ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some aspects of the sociolinguistic variation and change in North Saami, a Finno-Ugric minority language traditionally spoken in the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and urban centres. It determines the issues that make North Saami sociolinguistically different from the dominant majority languages surrounding it. The chapter is based on field experience, as there is a near-total lack of research on North Saami sociolinguistics. 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. In a traditional dialectological analysis the North Saami-speaking area is divided into four main dialect areas, the Eastern Inland, Western Inland, Torne and Sea dialects. The phenomena described in this chapter are largely based on observations of language use in the parts of the speech community that show a relatively high degree of language vitality.
