Norwegianization of the Sámi

Over the course of the 1800s it became increasingly influenced by Social Darwinism and nationalism, in which the Sámi people and their culture were regarded as primitive and uncivilised.

Today, we express our regret on behalf of the state for the injustice committed against the Sámi people through its harsh policy of Norwegianization."

[5] It has been concluded that the narrative that portrayed the Sámi people as underdeveloped and uncivilized had its origins in theological convictions, and that these informed the subsequent sense of Norwegian Nationalism.

[7] Historian Henry Minde and psychologist Stephen James Minton argue that the assimilation of the Sámi population at the hands of the Norwegian government began in earnest in 1851, with Minde identifying the Alta Controversy and establishment of the Sámi parliament in 1987 as the end of the policy.

In 1899, Wexelsenplakaten was passed, an official instruction which forbade Sámi people and Kvens from acting as educators in multilingual schools.

[13] The purpose of the boarding schools was to isolate the pupils from their roots and communities, thus making the assimilation process more effective.

Local government correspondences in the Sami and Kven languages were found in the archives of Kistrand between 1860 and 1910, indicating that some communities avoided or did not implement as strong of assimilatory processes as others.

[21] In this period, the ideological reasoning behind the assimilation policy continued to evolve, influenced in part by the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905.

Around this time, it became legal to deny Sámi and Kven people the right to lease or buy land in Finnmark.

[23] In 1923, he wrote that "the Lapps", a slur used on the Sámi population, lacked both the ability and the motivation to use their language in written form.

Furthermore, he described them as the most underdeveloped and loathsome of groups in Finnmark, claiming that they made up a disproportionate portion of the people in need of psychiatric care or special education.

[13] The introduction of the 7-year school in 1936 represented a further tightening of the assimilation policy, as it resulted in the Finnish language being banned in educational settings.

[26] The committee's attitude signaled an important break with the politics and perspectives of the Norwegian government's assimilation policy.

In the same vein, Norwegian authorities have avoided taking responsibility for the consequences the assimilation policies had on both private individuals and the Sámi population as a group.

The purpose of the assimilation policy was undoubtedly to eradicate the culture, language, and history that contributed to the formation of Sámi and Kven/Finnish identity.

These include the human rights lawyer Láilá Susanne Vars[38] and psychologist Stephen James Minton.

[40] Similar policies occurred in other European countries during the same period, including Swedification in Sweden, Danification in Denmark, and Germanization in Germany.