German and Austrian occupant literature on the Sami in Norway and Lapland : “Harmless” minority, a resource, and well-off “reindeer kings”
Nyyssönen, Jukka (2020). German and Austrian occupant literature on the Sami in Norway and Lapland : “Harmless” minority, a resource, and well-off “reindeer kings”. J@rgonia, 18 (35), 52-74. http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-202006234344
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J@rgoniaAuthors
Date
2020Copyright
© Jukka Nyyssönen
In previous research on the history of the Second World War in Finland and
Norway, relations between the German and Austrian occupying forces and the
Sami people have generally been considered to be good. The occupant gaze upon
the Sami has been interpreted as exoticizing and “touristic”. Historical
encounters and the Sami position in the literary discourse are discussed and
explained in this article, using a selection of German and Austrian wartime and
post-war literature. The discursive reading the sources bear evidence of multiple
ways of relating to the Sami, from benign to racializing; from demeaning to one
filled with surprise at unveiling a well-off, yet “primitive” minority. The Sami
were positioned in a complex way in the Nazi racial hierarchies, which were
multiple, some aspects of which appeared to enable the occupants to posit a
benign gaze upon the minority. The authors echoed Nordic research on the Sami,
and the hierarchies produced there as well. The weight that race had on
perceptions of the Sami is discussed, whilst other socio-economic factors are
analysed as well.
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