Sharing land: Sami resource management before and under the early phases of settler colonization

This project aims to clarify how the indigenous Sami shared land and resources in the Swedish lappmarker from 1645, when there were almost no settlers, to 1845, when the Sami were becoming a minority.

The project capitalizes on the recent digitization of Wiklundʼs excerpt collection, a uniquely large body of transcripts of district-court records on Sami land use.

Once locations and individuals have been identified, GIS methods will be used to map the movements of persons, groups, and communities in time and space.

The results will be included in an interdisciplinary reinterpretation of existing field data on past Sami land use from forest-history studies.

Furthermore, the court records will be used for an analysis, based on the theoretical framework of Elinor Ostrom, of how operational rules were set up for the management of common-pool resources.

The project will be executed in three years through a series of subprojects, starting in a limited area and zooming out to encompass all Swedish lappmarker.The project will produce new knowledge on how the Sami managed crucial resources both among themselves and in relation to the increasing demands of immigrant settlers.

It will promote a holistic understanding of how and why land use evolved in different ways in the different lappmarker during a period of critical change.

Also, the project includes the development of GIS and LiDAR methods to map physical remains of Sami presence and analyze historical land use.