Kinship and Settlements: Sami Residence Patterns in the Fennoscandian Alpine Areas around A.D. 1000

Abstract

while another suggests that the transition to reindeer herding took place much earlier, during the period A.D. 200-1000A.D. 200- (cf. Aronsson 1991 Storli 1994). Regardless of which of these positions is adopted, a specifi c type of ancient feature, the so-called stállo foundation, is a recurrent object of discussion. 1 Stállo foundations are the remains of hut dwellings that exclusively occur in the high mountain areas of the Scandes. They consist of sunken fl oors with earthen embankments surrounding the shallow depressions. The origin of the stállo foundations (Norse or Sami) has been a matter of dispute, although most scholars currently consider them to be Sami (cf.

Surviving the Winter in Northern Forests: An Experimental Study of Fuelwood Consumption and Living Space in a Sami Tent Hut

“…ϳ6.9 m 3 per person. When extrapolated to an approximate annual consumption, our results indicate that more than 42 m 3 of wood was needed per hut, or approximately 9.3 m 3 per person, assuming that 4.5 people lived in each hut on average (see Bergman et al, 2008;Josefsson et al, 2010a). This is 60% higher than the amount derived from a previous experiment (also in a Sami hut, but using unseasoned birch wood) by Liedgren and Ö stlund (2011).…”

“…According to detailed forest landscape data derived from Josefsson et al (2010b), the mean volume of pine trees with a mean height of 12 m and mean diameter of 25 cm dbh growing in the Tjeggelvas Nature Reserve, ca 80 km north of our study site (66ЊN, 17ЊE), is approximately 0.3 m 3 . Assuming that the trees were of this size and that approximately 42 m 3 was consumed annually in pre-industrial times, about 140 trees were cut for fuel per tent hut, but almost certainly this figure is too conservative for a settlement, since a Sami family commonly consisted of 2-4 households, each residing in separate huts (Hultblad, 1968:122;Bergman et al, 2008;Josefsson et al, 2010a). As in other pastoralist economies throughout the northern hemisphere, the population density in the study region was very low in the past, i.e.…”

Plants in a “Sea of Relationships”: Networks of Plants and Fishing in Makkovik, Nunatsiavut (Labrador, Canada)

“…This practice is believed to have depleted the populations of specific game species to the extent that people could no longer sustain themselves by hunting these animals and were therefore forced to start keeping domesticated reindeer (Lundmark 1982). More recent archaeological investigations have shown that this transition is most likely to have been of much earlier origin, dating back to AD 850-1050 (Bergman et al 2008, Storli 1994. The timing of the transition has been considered important because it marks a change in social organization, from the common sharing of prey by members of a hunter-gatherer band to the privatization of domesticated animals, allowing individual Sami to gain power due to the possession of private property (Ingold 1980).…”

Exploring Pre-Colonial Resource Control of Individual Sami Households

“…Although it has been pointed out that Sami groups have sometimes remained in the alpine mountains with their reindeer throughout the winter in the past (Bergman et al, 2008), access to winter pastures in pine-dominated lichen forests are usually considered to be the limiting factor for reindeer husbandry (Steen, 1966:77 -82). Several attempts have been made to estimate the minimum area of lichen pasture needed for reindeer winter nutrition in Fennoscandia: the results range from 8 -10 hectares to 16 -20 hectares per head (Kumpula et al, 2000).…”