Behind the sleigh bells and huskies of Lapland’s Christmas industry, the Sámi people struggle

When I was a child growing up in Sweden, “Lapland” meant magic – snow, huskies and reindeer. I was born in Göteborg, on Sweden’s west coast, and like countless families from across Europe, I made the northern trip one winter as a kid, when the promise of meeting Santa in his “homeland” was irresistible. 

By the 1990s, northern Finland had been branded as the home of Santa Claus, complete with grottoes and hotels around the Arctic Circle near Rovaniemi. The legend had been carefully cultivated since the 1950s, when Eleanor Roosevelt’s postwar visit helped launch Finland’s Christmas-tourism industry. Today, hundreds of thousands of visitors arrive each year to meet “the real Santa” and buy a little piece of Arctic wonder. Only later did I realise how much of that wonder was constructed – and how easily it blurred into misrepresentation. 

Behind the image of snow and Santa lies another, older story: that of the Sámi – the Indigenous people of northern Europe. Numbering around 80,000 to 100,000, they live across the Arctic regions of Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia’s Kola Peninsula. Traditionally semi-nomadic, many Sámi communities made their living through reindeer herding, fishing and handicrafts known as duodji. 

The region so often called Lapland is, in truth, their homeland – known in the Sámi languages as Sápmi. It stretches from the Norwegian coast to Russia’s Kola Peninsula. The word Lapland may sound benign to outsiders, but it carries a complicated legacy. In Scandinavian languages, Lapp was historically used by settlers as an exonym for the Sámi people, derived from a term that could mean “uneducated” or “uncivilised”. The name reflects a colonial gaze: a wilderness to be mapped, its people romanticised or erased. 

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In Finland, Lapland (Lappi in Finnish) is also the official name of the country’s northernmost administrative region – the municipalities of Enontekiö, Inari and Utsjoki, plus the northern part of Sodankylä. The Sámi are the EU’s only formally recognised Indigenous people; within Finland, this homeland is the core of Sámi cultural and political life. The same land is called Sápmi in North Sámi, Säämi in Inari Sámi and Sää’mm in Skolt Sámi – linguistic diversity that colonial naming concealed. Despite that richness, Sámi languages were long suppressed. For much of the 20th century, Sámi children were punished for speaking their mother tongue and were taught instead in Swedish, Norwegian or Finnish. 

Sámi wasn’t recognised as a minority language in Sweden until 2000; in Finland, it gained official status in Enontekiö, Inari, Sodankylä and Utsjoki in 2003; and Norway followed in 2005. 

As tourism boomed, misrepresentation followed. Knock-offs of the gákti – the traditional Sámi dress – appeared in shops and on postcards. The gákti is not a costume but a statement of belonging: colours, cut and patterns often signal a wearer’s home area or family and, in some regions, marital status. Yet across northern Finland and Sweden, the red-and-blue tunic became a novelty – something tourists could buy or dress up in while on holiday. 

Even seemingly harmless attractions can cause harm. Around 10% of Sámi people are involved in reindeer herding – a practice central to their economy and identity. Free-roaming sled dogs, promoted as part of Arctic adventure tourism, have been known to chase or kill reindeer, disrupting herding routes and livelihoods. Dog-sledding has little connection to Sámi or Finnish traditions – yet it has become one of the most recognisable symbols of “Lapland” abroad.  

The commercialisation of Sámi life is not just about aesthetics – it’s about power: who controls how Sámi people are seen. In response, the Sámi parliament in Finland adopted a framework to end exploitation and correct misinformation in 2018. Illustrated by Sámi comic artist Sunna Kitti, the document makes one point clear: Sámi people must lead storytelling about Sámi life. 

That same principle – self-definition – lies at the heart of Finland’s latest political reform. In June this year, the Finnish parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee backed an update to the Sámi Parliament Act, designed to strengthen Sámi self-determination and bring Finnish law into line with international human-rights standards. Crucially, it clarifies that the right to vote in Sámi parliament elections does not determine who counts as Sámi – a key point in decades of debate over identity. 

When I think back to the Lapland I visited as a child – all sleigh bells, huskies and bright costumes – I can see how much of it was theatre. Some of the Sámi’s story was being told, but not by the community itself. Three decades later, that’s beginning to change.  

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