Sami Culture - History - Origins of The Norwegian Sea Sami - The Bubonic Plague

The Bubonic Plague

Until the arrival of the bubonic plague of 1349 in northern Norway, the Sami and the Norwegians occupied very separate economic niches. The Sami hunted reindeer and fished for their own livelihood. The Norwegians, concentrated on the outer islands and outer sections of the fjords, were connected to the greater European trade routes; did marginal farming in the Nordland, Troms, and Finnmark counties; and fished for trade products from the south. The two groups co-existed using two different food resources. According to old Nordic texts, the Sea Sami and the Mountain Sami are two classes of the same people and not two different ethnic groups as had been erroneously believed.

This social economic balance greatly changed with the introduction of the bubonic plague in northern Norway in December 1349. The Norwegians were closely connected to the greater European trade routes, along which the plague traveled; consequently, they were infected and died at a far higher rate than Sami in the interior. Of all the states in the region, Norway suffered the most from this plague. Depending on the parish, sixty to seventy-six percent of the northern Norwegian farms were abandoned following the plague, while land-rents, another possible measure of the population numbers, dropped down to between 9-28% of pre-plague rents. Although the population of northern Norway is sparse compared to southern Europe, the spread of the disease was just as rapid. The method of movement of the plague-infested flea (Xenopsylla cheopsis) from the south was in wooden barrels holding wheat, rye, or wool – where the fleas could live, and even reproduce, for several months at a time. The Sami, having a non-wheat or -rye diet, eating fish and reindeer meat, living in communities detached from the Norwegians, and being only weakly connected to the European trade routes, fared far better than the Norwegians.