Do you want to see more portraits of people I meet on my travels? Comment below!
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This is Anneli. She lives just outside Tromsø and works as a reindeer herder. Yes, no matter who you are, she has a cooler job than you.
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Anneli is Sami - a group of 150,000 people residing in Lapland (the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the western tip of Russia), the Sami are the oldest indigenous culture in northern Europe, with a well-defined community established before the Vikings were even around.
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Discriminated against by the Norwegian government for most of their history, Sami culture has enjoyed a reprieve and a resurgence in prominence in the last 50 years (at the start of the 20th century, Sami were not even allowed to teach their own language).
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One thing I learned from Anneli - everything in Sami culture means something. The pattern on her coat, the buttons a man has on his belt, everything signifies something - your family roots, whether you’re single or married, etc.
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I will delve into the Sami and their reindeer in #NordNorge in an upcoming post. So stay tuned! #losethemap
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