ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some aspects of the sociolinguistic variation and change in North Saami, a Finno-Ugric (Uralic) minority language traditionally spoken in the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and nowadays also in urban centres outside the traditional speaking area. We shall discuss issues that seem to make North Saami sociolinguistically different from the dominant majority languages surrounding it. The chapter is mostly based on field experience, as there is a neartotal lack of research on North Saami sociolinguistics.1 Hence, the sociolinguistic observations described below must be treated with some caution, and in-depth research would obviously reveal a much more elaborate picture of the phenomena discussed in this chapter. North Saami is one of ten distinct Saami languages traditionally spoken in Lapland,
in an area reaching from Central Scandinavia in the southwest to the tip of the Kola Peninsula in the East. North Saami is the largest of the Saami languages with approximately 25,000 speakers. The figure is a rough estimate, as there are no good demographic data on speakers of Saami languages, and, moreover, the legislations of Sweden and Norway forbid gathering of demographic data related to ethnic identity. The traditional speaking area of the language is divided between three countries: Norway, Sweden and Finland. North Saami speakers form the majority of the population only in the municipalities of Kárášjohka (Karasjok) and Guovdageaidnu (Kautokeino) in Norway, and possibly also Ohcejohka (Utsjoki) in Finland; everywhere else the speakers are in the minority. The speech community is undergoing language shift, but the language is still transmitted to children in its core speaking area, and there are also active efforts to revitalize the language. North Saami is classified as “definitely endangered” in the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (Moseley 2010).
