ABSTRACT
This chapter describes legal developments in Norway regarding Sami reindeer herders' rights to use traditional Sami reindeer herding areas and spanning the last 150 years. The Lapp Codicil of 1751 and the Constitutional Amendment of 1821 are evidence of a respect for the Sami people and an understanding of their economy, culture and history. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the Sami were generally considered to be indigenous inhabitants of Norway, who had been displaced northwards by the arrival of Old Norse-speaking tribes. Norwegian culture focused to a large extent on the process of Norwegian nation-building, in which there was no place for Sami culture, economic activities or society. In the Altevann case of 1968, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs intervened in the matter of paying compensation to Sami villages in Sweden that had lost herding land due to the building of a hydropower dam at Lake Altevann.
