Norwegian Woods (OT)

Lapps are now generally known as ‘Sami’ or ‘Same’ [pronounced ‘Sar-mi’]. They are the same people who were named in the remote past ‘Finns’, [the “small (?) very mild Finns...” of Jordanes] or Procopius’s Scrithifini]. Nansen remarks that “Lapps are called ‘Finns,’ both in Old Norse and modern Norwegian...” It has been suggested that the Lapps may be unique among the present-day Arctic peoples in that they have remained in the same place in the Arctic since just after the last ice age. Their home has been the northern regions of Norway, Sweden and Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia for a period of about eight thousand years.

The modern people known as Finns, inhabitants of Finland, are quite different. They are descended from a collection of tribes speaking similar languages of the ‘Finno-Ugric’ family - the same language which they passed to the Lapps and which is now spoken by them. This succession of land-hungry tribes probably arrived in the area of the eastern Baltic, Finland and Karelia around 100 B.C. to 100 A.D. and included the Estonians and Karelians. These peoples came from central Russia, and brought with them the ability to cultivate cereals. Those migrating to what is now Finland would have displaced small numbers of resident nomadic Lapps [Sami], who withdrew to the north. [‘Finnic Peoples’, Encyclopædia Britannica, Britannica (R) CD 99 Multimedia Edition (C) 1994-1999 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.