material basis of Sami culture. Four different mapping practices are analysed in the article, all related to the seascape in the Lyngen fjord (Lyngenfjorden) in northern Norway. Initiatives undertaken by the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries and the Institute of Marine Research (IMR) to map cod spawning grounds, and by the Sami Rights Commission (SRC) to map customary use of a fjord are compared with local fishing practices. Although the seascape was initially mapped to find spawning grounds (the IMR and the Directorate) and to record social practices (the Directorate and the SRC), the outcomes also express social relations between the mappers and the mapped materials. Whereas the mappings that included fishermen's relations with fishing grounds are compatible with each other, the marine scientists' mapping documented biodiversity independent of local relations with it. The author argues that the marine environment should be seen as expressing social relations between groups of people and certain materialities instead of as separated in natural and social layers. Thus, even though marine biodiversity mapping practices reveal biodiversity in Sami settlement areas, they inform little about the material basis of Sami culture.

Keywords:

• fishing grounds
• mapping practices
• marine spatial planning
• Sami customary use

Acknowledgements

I thank Svein Jentoft and Maiken Bjørkan at the Norwegian College of Fishery Science, University of Tromsø, Inga Fløisand and Elin Myrvoll, Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage Research, and an anonymous reviewer for comments on previous versions of this article. However, the views expressed are my own.

Notes

1. The traditional Sami settlement area in coastal Norway is here generally identified as consisting of areas where a majority of Sami were settled according to the historical censuses that registered ethnicity in Norway (1845 until 1930 and to a smaller degree in the 1950 and 1970 censuses). In the Lyngen area which is the focus of this article, the censuses have registered a highly multi-ethnic population consisting of Sami, Kvens (descendants of settlers from areas in Finland), and Norwegians. In the Kåfjord area, where the fishing ground chosen as a case study is located, the 1930 census registered a few nomadic reindeer herders, a large mixed population (c.60%). In 1930, a total of 856 Sami persons were registered in Kåfjord out of a population of 2482 (Evjen 2007).

2. A multi-year Sami fisheries research programme led by the Centre for Sami Studies at the University of Tromsø.

3. In Sami and Norwegian oral tradition, fishing grounds can be located in the sea by their landmarks (what Paine (1957) calls ‘bearings’) and names. The names function as addresses in the seascape in ‘the common pool of knowledge’ (Paine 1957, 102; Bjørklund 1991), and contain descriptive marine-bottom appellatives (Brattland & Nilsen 2011).

4. All translations from Norwegian are by the author

5. Throughout the spawning season (which peaks between mid-March and early April, fishermen can observe female cod with roe in various stages of maturation from hard to increasingly soft, until the roe is ripe and reaches the stage when the eggs are released to the water and then fertilized on the spawning grounds. According to Berg & Albert (2003), the sex and maturity of a fish, particularly coastal cod, can be determined by visually inspecting its gonads (in female fish, the roe) ‘using a general maturity index (immature, maturing, running, spent)’ (Berg & Albert 2003, 788). The term ‘running roe’ or ‘runny roe’ (rennende rogn) thus refers to the penultimate stage in this process, and is the phenomenon observed by fishermen that is used by the Directorate of Fisheries (Fiskeridirektoratet 2012, spawning area theme layer description) to identify that spawning has occurred in an area (see also Knutsen et al. 2007). When fishermen report having caught fish with runny roe it means that they have observed female cod with ripe roe in the process of releasing their eggs in a spawning area.