Forest Fire and Indigenous Sami Land Use: Place Names, Fire Dynamics, and Ecosystem Change in Northern Scandinavia

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 Sápmi, 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.