Advanced ages at death in Sápmi during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: With special attention to longevity among the Sami population

Abstract

This article examines advanced ages at death in a historical population in northern Sweden between 1780 and 1900. The source material used is a set of data files from the Demographic Data Base at Umeå University supplemented with the search tool Indiko. The belief that the Sami died at very old ages was tested, and life tables and values of remaining life expectancies at older ages were calculated. The information of the age at death was analysed using a model containing four levels of certainty. The analysis reveals that the Sami did not live to extreme ages. The analysis also reveals large differences between the parishes concerning extreme longevity and correctness of age at death.

Keywords:

• age exaggeration
• life expectancy
• longevity
• Sami

Note

Acknowledgments

The research project is part of the activities at the Centre for Sami Research and the Centre for Demographic and Ageing Research at Umeå University. Thanks to the Demographic Data Base for the preparation of data files; to colleagues at the Centre for Sami research; and Demographic and Ageing Research, especially to Sören Edvinsson for helpful comments and to Gabriella Nordin for the transformation of the ethnic variable. I also thank two anonymous referees and the editors of Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History for comments on previous versions of the article.

Notes

1. Swedish national data on life expectancy are taken from the Human Mortality Database (www.mortality.org).