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D
EBRECENI
E
GYETEM
F
INNUGOR
N
YELVTUDOMÁNYI
T
ANSZÉK
F
OLIA
U
RALICA
D
EBRECENIENSIA
20.
D
EBRECEN
, 2013
161
The Earliest Contacts between Scandinavians and South Saami
1
Lars-Gunnar L
ARSSON
1. The first inhabitants of Scandinavia
Over the centuries the opinion about the ethnic identity of Scandinavia’s
first population has moved back and forth. Up until the middle of the 19
th
century, the Saami were generally regarded as the original inhabitants of all
Scandinavia. Such an opinion is expressed clearly by Johan Ihre in his pref-
ace to the Saami dictionary of E. Lindahl & J. Öhrling, Lexicon Lapponicum,
from 1780. According to Ihre, the greatest linguist of Sweden at that time,
this idea was first presented by G. W. von Leibniz. Ihre’s version of the the-
ory is, however, mixed with a mythical perspective; the Germanic language
was introduced into Scaninavia by ”Odin and his company”. In other words,
the main god of the Scandinavians has become a historical person.
At the middle of the 19
th
century the general opinion changed in a radical
way. The Saami were now seen as immigrants, often late immigrants, par-
ticularly in the southern parts of their area of distribution. According to the
Norwegian historian Yngvar Nielsen (1891: 26) the Saami had spread from
the north at a very late point of time and had not reached the area of Røros, in
the southernmost Saami area of today, until late in the 17
th
or even early in
the 18
th
century. His view is clearly connected with the Norwegian national-
ism that was growing strong at this time, but his expressions occasionally
have a distinct racist character, e.g., when talking about the need ”to stop the
Lappish invasion” or when describing what happens when the Saami ”get
into closer contact with culture”. Certainly there was a similar nationalism in
Sweden, as all over Europe at that time. In the writings of Karl Bernhard
Wiklund, the first Swedish scholar in Finno-Ugric and Saami research, this
nationalism was intertwined with a strong darwinistic perspective (Larsson
1996: 49 f.). According to him also it was a question of ”a real Lappish im-
1
The broad version of the study was delivered on 28 November 2013 at the University
of Debrecen in the framework of the author’s Doctor honoris causa lecture.