in the street.

At the more extreme end of the spectrum is Björn Söder. Although he has claimed he was quoted out of context, and his views were widely criticised, in an interview last week the Swedish Democrat said that it would be problematic if there were too many people “who belong to other nations” and had non-Swedish identities. He singled out Samis alongside Jews and Kurds in Sweden.

A lost mother tongue

The irony is that for many Samis this assimilation into Swedish culture and the shedding of Sami identities has already been great, and the costs have been dear. One of the biggest casualties of this process has been their language.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Patrik Lundgren shares the name he has given for the marking on his reindeer’s ear.

Ume Sami,was mirrored in his family home: “To protect me, my grandmother refused to teach me Sami.”

Fortunately, the place of Sami languages has improved in the Swedish education system. In 1998, the Swedish government apologised to the Sami people for the country’s oppression of the Sami. The refusal to let them speak and learn the language was, along with forcible displacement, cited as an example of such oppression. In 1999, the Swedish Riksdag approved the ratification of the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the protection of national minorities and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In 2009, the government introduced a new minority policy that outlined a responsibility for protecting and promoting the languages of the country’s national minorities.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anders Ruth: ‘To protect me