Christianization of the Sámi people

[4] They were however silently allowed to practice Sámi shamanism in private until the second half of the 17th-century, when Swedish authorities forced them to abandon their religion, burning their Sámi drums, banning the joik singing and forcing them to subject to the doctrine of the church both in public and private.

[5] In the 18th-century, the Christian mission among the Sami in Norway achieved actual success, after the Christian missionaries convinced the authorities to grant the Sami amnesty from the witchcraft law, which made it possible for Pagans to openly discuss their religion without the risk of getting arrested for witchcraft.

[3] In parallel, the Pietist Mission in Copenhagen sent the missionary Thomas von Westen to the Norwegian Sami people in Finnmarken where he was active in 1716-1727.

Instead of doing as the previous missionaries and force the Sami to practice outward Christianity, such as to attend church, he focused on personal theological persuasion.

The Sami tribes living in the Kola Peninsula fell under the Eastern Orthodox sphere instead of the Catholic-Protestant realm as a consequence of Novgorodian and later Russian expansion into and conquest of the region's easternmost parts.