Indications of shifting cultivation west of the Lapland border: Multifaceted land use in northernmost Sweden since AD 800

Abstract

Permanent cultivation is generally believed to have been established in the interior of northernmost Fennoscandia later than elsewhere in northern Europe, during or after the late 17th century. Although subtle evidence from various pollen records suggests cultivation may have occurred much earlier in this region, such indications have generally been disregarded. We hypothesized that cultivation was introduced early in the Lapland border zone where western native Sami interacted with coastal farming societies due to the high degree of contact between these communities. Therefore, we investigated historical land usage at three settlement sites in the interior of Sweden's northernmost territories -two in the Lapland border zone and one in a more westerly traditional Sami area. Analyses of pollen, charcoal and written historical records indicated that cultivation first occurred in AD 800 (700-900) at the westernmost site and one of the border zone sites. Permanent cultivation appears to have been established in c. AD 1480 (1400-1560) and 1750 (1720-1810) in the two Lapland border zone settlements and around AD 1840 in the westernmost settlement. These results suggest that small-scale shifting cultivation may have been conducted in inland regions of Northern Fennoscandia (including a traditional Sami area) since AD 800. As such, they support the hypothesis that intermittent small-scale cultivation has been going on in these regions for much longer than was previously accepted. Because there was a great mobility of people and ideas across northernmost Fennoscandia, we conclude that the current tendency to describe specific geographical regions as being solely used by 'nomadic herders' or 'permanent farmers' is inappropriate and fails to capture the complexity of historical land usage.

Early Cereal Cultivation at Sami Settlements: Challenging the Hunter-Herder Paradigm?

“…Indeed, at some sites there are indications that they were cultivated as early as 850 BC (Segerström 1990b;Engelmark 1976;Tolonen 1972). Pollen records display discontinuous occurrences of cereal pollen in association with apophytes-wild native plants that are associated with humans or increase in abundance following human activities (Behre 1981;Hicks 1988;Josefsson et al 2009)-sometimes in conjunction with increased amounts of charcoal particles that may be indicative of intermittent small-scale shifting cultivation (Hörnberg et al 2012(Hörnberg et al , 2015 in a similar way as has been interpreted for the same kind of finds in southern Sweden (e.g., Lagerås et al 1995). Permanently cultivated fields linked to agrarian settlements seem to have been established much later, between AD 1300 and 1400 Segerström 1995).…”

“…During the period AD 1300-1500 more sustainable forms of land use evolved that were well adjusted to alpine ecosystem dynamics (Bergman et al 2013). 2) was initially a summer camp of reindeerherding Sámi but later, during the beginning of the 19th century, it became the permanent settlement for reindeer herders including farming as part of their subsistence (Hörnberg et al 2015;Manker 1956:78-83). 2), dating to AD 1350, suggests that cultivation was integrated within an otherwise explicitly pastoralist context (Staland et al 2011).…”

“…In the interior Sámi area cereal pollen has been recorded at a number of sites, again in association with apophytes and charcoal particles that may indicate small-scale shifting cultivation from at least AD 800 (DeLuca et al 2013;Hörnberg et al 2015;Josefsson et al 2009) but possibly as early as 600 BC (Jankovská and Kociánová 2010) (Fig. 2).…”

“…These occurrences have largely been disregarded as "anomalies," and the new finds have been interpreted within the framework outlined above (see Josefsson et al 2014 for a review). In this paper we analyze cereal cultivation in Sámi contexts from the perspective of postcolonial theory and address northern Sweden during the Late Iron Age and Early Medieval period, AD 800-1500 (Hörnberg et al 2015). In this paper we analyze cereal cultivation in Sámi contexts from the perspective of postcolonial theory and address northern Sweden during the Late Iron Age and Early Medieval period, AD 800-1500 (Hörnberg et al 2015).…”

Thule Inuit environmental impacts on Kangeq, southwest Greenland

“…The majority of palaeoecological studies that consider the environmental impacts of hunterfisher-gatherer groups at high latitudes have been conducted in woodland (closed-canopy) environments (e.g. Hicks, 1993;Bell et al 2005;Olsson et al 2009;Khorasani et al, 2015;Hörnberg et al 2015;Kamerling et al, 2017) that are very different from those in which the Thule operated in Greenland. Only a small number of palaeoenvironmental studies are available regarding the impacts of Palaeo-Inuit (Saqqaq and Dorset culture) and Neo-Inuit peoples on open arctic landscapes in Greenland and North America.…”