Abstract

The Sámi are an indigenous people living in the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland and in North-Western Russia. This chapter discusses the development of Sámi housing, and in particular the way cultural conceptions of purity and hygiene influenced Finnish efforts to valorize and improve it. It opens with a discussion on nineteenth-century descriptions of the Sámi way of life and then focuses on the post-Second World War period of reconstruction. The period was characterized by the large-scale introduction of type-house planning, especially in the war-ravaged province of Lapland, where the Finnish parts of the Sámi homeland were located. The reconstruction was guided by legislation, influenced by contemporary ideals of regulation and standardization and, as the chapter will show, by deep-rooted notions of purity and hygiene. While type-planned housing were seen (by the Finns) as a means of offering similar and equally good housing to both Finns and Sámi, it involved a major rupture in Sámi housing traditions and brought the Sámi culture and way of life closer to those of the Finnish majority.