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Background: When people in Northern Norway get ill, they often use traditional medicine. The global aim of this study was to examine the extended family networks’ function and responsibility in cases of illness in the family, in two Northern Norwegian communities with a population of mixed ethnicity. Methods: Semi-structured individual interviews with 13 participants and 4 focus group interviews with total 11 participants were conducted. The text data was transcribed verbatim and analysed based on the criteria for content analysis. Results: The participants grew up in areas where it was common to seek help from traditional healers. They were organized in networks and shared responsibility for the patient and they provided practical help and support for the family. According to the networks, health-care personnel should make room for the entire network to visit the patient in severe and life-threatening situations. Conclusion: Traditional networks are an extra resource for people in these communities. The networks seem to be essential in handling and disseminating hope and manageability on an individual as well as a collective level. Health personnel working in communities with mixed ethnicity should have thorough knowledge of the mixed culture, including the importance of traditional network to the patients.

Focusing on women’s and men’s participation, this article sheds light on the reindeer herding on the island of Hinnøya and in the southern areas of the county of Troms, Northern Norway, during the 18th and 19th centuries. In this region the Sámi and the Norwegian populations have been living side by side for a long period. In addition to hunting and gathering, the economy of the Sámi population was based on farming, fishing, and reindeer herding. Based on a variety of scant sources, the study focuses on the organization of the household and the concept of household as applied to a reindeer herding population. Who was participating in the reindeer herding and how was it organized? Men’s and women’s roles in the household, their economic contributions and their attachments to specific places and areas, are also studied. Public documents such as assize minutes, tax registers, censuses and court testimonies dating from the 1740s onwards have been analysed with regard to ethnographic and biographical studies. The four mentioned sources allow for different approaches to the analysis of gender perspectives, families, kinship, female and male participation, household organizations, economic activities and land use. By comparing this material with ethnographic studies and travel literature, selected individuals are followed – at least partly – through the different phases of their lifetime. Their roles within the household, their social status and kinship shed light on different conditions of their economic base. It is shown, in a systematic discussion of the sources related to specific regions, that women contributed to and participated in the reindeer herding as a part of a combined economy. However, the sources are insufficient for a full reconstruction of the Sámi households in this geographical area.

The introduction of metals, particularly iron, has always been seen as an important stage of socio-cultural, economic, and political departure of human development. Nevertheless, since its appearance in the form of utilitarian or armaments, iron has occupied an ambiguous position in any society. It has played both the role of production by increasing fertility or prosperity, and destruction by furnishing the process of or terminating life. This ambivalent position of the material is also evident in the position of the workers in their respective societies. Consequently, its workers (the tumtuu) are both feared and respected. This ambiguous position/role of the material and the artisans has long attracted heated debates amongst archaeometallurgists. Although the double roles of iron tools among the Oromo traditional believers in Wollega can never escape such debates, engagement in such a debate is beyond the scope of this article. This article, however, departs from the search for the destinations of iron tools once they left the production sites in the operational sequences i.e. traditional ritual site of the Qaalluu. The data for this discussion have emerged from my current ethnoarchaeometallurgical research in northeast Wollega, which aims to documenting different destination of iron/metal products after they left the cottage of the smiths. This article attempts to draw on the secular meaning of metal tools in order to attain the symbolic significance derived from it. Utilizing the data from traditional spiritual sites in northeast Wollega (Butaa Nadoo and Sagro Guddina), the article outlines the peaceful resolution of various forms of conflicts at the traditional ritual sites in the medium of metal tools or by invoking their symbolic value.

A recurrent topic in ethnographic, historical and archaeological research has been the origins of Sámi reindeer pastoralism. The article discusses how prevailing theories have been influenced by general conceptual schemes, apriori constructed models and an extensive use of taxonomies. The debate has centered aroundhowandwhendomestication took place, presupposing a paradigmatic change from hunting to pastoralism. However, there has probably never been an abrupt change; hunting and herding have both been parts of a multifaceted adaption existing up to the nineteenth century. What did change was the social organization of herding when a pastoral economy became the norm at that time. Such a change also had qualitative consequences in terms of new values and economic strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 2007 Reindeer Husbandry Act acknowledged in principle the tra- ditional Sámi siida as a rights holder and basic unit of the working partnership. The Act provides a definition of the siida and certain provisions concerning its institutional aspects. The siida system had lost prominence under the Reindeer Herding District regime. Two basic issues must now be determined to restore siida autonomy – animal numbers, and siida rules of land usage. The article dis- cusses these issues in relation to traditional reindeer herding customs. Keywords: Sámi, siida, reindeer husbandry, land, scientific and juridical approach, herding concepts. Citation: Arctic Review on Law and Politics, vol. 3, 2/2011 p. 138–158. ISSN 1891-6252

Background: When people in Northern Norway get ill, they often use traditional medicine. The global aim of this study was to examine the extended family networks' function and responsibility in cases of illness in the family, in two Northern Norwegian communities with a population of mixed ethnicity. Methods: Semi-structured individual interviews with 13 participants and 4 focus group interviews with total 11 participants were conducted. The text data was transcribed verbatim and analysed based on the criteria for content analysis. Results: The participants grew up in areas where it was common to seek help from traditional healers. They were organized in networks and shared responsibility for the patient and they provided practical help and support for the family. According to the networks, health-care personnel should make room for the entire network to visit the patient in severe and life-threatening situations. Conclusion: Traditional networks are an extra resource for people in these communities. The networks seem to be essential in handling and disseminating hope and manageability on an individual as well as a collective level. Health personnel working in communities with mixed ethnicity should have thorough knowledge of the mixed culture, including the importance of traditional network to the patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]