Jonas M. Nordin

Mining Sápmi: Colonial Histories, Sámi Archaeology, and the Exploitation of Natural Resources in Northern Sweden

In recent years, there has been a large-scale boom in mining in the present-day Swedish part of Sápmi, leading to protests from Sámi activists as well as environmentalist groups. To the protesters, issues of Swedish colonialism and Sámi indigeneity are central, and history becomes important. Taking its starting point in the mining conflicts, this article discusses Sámi archaeology and claims for Sámi indigenous land and cultural rights. We argue that it is important to further explore the colonial history in Sápmi, and its meaning and consequences today. Archaeology can contribute with new perspectives on colonial histories and relations, and connections between past and present in Sápmi. At the same time, many issues concerning the ethics and politics of archaeology need to be discussed. Furthermore, in discussions on Sámi archaeology and heritage management in Sápmi, it is important to consider experiences from the international fields of postcolonial studies and indigenous archaeology.

Metals of Metabolism: The Construction of Industrial Space and the Commodification of Early Modern Sápmi

In 1634, silver was found in inland Sapmi, on the present border between Norway and Sweden. The Swedish Crown had the ore extracted and a works for refining the silver was established in Silbojokk the following year. During the coming decades, two more works and many mines were opened in Sapmi. Sami, Swedish and Dutch/German migrant workers were employed under restrictive conditions and in a harsh climate. A colonial discourse was developed, viewing Sapmi as the Americas of the Swedes and the Sami as distinctly non-Swedish/non-European. Expectations of rapid economic and political gain created a metabolic relation to natural resources. The precious metals were exploited at whatever cost. This process caused a change in the perception of man, landscape and nature. Soon, the metal ores were exhausted and all the woods cut down. The three works studied here were all abandoned during the seventeenth century. The metabolic relation to the landscape and the process of commodifying nature prevailed and laid the foundation for later industrial expansion during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Copper Worlds : A historical archaeology of Abraham and Jakob Momma-Reenstierna and their industrial enterprise in the Torne River Valley, c. 1650-1680

ABSTRACT This article analyses the industrial enterprise of the Dutch-born brothers Abraham and Jakob Momma-Reenstierna and their investments in Sápmi and the upper parts of the Torne River Valley, northern Sweden, during the second half of the seventeenth century. The aim is to explore the driving forces behind the industrial projects of the two brothers in a larger global and colonial context. With inspiration from recent critical studies on the simplifications, and Eurocentrism, in earlier understandings of the birth of modernity, we focus on the modernizing processes taking place in the upper part of the Torne River Valley as a meeting zone between local populations and landscapes and external capital. Metal extraction was booming in the seventeenth-century Sámi areas. Both the Danish-Norwegian and the Swedish Crowns invested heavily in the mining of silver, copper and iron. The scientific focus in archaeology and history has hitherto been very much on the state-governed projects, and limited interest has been directed towards the private enterprises. Moreover, there is also a need to study the roles of the local Finnish and Sámi populations, as well as the global connections, in these colonial industrial projects.

A Baroque Landscape of Earth, Water and Fire: The Production of Space at Skokloster, a Swedish Estate of the Seventeenth Century

Abstract This article uses the elemental concepts of earth, water and fire to examine the production, use and control of space in the seventeenth-century Wrangel estate at Skokloster in central Sweden. Using a relational approach, the paper discusses how the elements symbolically express a part of the baroque aesthetic, how they were emphasised or pinned down as part of an economic asset, and how they reacted and produced space in dialogue with human agents. The reciprocal relations between man and earth through food production, tenancy and rent, or the management of woodland for firewood, demonstrate an on-going interaction between various socially-hierarchical agents. The construction of dams and the control of water illustrate other struggles between the tenants, the proprietor and the water itself. When setting up new types of heating systems inside the castle multiple sources of agency are visualised – the owners, the domestic servants, the woodland and the fireplaces. The study concludes that the elements operated as more than aesthetic and philosophical categories, but were empirically-evident worldly driving-forces.

Collecting, Connecting, Constructing : Early modern commodification and globalization of Sámi material culture

This article analyses the role of material culture in the enforcing of a colonial order in early modern Sápmi (Land of the Sámi, the indigenous people in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia). In addition, the article focuses on the unequal power relations created through the collecting and cultural appropriation of Sámi objects. The 17th century saw a rapid growth of interest in the Sámi and their material culture. Clothing, sledges, ceremonial drums and other objects were collected for royal and noble courts of Europe, as well as for scholars and other collectors. This Eurocentric process of constructing Sáminess was concurrent with colonial attitudes towards non-European peoples. Empirically, the article explores the collecting of Sámi objects, clothes and religious/sacred material culture such as ceremonial drums and sieidis, as well as models and mannequins, and their role in the colonial rule and imperial representations of Sápmi.