Sami Place Names and Maps: Transmitting Knowledge of a Cultural Landscape in Contemporary Contexts

Sarah Cogos · Marie Roué · Samuel Roturier

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Indigenous Cultures and History Language and Culture Indigenous Studies and Ecology

Abstract

For the Sami people, place names provide the basis for the transmission of a cultural landscape, through an oral way of mapping built around narratives and the designation of specific landmarks. Based on interviews with members of a mountain-based reindeer herding community in Sweden, we found that their transmission is today ensured through continued oral tradition but also by the increasing use of maps. However, because they follow the western cartographic tradition, official maps are unable to express the continual renewal of Sami place names and the land features that are meaningful to the Sami, and thus fail to convey toponymic knowledge. Inscribing place names on maps transforms them into mere labels: toponymic knowledge has to be transmitted along with its context of emergence, situated at the crossroads of cognitive, perceptive, emotional, and social dimensions. There is an urgent need to conceive new forms of cartography that can guarantee the transmission of toponymic knowledge to future generations, maintaining the relationship that binds the Sami to their environment.

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References

2002The Perception of the Environment 2012The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill 1993The temporality of the landscape 2015An Introduction to Critical Cartography 1995GIS, Indigenous Peoples, and Epistemological Diversity 1988“Speaking with Names”: Language and Landscape among the Western Apache 2008Mobility and Place: Enacting Northern European Peripheries 2008Mapping Indigenous Depth of Place

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2024Spatial distribution of toponyms and formation mechanism in traditional villages in Western Hunan, China 2022A toponymic cultural heritage protection evaluation method considering environmental effects in a context of cultural tourism integration 2022‘Process Toponymy’: A GIS-Based Community-Engaged Approach to Indigenous Dynamic Place Naming Systems and Vernacular Cartography

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