Battle Murmansk
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Battle Murmansk
Russianizm/Russification of Kola Saami, Russia (Part V)
Saami have been pushed to convert into Christianity since the eleventh century. However, collecting tribute was more successful, rather than converting Saami to a new fate.
Considerable number of Saami lived on the territories that were inaccessible to the majority of other people. Lutheran churches were built in the western suburbs of Saami territory from the sixteenth century while on Kola Peninsula, and also in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, orthodox monasteries enslaved Saami who were living nearby.
Monasteries often took into their possession the best places for fishing and hunting. Monks sometimes forged official papers, and this deceived the local Kola Saami. It was hard to prove the authenticity of documents. The Kola Peninsula was too far away from capitals, and Sami were not literate. The Orthodox faith very slowly extended among Saami, and even in the twenty-first century, there are still adherents of traditional beliefs/shamanism.
Monks and priests pursued a humanitarian idea to “humanize wild Lapps,” and for centuries impudently plundered and oppressed the indigenous people. In the nineteenth century, Russian historian N. Haruzin, in his book Russian Lapps about Krestny and Voskresensky monasteries wrote, “If to ask a question, whether the Voskresensky monastery helps to Iogansky Lapps, it is necessary to answer, unfortunately, it is negative. It promoted their impoverishment and hardened them by an example of a life of brotherhood in corrupting image operated on them. It has left them uncivilized in ignorance for many years, without caring for their education.”
The missionaries focused most of their efforts on noaides (shaman) and children. They reasoned that if they could convert noaides, the rest of the Saami population would follow them. Noaides resisted conversion. However, their efforts fell far short without internal organization and the support of their community.
Russia, as was in Norway and Sweden, used to remove young Saami children from their homes to teach them in monastery schools. Eventually, school attendance became a mandatory.
The small Kola Saami community managed to keep their originality, traditions, language, art, and folklore, despite oppressions from merchants, industrialists, churchmen, and also foreign aggressors.
The violent introduction to Christianity in Russia was mostly formal. Saami held tight to their customs. They have created many poetical and wise national legends and songs. One of these is “The Legend on Gorge Dead,” written by academic Visa in the Soviet period. It narrates the bloody slaughter occurring in a gloomy gorge where Saami-soldiers battled to death with the Norwegian and Danish aggressors.
From eighteenth to the early twentieth century’s, the inhabited territory by Kola Saami was part of the Arkhangelsk province. By the end of the nineteenth century, their economic condition had worsened because Saami traditional territory was lost as a result of colonization in 1888 by Komi and Izhems. They arrived with the remainder of their reindeers (only approximately 5,000 due to an epidemic among the livestock) from the White Sea district of Kanin Peninsula and settled in a Lovozero area.
Unlike local Saami, the Komi were persuaded by commercial sale of products of reindeer breeding as meat, skins, and pants. They actively traded in Kohl, Murmansk, and at the Tersky coast. Traditionally, Saami have practised less intensive subsistence herding by leaving reindeers to graze freely during the summer period, to rely on fishing.
Saami used reindeer only for their own consumption. Lovozero Saami have refused to sign the rights to newcomers for any part of their land. This led to a long opposition that continues till now. For example, Saami are trying to keep away from local official offices people whose ancestors were Komi.
The situation looks like a sleeping bomb. The commercial reindeer herding has supported the people on the Kola Peninsula since the arrival of Komi to present time.
About the Author
Rachel Madorsky, an internationally published award-winning author of several books.
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