In a 1924 painting, King Harald Fairhair stands before the gamme of Svåse, a Sámi king, on Norway’s Dovrefjell mountain. The scene echoes a history that new research says was present in medieval writing: Sámi people were not merely newcomers to Central Norway, but appeared in texts and family stories centuries before the 18th century.
For years, some researchers supported what is called the “hypothesis of late immigration”: the idea that South Sámi people reached Central Norway no earlier than the 18th century, after Norwegian farmers had already settled there. Historians at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have now found written evidence that challenges that view. Their work does not settle every question about where people lived or when, but it shows that Sámi presence was known and recorded much earlier.
Peter Sigurdson Lunga and Emil Mård Vaadal Eliasson, both historians at NTNU’s Department of Teacher Education, led the research. They and colleagues published a special issue of the journal Historisk Tidsskrift, or Historical Journal, examining references to South Sámi people in medieval sources. Researchers from Germany and the Netherlands also contributed analyses.
The team studied texts from Norway, Iceland and the Orkney Islands, written down between the 12th and 14th centuries. They found Sámi names and other concrete references, including in stories about the origins of kings and powerful families. Such accounts were once brushed aside as fantasy. Lunga and Eliasson argue that the repeated, matter-of-fact presence of Sámi people in these writings is evidence that they were physically present and seen as important.
The family stories also reveal how status worked. In Viking Age and early medieval genealogies, a family could claim descent from gods, links to people from abroad, or kinship with the Sámi, who were associated with mastery of magic. Lunga’s analysis says that by the 13th century and later, many Norwegian and Icelandic noble families were believed to have South Sámi ancestors. Some Norse chieftains may have used Sámi ancestry, whether real or invented, to strengthen their family’s standing.
Eliasson says the researchers see signs of intermarriage and Sámi elements in the genealogies of powerful families, including royal lineages such as Harald Fairhair’s. Lunga notes the sharp contrast with more recent attitudes: “Not that long ago, having a Sámi background was a source of shame in Norway. But during the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, this was something people took pride in.”
A major gap remains. Researchers have not systematically studied South Sámi history from 1250 to 1650, Eliasson says. The new work opens questions about why these origin stories were recorded and what they meant to the people who told them. By returning to old texts with those questions in mind, historians are bringing a long-overlooked part of Central Norway’s past into clearer view.