P.S. It is recommended to read the previous story “When the Sami had to become Norwegian” to get a better overview of the topic.
Those who made the decisions on how the Sami were to live their life did so with the intention to assimilate them into Norwegian society, and most of them had never visited Sápmi or Lappland. The hundred years between 1850 to 1950 were characterized by overruling and decision-making policies that harmed the Sami minorities, but at the same time it created a national pride and opposition to the assimilation amongst the Sami — The fight to stay Sami and practice their culture next to the Norwegian society. And that source of conflict started with the school system.
The Finns names him Bobrikoff. The name suits him well. Bobrikoff was appointed by the Tsar to Russify Finland, and Thomassen by Wexelsen to Norwegianize Finnmark.”
Isak Saba about school director Bernt Thomassen
In 1901 it was no longer any doubt: research and reports from Finnmark, Norway’s northern region was so bad that the government decided with minister Wexelsen to appoint a school director to oversee the Norwegianization policy. The school being one of the most important instruments to assimiliate the minorities gave the position as school director of Finnmark an outmost powerful role. Church- and Education minister Wexelsen personally appointed teacher Bernt Thomassen (1859–1929) from Trondheim, as the first school director of Finnmark in 1902. Thomassen was an eager defender of the Norwegianization policies, and with ambitions to fix school dropouts, replace teachers with Norwegian teachers only and raise the level of inclusion into Norwegian society and language. He stated that it “was a welfare case for the Lapponian and Finnish population in Northern Norway. Through Norwegianization, they will experience development and progress.”
In his mind, he might have been referencing the Wexelsen Poster, a set of rules given by minister Wexelsen on how to educate the minority children in school. In short, Sami or the Finnish language as help to understand Norwegian. To prevent the lack of education, the government founded the Finnefond, a fund devoted to teaching and building state boarding schools in the name of the Norwegianization policy. Here the Sami children met nothing that reminded them of home. They were taught and spoken to in Norwegian and presented a whole new way of living.
Not giving up being Sami
“One can very well remember from the times one started in school. You were shy and scared as the Finn often is, but open and with a clear mind. One wanted so much to have a trusted relationship to the teacher. But here you were soon to be disappointed; for the teacher spoke a language that sounded so remote and far away, so cold and foreign. You didn’t understand a thing!”
Per Fokstad, “How the Norwegianization gripped into my life”
Per Fokstad (1890–1973) was a teacher and political representative of Sami rights, and that with a good reason. He came from a district in Finnmark named Tana, which at the time of his childhood had nearly no Norwegian speakers. Per couldn’t speak Norwegian when he entered the school, and the treatment he experiencened made him fight for the right to have Sami in school. Most of the contributors and fighters for Sami rights shared Fokstad’s background. They lived through the toughest assimilation period and found the most respectable path for a Sami — studying to become a teacher in Tromsø. The college had places reserved especially to students of Sami background, but getting so far meant that you as a Sami already had to give up your culture, teach Norwegian and adapt to the dominant Norwegian society at the time. For most of the educated Sami, this was hard to accept. And as the Norwegianization policies got tighter, the opposition started to form itself and spread to the parliament in Oslo.
Isak Saba (1875–1921) was the first Sami who was elected into the Storting, the Norwegian parliament in 1906. He was like Fokstad a teacher, and an avid local politician of Finnmark Labour Party. He contributed by preserving and presenting Sami culture by writing the Sami national anthem and had many public arguments with school director Thomassen. Saba was one of few who spoke openly against the Norwegianization policies and always created an uproar. After his interviews in the newspapers, it was a storm of critical answers from supporters of the Norwegianization policy.
“I once asked an official: “What is Norwegianization?” Whereas he answered “that the Sami wil learn to speak Norwegian.” To such work I give my full support. The most Finns (Sami) can express themselves in Norwegian fairly well. But that is not enough. The Finns have to learn to utilize the Norwegian language as easy as the Norwegians. Otherwise they will not survive in the competition. — If Norwegianization on the other hand means that the Finns will give up their nationality and melt together with the Norwegians, then I’m not with it anymore.”
Saba interviewed in Skolebladet 1906
Bernt Thomassen tried to find the official Saba was citing, defending that there was never any forbidding of using the Sami language in school. The boarding schools took great care of the children, and thus Saba was only complaining. In other words, the Norwegianization policies and the development of the northern regions did not affect the minorities as bad as Saba wanted it to be, according to Thomassen.
“There are a lot of signs that, with rising enlightenment, culture, and transportation, the separation between the three people in Finnmark will become more and more blurred as has already happened in other places. Some are in this case dissatisfied. And those reasons, which I will not go into, are different. Others mean that it is a blessing for the people.”
Bernt Thomassen, Skolebladet 1907
The Sami opposition
No matter what was discussed in the local Finnmark newspapers, the Norwegianization continued through the years. Isak Saba was a representative in the Storting up until 1912, and then he continued his work on preserving Sami culture from home until his death in 1921.
Per Fokstad and other Sami groups across Norway and Sweden continued to fight for the rights in the years that followed. Elsa Laula Renberg (1877–1931) and a hundred other Sami took the initiative to hold the first official Sami meeting across all nations where Sami lived. The meeting took place in Trondheim in 1917 and marked the start of a more united Sami opposition to the harsh assimilation policies.
By appealing to the governments and create local organizations they made the foundation of the Sami governments we see today. Their initiatives of getting the Sami language back in school, was one of the core cases to still keep the Sami identity going, even long after most Sami moved into modern houses.
