Abstract

During the last two centuries, fire suppression has critically modified boreal ecosystems in northern Scandinavia and has undoubtedly affected indigenous Sami land use. We inventoried Sami toponyms referring to fire in a municipality located in Swedish Sapmi, and investigated their past and present meanings by analyzing Sami dictionaries and conducting semi-structured interviews with Sami reindeer herders. We use toponyms based on the Sami word roavve' - a lichen-rich pine-heath that has burned - as a description of past ecosystems to inventory understory and tree vegetation and date the last occurrence of fire in 15 roavve' places. The inventories showed that some roaave' places have developed a late succession vegetation type, reducing their suitability for reindeer grazing. We argue both that fire suppression strongly influences the ecological trajectory of these sites and that one must take into account ethnoecological considerations when using toponyms as ecological markers to fully understand their meanings and avoid misinterpretation.

Keywords

Toponym; Fire suppression; Sami reindeer husbandry; Indigenous knowledge; Boreal Sweden; Forest history

Published in

Human Ecology
2019, Volume: 47, number: 1, pages: 51-64
Publisher: SPRINGER/PLENUM PUBLISHERS

SLU Authors

• Östlund, Lars

  • Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss


UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology
Forest Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-019-0056-9

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/99254