Sami History V – the 19th century

During the period 1868-1873 the Swedish government drawn the borders of cultivation. They divided the Swedish land between state and private land and also drawn a line for the protection of the Sami are from further colonization. It should prevent these areas from cultivation, but it didn’t succeed vey much. In 1886 the Sami were guaranteed to have the right of pasturing their reindeers by law. However the reindeer herding law represented a reduction of the Samis rights since it given the advantage to the government. The Sami weren’t able to manage their own business since the Swedish government thought the law as if Sami people was in lower cultural level. By luck, this reindeer herding law has been revised several times after the original to favour the Sami. At the end of the 19th century the problems for the Sami people increased as the mining and forestry expanded to previous inaccessible areas.