Meeting the Sámi, the indigenous people of the Nordic region

The Sámi are the only indigenous people of the European Union, with communities across northern Norway, Sweden and Finland. Meeting them, and learning about a culture that is contemporary rather than frozen in the past, offers a way of understanding the north that landscape alone cannot. Here are some suggestions for where and how to do that, on terms that respect it.

Most visitors arrive in the north with some idea of the Sámi already formed, often shaped by images of reindeer, snow and traditional dress. Those things are real, but they are a small part of the picture, and taken alone they can mislead. Sámi life is not a relic. Reindeer herding remains central to many families and to Sámi identity, but Sámi people today work across every field, from herding to film, architecture, music and law. The culture is contemporary and adapting, not preserved behind glass. The suggestions that follow are most rewarding when approached in that spirit, as meetings with a living people rather than visits to a museum.

There is no exact figure for the Sámi population, since none of the countries records ethnicity. Estimates range from roughly 50,000 to 100,000, with around half living in Norway. The Sámi speak several related languages within the Uralic family, alongside Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian. Many people are bilingual, and decades of assimilation policy mean a significant number have lost their ancestral language, though efforts to revive these languages are now under way across Sápmi.

Karasjok and Kautokeino, Norway

Karasjok is one of the principal centres of Sámi life in Norway and the seat of the Sámi Parliament, whose building takes the form of a lavvu, the traditional Sámi tent. It is also, as it happens, the birthplace of 50 Degrees North co-founder Tietse Stelma. The municipality is home to around 2,600 people and, at peak grazing season, many times that number of reindeer. A large majority of residents speak Sámi.

The Sápmi Culture Park offers an introduction to Sámi history, food and the joik, one of Europe's oldest continuous song traditions. Visiting around Easter adds another layer, since Kautokeino, around 130km to the south-west, hosts the Sámi Easter Festival. This long-running gathering includes the reindeer racing and lassoing championships, the Sámi Grand Prix music competition, and a week of concerts, and it remains one of the best ways to encounter the breadth of Sámi cultural life in a short space of time.

Karasjok, and Kautokeino if you wish to add it, can be visited as part of our self-drive itineraries through the region.

Alta, Norway

Alta, on the coast of Finnmark, rewards a slower look. Just outside the town at Hjemmeluft lies one of the largest collections of prehistoric rock art in northern Europe, a UNESCO World Heritage site whose carvings record thousands of years of life in the Arctic, from hunting and fishing to boats and bears. The carvings predate the Sámi as a defined people, so they are best understood as a record of early northern life rather than Sámi heritage specifically, but they set a long horizon against which the region's living cultures can be understood. The Alta Museum, which cares for the site, sets the carvings in context.

On the banks of the nearby Alta River, Sorrisniva offers experiences led by local Sámi guides, including time in a lavvu, ice fishing and reindeer sleigh rides, with the chance to hear the joik and learn about reindeer herding from those who practise it. A visit to a Sámi family at Sorrisniva can be built into one of our Northern Norway journeys.

Sámi events near Tromsø, Norway

Sámi Week in Tromsø, held each February around the 6th, the Sámi national day, has grown from a single day into a week of concerts, talks, language courses, lassoing contests, reindeer racing and a market of traditional food and handicrafts. The national day is marked as a flag day across all four Sámi countries, but Tromsø's celebration is among the most substantial.

Many of our journeys include Tromsø. The 7-day Arctic Wilderness and Auroras, for instance, pairs it with the Vasara Reindeer Ranch in Kilpisjärvi, another place to encounter Sámi reindeer herding.

In July, the indigenous festival Riddu Riđđu takes place in Manndalen, around two hours east of Tromsø. It draws Sámi musicians and artists alongside indigenous performers from around the world, with concerts, films, courses and seminars. For a more comfortable base within reach of the festival, see our 7-day summer travel package in of Tromsø and the Lyngen Alps.

Harads, Sweden

The small village of Harads, on the Lule River in Swedish Lapland, has become known for two distinctive places to stay, the Treehotel, with its rooms suspended in the forest canopy, and the Arctic Bath, a design hotel built around a floating sauna on the river. Both are worth the journey on their own terms, but the area also offers a Sámi experience, held a short way out towards Jokkmokk.

Here you meet a young Sámi woman whose family are reindeer herders. Sitting in a lavvu by the fire, you hear her stories and joik over a meal cooked on the open fire from local ingredients, with time to feed the reindeer. It is a small, direct encounter, shaped by the person sharing it rather than staged for visitors, and it features in our 5-day Swedish Aurora Glamping & Arctic Wellness itinerary.

For travellers wanting a night deeper in the wilderness, Aurora Safari Camp, set in the forest near the Råne River, offers lavvu-style tents and open skies well away from any town. It is a nature and aurora camp rather than a Sámi cultural experience, but it makes a quiet base in the same region, within reach of the encounters described here.

The Jokkmokk Winter Market, Sweden

Held in the first week of February since 1605, the Jokkmokk Winter Market is one of the most important meeting places in the Sámi calendar. It draws thousands of visitors, but its deeper significance is as a gathering point for Sámi people from across Sápmi, with parades, lectures, food, joik concerts, and art and handicraft exhibitions. For Sámi traders, it is as much an annual reunion as a market.

A visit combines easily with a stay at the Treehotel in Harads, around an hour away. Accommodation is limited and demand is high, so it is worth planning well ahead.

Nutti Sámi Siida, Sweden

Nutti Sámi Siida, in Swedish Lapland, offers Sámi-led experiences including reindeer feeding and sledding, traditional food, and exhibitions of Sámi arts and crafts. It sits just over a kilometre from the Icehotel, which makes the two easy to combine.

The 6-day Aurora Safari in Swedish Lapland could be extended to take in several of our Swedish suggestions, travelling from the Treehotel to the Arctic Bath, then on to Jokkmokk and the Icehotel with a visit to Nutti Sámi Siida.

Inari, the centre of Sámi life in Finland

In Finland, the village of Inari is home to the Finnish Sámi Parliament and can be considered the heart of the Finnish Sámi homeland. It is also home to the Sámi Museum Siida, an indoor and outdoor museum with changing exhibitions on Sámi culture, history, art and nature.

In late January, the Skábmagovat Film Festival marks the end of the polar night with films by and about indigenous peoples from around the world, alongside workshops, discussions and concerts. Visiting around the Sámi national day on 6 February offers another window onto Sámi cultural life, while a trip in mid-August coincides with Ijahis idja, Finland's only festival dedicated to indigenous and Sámi music.

We offer many tours and tailor-made journeys to the Inari region, many of which include Sámi experiences.

Vasara Reindeer Ranch, Finland

Finally, in Kilpisjärvi, in the north-westernmost corner of Finland, the Vasara Reindeer Ranch is a working Sámi reindeer farm. A stay here is built around the working life of the place, home to Nils-Matti Vasara, a 12th generation Sámi reindeer herder, with nights spent in a glass igloo or log chalet. It features in our 7-day Arctic Wilderness and Auroras itinerary, which also includes a winter visit to Tromsø.

What connects these places is not a single experience but a way of approaching it. The Sámi are not a sight to be ticked off, and the most rewarding encounters tend to be the quietest ones, a conversation by a fire, a meal shared, an afternoon spent learning how reindeer shape a family's year. Travelling well here means arriving with curiosity rather than expectation, and leaving with a clearer sense of a people who are very much of the present. The north has been home to the Sámi for thousands of years. To meet them on their own terms is to understand it better.