Two nomadic, non-territorial ethnicities that attracted the attention of intellectuals in the wake of Romantic Nationalism were the Romani of South-Eastern and Central Europe, Spain, England/Wales and elsewhere, and the Saami in northern Scandinavia. These ethnicities, whose literacy and settled participation in civic society was low during the 19th century, did not develop their own “cultivation of culture” until well into the 20th century; for most of the period covered here, they were objects of exoticist interest on the part of outside scholars and artists. Tellingly, both are known traditionally by “exonyms” – names given to them by non-members of their communities – which carry stigmatizing connotations: “Gypsies” (Cygani, Zigeuner) and “Lapps”.
The Saami, a non-sedentary group without civil rights, social esteem or political representation, saw their living area steadily shrinking towards the northern edges of Scandinavia and were marginalized by, rather than participants in, the modernization of Norway, Sweden and Finland. Some form of social organization was achieved in the frame of the Swedish Lutheran Church, when a Saami pastor, Lars Levi Læstadius (1800–1860), launched a successful pietistic movement involving an anti-alcoholistic temperance programme. He held his sermons in Finnish, Swedish and Saami dialects. He also aided a botanical/geographical French expedition to Lapland, during which he collected materials for a “Lappish mythology”. The MS was lost for a long time and only published in 1997.
Some ethnographical work was conducted by Scandinavian scholars, Castrén among them. The Norwegian philologist and ethnographer Jens Andreas Friis (1821–1896), who also studied under Lönnrot for a while, and who taught Saami to theological students at the University of Christiania/Oslo, published a Lappisk grammatik (indebted to Rask) in 1856, and a dictionary in 1887; a collection of folk tales appeared in 1856 and Lappiske mythologi: Eventyr og folkesagn (“Lappish tales and folk legends”) in 1871. It contained tales gathered in 1850 from oral recitation by a Pastor Fjelder, which were also published in a German version (by one Dr Bertram) as Peivash Parnéh, Die Sonnensöhne: Nach Bruchstücken einer epischen Volkssage aus Lappland (Helsingfors 1872). Friis also evoked Saami life in a novel, initially (1881) published as “Sketches from Finnmark” and later repeatedly reissued under the title Lajla.
While cultural patterns like yoik singing and traditional vestments had drawn exoticist interest from scholars, they met with little encouragement; nor were Saami in a position to undertake any organized or group-building cultivation of culture by or for themselves until the turn of the century. The pioneering steps in this direction were taken by Elsa Laula (1877–1931), daughter and wife of reindeer herders but herself trained as a midwife in Stockholm. She published a pamphlet Inför lif eller död? Sanningsord i de Lappska förhållanderna (“Facing life or death? Words of truth for the Lappish situation”), and in 1910 founded the Brurskanke Samiske Kvindeforening (Saami Women’s Association of the Brurskanken Mountain), with an educational agenda. In 1917 an international Saami council was held in Trondheim. Since then, cultivation of culture (crafts, music, language, narratives, films) has developed, as well as political consciousness-raising, including assertions of civil rights and some initiatives towards self-government. The foundation of quasi-state organizations by and for Saami is aimed largely at civic emancipation within the existing states.
