TransRein
Project overview
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Short summary
By studying Sami natural resource use from 1550 to 1800, the project investigates how Indigenous peoples manage the transition from a foraging to a food-producing economy and how that change affects people.
Across the world, many Indigenous societies have independently transformed how they live and make a living. In northern Eurasia, one of the most significant changes happened between the 16th and 19th centuries, when many communities shifted from using reindeer mainly for transport to herding reindeer as a full-time way of life. This transformation deeply shaped the lives of Arctic peoples, yet we still know surprisingly little about why it happened or how it affected Indigenous ways of governing and living together.
Northern Fennoscandia (the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland) was one of the first places to experience this shift. The Sami people of northern Sweden offer an especially fascinating case to explore these questions. Historical records from this region are unusually rich, and the Sami are unique because, even after reindeer herding became widespread, many families continued to hunt and fish alongside their herding activities.
A common idea is that this transition happened mainly because of new market opportunities. But our project, TransRein, takes this further. We believe that the shift to reindeer pastoralism was not just a simple response to markets but also the result of self-organized decisions and adjustments within Sami society as the change unfolded. Our research aims to push the boundaries of what we know about Indigenous reindeer-herding societies by focusing on three goals:
- Reconstruct the story of how the Sami moved from transport herding to full pastoralism, with special attention to how they managed natural resources and how this shift changed their social relationships—giving us a much deeper understanding of Indigenous governance between 1550 and 1800.
- Compare the Sami experience with other reindeer-herding societies across Eurasia to find common patterns and forces behind this shared transformation.
- Place the Sami transition in a bigger picture, by looking at how similar shifts from foraging to herding happened in other societies, and how these changes fit into broader economic transformations in early modern Europe.
FACTS
Pastoralism is a term in anthropology that refers to nomadic livestock herding. It describes both societies that rely exclusively on livestock herding for their livelihood and those that combine herding with agriculture.