Diss. Umeå : Univ., 2004.

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The 17thcentury’s marketplaces established in the peripheral areas of Fennoscandia were revealingly intertwined in inter-cultural encounters of minorities as they were in market exchange. Historical sources supply insight in the trade between Sámi and wealthy merchants, but nonetheless they are to be criticized for beingauthored from an outside perspective. The archaeological record, however, provides an alternative approach to knowledge about the history of trade in Sápmi. This paper proposes to shed light on what archaeology can reveal about two contemporary marketplaces: Arjeplog and Arvidsjaur. This is accomplished through compiling and presenting the archaeological record of each marketplace in two separate case studies. Sequentially, some observations are discussed within the context of each marketplace, and later the archaeological record of them both are juxtaposed to each other. Hence, minor deviations from the historical framework are considered and reviewed as the study settle in for a terminal discussion of the results. From here the archaeologically based reality of market exchange in Arjeplog and Arvidsjaur intend to function as non-biased means for the local community to raise awareness of their past, and to invoke interest in further excavations.

De historier vi berättar för varandra berättas med ett syfte. Men vem berättar dem och med vilket bakomliggande syfte? I denna kvalitativa studie som bedrivs som en komparativ flerfallstudie undersöks och jämförs användningen av det existentiella historiebruket i lokalhistoriska publikationer. Författarna till dessa publikationer har antingen en samisk kulturell bakgrund eller en kulturell bakgrund som kan ses svara mot nybyggarkulturen. De lokalhistoriska publikationerna handlar om orterna Arvidsjaur och Glommersträsk samt de personer som där levde. Uppsatsen visar på hur författarna drivs av en tydlig personlig tendens och att valet av berättelser har ett bakomliggande syfte. Uppsatsen visar även hur författarna konstruerar ett ”vi” och ”dom” som primärt definieras av antingen etnicitet eller moraliskt handlande och att de använder denna konstruktion för att styrka det historiska narrativ författarna vill förmedla. / The stories we tell each other aret old with a purpose. But who tells them and for what reason? In this qualitative study, witch is conducted as a comparative multiple-case study, the use of existential history use in local history publications is examined and compared. The autors of these publications have eather Sami cultural background or a cultural background that can be seen as corresponding to the settler culture. The local history publications are about the places Arvidsjaur and Glommersträsk as well as the peaople who lived there. The essay shows how the authors are driven by a clear personal tendency and that the choice of stories has an underlying purpose. The essay also shows how the authors construct a ”we” and ”them” that is primarily defined by eather ethnicity or moral action and that they use this constuction to strengthen the historical narrative the authors want to convey.

The areas of study for this dissertation are the Turopon and Sirkas lappbyar (communities) in the parish of Jokkmokk during the period 1760—1860. The starting point for discussion is a decrease in population through migration to Norway, from 667 inhabitants in 1781, to 353 in 1868. The primary cause was the ecological instability of reindeer herding with recurring crises caused by poor grazing, adverse snow conditions, epizootics, and predators. The stability in reindeer herding is finally determined by the numbers of grazing animals and the carrying capacities of the pastures. A disturbance in the balance between people and animals could occur if competition from the settlers limited available pastures, or the government through taxes appropriated so much of the surplus that the subsistence level was markedly increased. A closer examination reveals, however, that no outside influences can be indicated as being responsible for the population decline. Attention must thus be directed toward the inner social processes of this pastoralist society. While the reindeer herding population diminished, the total number of reindeer remained on a relatively constant level. The resulting process of accumulation consolidated the reindeer into the hands of fewer owners. While these conclusions indicate an economically differentiated society, the marriage pattern shows that the social distance between the economic groupings was very small. By promoting economic differentiation, trade had an important potential as agent of social stratification. This potential was, however, not fully realized. The equalizing factors were stronger than the differentiating forces. / <p>Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Umeå universitet, 1989, härtill 5 uppsatser</p> / digitalisering@umu

This thesis is a study of factory owner Abraham Abrahamson Hülphers’s collections of parish description about the parishes in Norrland, more specifically those about Medelpad and Ångermanland. The thesis seeks to explain how Hülphers’s collections were created in practice while also presenting the descriptions content and analysing the ideology it reproduced. It does so by analysing Hülphers’s published descriptions, his travel journal and some of his correspondence. The thesis uses Mary Louise Pratts ideas about the imperial gaze as a theoretical framework to understand the work of Hülphers and the relation between the enlightened middle class and the peasantry which they described. The thesis investigates the idea of the parish descriptions understood as Hülphers travel journal reworked, arguing that Hülphers journey through Norrland was important for social reasons, rather than information gathering, and presenting the collections as new texts, not transformed versions of the journal. Furthermore the thesis discusses who helped Hülphers create the descriptions and the impact these men, from the same enlightened middle class as Hülphers himself, had on the text. The thesis also handles the economic ideology of the enlightenment as mirrored and reproduced by the descriptions. Here the focus lies on the priorities of the parishes different lines of work and the boundless optimism of enlightenment man – as nature could be conquered completely by man’s reason. Finally the thesis discusses the way Hülphers described the local culture; what he considered to be virtues and vices in the peasant population in terms of habits, language and dress, also showing the great value he considered the local dignitaries to have and discussing his disdain towards the superstitions of old as these could lead a community towards chaos.