WAYS OF LIFE

The Sámit’s traditional social unit is the « siida », a group of families, related or not, which run together a common territory. Each siida is managed by a council including the heads of the families, men or women. This structure, formerly known by all the Sámi groups, is still in use now among the Mountain Sámit. As a matter of fact, the reindeers use to migrate twice a year sometimes on several hundreds of kilometers. So their breeding requires a watch which may only be kept by several families together. Until the years 1950s, most of the Mountain Sámit still spent the whole year under the family tent. They have now bartered it for comfortable wooden houses, but they still use it during the migrations and even sometimes on their summer places.

The non-migrant groups have left their traditional dwellings too : the turf-hut for the Sea and Fishing Sámit, the standing-timbered cabin for the Forest ones. Living now in modern houses, all of them continue to carry on their basic activities to which they add some other revenues (small-scale farming, sheep and cattle husbandry, trade and tourism). The dress is still one of the major components of the Sámi identity. The original common model has somewhat evolved in each group, so one may easily identify, from the colours and the pattern of the braids which trim it with, the exact place where each one comes from.