The Coastal Sa?mi of Norway and their rights to traditional marine livelihood

• Author: Steinar Pedersen
• Pages: 49-78

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[start kap]

The Coastal Sámi of Norway and their

rights to traditional marine livelihood

Steinar Pedersen

Steinar Pedersen, Historian. PhD, Associate Professor, Sámi University College,

Kautokeino, Norway. E-mail: Steinar.Pedersen@samiskhs.no.

Received September 2010, accepted November 2011

Abstract: e coastal Sá mi of Norway have, for thousands of years and long

before the Norwegian state wa s established, relied on a wide range of marine

and terrestrial resource s. Due to increased public regulations over the past few

decades, it has become dicult to continue their traditional livelihood, combin-

ing shery in loca l seawaters with husbandry or other local industries on la nd.

Fish quotas have been made tradable, and so to a large extent transferred outside

the local communities. is a rticle presents a short historical background, and

discusses two legal docu ments from the 18th c entury, which are relevant for

coastal sher y rights in northernmost Norway. e rst is the Lapp Codicil of

1751, which may perta in to the coastal Sámi today when its foundi ng principle

– the preservation of the “Lappish Nation” (Sámi Nation) – is duly considered.

e other document is the Land Acquisition Decree of 1775, which included a

formalization of the sea-shing r ights of the inhabitants of Finnmark.

Key words: Coastal Sámi, Finnmark, ancient use, sea-shing rights, Lapp Codicil

(1751), Land Acquisition Decree (1775), U N Declaration on indigenous rights

(2007).

1. Introduction

is article deals with Sámi coasta l shing rights in Finnmark, the northern most

county of Norway. e trace archaeological ev idence tells us that Finnmark has

been inhabited for 10,000 to 11,000 years. e Sámi are the oldest known ethnic

Arctic Review o n Law and Politics, vol. 3, 1/2012 p. 51–80. ISSN 1891-6252

stei nar ped ersen

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group in the area today, with a his tory that dates back at least 2,000–3,00 0 years.

Marine resources have formed the most important ba sis of their livelihood dur-

ing this entire time. One of the oldest written sources, the narrative of the North-

Norwegian chieain Otta r, includes a description of the Sámi. Chieain Ot tar

sailed from the Tromsø area to the White Sea at the end of the 9th century. He later

told King Alfred of England that he had seen no inhabitants, other than Sámi sh-

ermen and hunters on the Arctic coastl ine of Finnmark and the Kola peninsula.1

During t hose 10,000 to 11,000 years of settlement, up until the last couple of

decades, no one ever questioned whether people living i n this area had t he right

to sh and utilize the mari ne resources in their local and regional waters. Severa l

formal regulations ensured that the inhabitants of the county had the ba sic right

to sh, and to s ome ex tent regulations ba sed on Sámi indigenous rights2 also

had evolved.

e issue to be discussed here is whether thousands of years of shing in the

same waters, including use of the adjacent terrestrial resources, is a sucient basis

to provide for independent rights today. For example, how is the traditional liveli-

hood combining shery and livestock husbandr y over the last few hundred years

being taken into account in contemporary laws and regulations? ose traditional

combinations of livelihood include coastal marine shing for Atlantic cod (Gadus

morhua), haddock (Melanogrammus aeglenus), coalsh (Pollachius virens), plaice

(Pleuronectes platessa), halibut (Hippoglossus), herring (Clupeaharengus), Atlantic

salmon (Salmo salar), etc., and hunting for dierent marine mammals and terres-

trial anima ls, freshwater shing, berry-picking, livestock husbandry, and formerly,

some small-scale keeping of reindeer as wel l.

Here, we specical ly focus on the management of sheries, where in fact a large

proportion of the Coastal Sám i population, along with other commun ities in the

same region, have gradually lost the right to make their living from traditional lo-

cal and regional sh resources.3 Fish quotas have been made tradable and thereby

been transferred to outsiders with enough capital to buy them. How this has come

about in recent decades is discussed i n the next section.

1. NOU 1984: 18, p. 643.

2. See chs. 3 and 4.

3. e regulation s are common to the rest of Nor way, but their impact has bee n most negative

in Sámi area s in the North.