Antisámism in Norway: Historical background and contemporary experiences of racism and discrimination against the Indigenous Sámi

Negative attitudes to the Sámi population among Norway’s majority population is an old phenomenon. “Antisámism” has existed for centuries in Norwegian popular culture, academia, and politics, and remains a challenge today: anti-Sámi attitudes and practices constitute part of the social landscape that modern Sámi must navigate while struggling for self-determination and the survival of Sámi identity, culture, and traditional industries. This paper looks at “antisámism” not as one single ideology or discourse, but rather as a set of several distinct negative views on, and treatments of, the Sámi. The paper clarifies the roots of different types of antisámism – and provides modern examples of Sámi experiences with each of them, based on interviews and media studies. These “genres of antisámism” include Sámi invisibility as a form of structural discrimination; the Sámi as an economic threat to the majority; the Sámi as a lower "race" or lower class; the Sámi as a threat to Norwegian identity; and the Sámi as a security threat to the majority. The paper also sums up the present quantitative knowledge status about Sámi experiences with antisámism, and adds earlier unpublished data from a recent quantitative study.