Norway’s Supreme Court is deliberating on a case that could grant local control over a vast area in the country’s far north — and set a groundbreaking precedent for Indigenous land rights in Europe.
The case will determine whether the largely Indigenous Sámi municipality of Karasjok will get collective ownership over its roughly 5,450 square kilometres of land — the second-largest municipal area in Norway and one of the most productive in terms of natural resources.
The Sámi are Europe’s only formally recognized Indigenous group, with traditional territories spanning the national borders of Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia. Across traditional territories in four Arctic nations, Sámi communities are already engaged in high-profile conflicts over land as the appetite for industrial projects on their territories appears to be ever-rising.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Norway’s Supreme Court is deliberating on a case that could grant local control over a vast area in the country’s far north — and set a groundbreaking precedent for Indigenous land rights in Europe.
Within the northern coastal area known today as Finnmark, a county roughly the size of Nova Scotia, decisions about land are currently made by a private company, jointly managed by Sámi and a local public government.
If the court decides for Karasjok, the community will achieve direct, local control over development decisions in their territory — and call the future of the existing system into doubt.
At issue in Karasjok is whether the Kingdom of Norway ever established legal title over the lands of Finnmark, which formed a part of the heartland of the Sámi people long before the country took control of the area in the early 18th century.
“The history of land ownership in Norway is very similar to other Indigenous peoples’ areas,” said Rune Fjellheim, a Sámi politician from Karasjok who helped convene the local parties to the case.
In 2019, that commission found, by a narrow majority, that the largely Sámi Municipality of Karasjok had never ceded title to a territory comprising more than 5,000 square kilometres, representing over 10 per cent of FeFo’s lands and millions of dollars in annual income.
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