At the very northern edge of Europe, world’s apart from the dry, olive groves of Palestine, a solidarity movement is forging. Despite being thousands of miles away, the Sami people of Norway, Sweden, Finland and western Russia have emerged as vocal supporters of Palestinian self-determination.

Palestinian support at such a northerly latitude may come as a surprise. The Sami people have no historical contact with Palestinians, or indeed the Middle East, at large. But generations of Sami people have known all too well the brutality of oppression, displacement and the impact borders have had. 

Europe’s only remaining indigenous peoples, with a history stretching back as far as the melting of the glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age, have battled increasing land encroachment, hate speech, forced assimilation policies and the arrival of mineral extraction companies destroying their land. 

Because of this, many Sami say there lies a deep connection between two, separate peoples.

“The Sami are historically silenced and subjugated. There are things we can understand through our experience,” says Helga West, a researcher on Sami reconciliation at Helsinki University, and herself of Sami heritage. 

It all comes down to the imposition of borders drawn without Sami consent; a historical form of colonialism that has direct echoes to early Palestinian loss of land under the British in the early twentieth century. 

“The Sami know how it is to be marginalised and lose our lands. It all starts with state borders,” says Aslat Holmberg, president of the Sami Council.

Holmberg is a salmon fisherman. He’s also an advocate for indigenous rights, originating from a border area that is modern day Finland on one side and Norway on the other. In the division of his ancestral home, Holmberg understands the deep crisis borders create in splitting communities apart. 

Finland and Norway were considered Sami land “long before both countries existed”, he says. So too the areas spanning modern day Sweden and Karelia, western Russia. 

After Norway and Sweden drew a line of separation in 1751, Sami fortunes deteriorated rapidly. Their migratory existence with the reindeer began to decline with it. Reindeer herding remains a part of the Sami economy and their means to a sustainable livelihood. But even that is on the brink today, with just under 10,000 reindeer herders left. 

Reindeer herding is deeply interwoven into Sami language, tradition, and culture. For Maja Kristine Jana, from a reindeer herding family on the Fosen peninsula, it is a source of pride and ancestral wisdom. “It's not just knowledge of how to take care of the reindeer, but how to respect the nature and the landscape you are in,” she says. 

Her way of life is under danger, in what Holmberg describes as “colonialism with a shade of green”.

The construction of Europe’s biggest wind farm on the Fosen Peninsula, north east Norway, in 2016 moved the Nordic country away from fossil fuel dependency. But in that so-called green shift, the wind farm - owned by a state-funded energy firm, a Swiss company and the city of Munich - was built without Sami consent. 

By 2021, the Norwegian Supreme Court deemed the construction a violation of Sami human rights. Three years on, the wind farms remain in use. Pipes and roads have destroyed reindeer grounds for grazing, cutting away not just vital nutrients, but threatening a way of life the Sami have long known. 

“The psychological impact isn’t spoken about by the media and, especially, the national authorities,” says Jama. Her front line Sami community, squeezed into ever tighter spaces over generations, face increasing corporate pressure to leave their ancestral homes.