Afanasyeva, A. Forced relocations of the Kola Sámi people: background and consequences / by Anna Afanasyeva. - Tromsø: University of Tromsø, 2013. - 82 p.: ill., map, portr.

14 and commercial transporting. 34 The settlements in the local Sámi language are called ‘sijjt’ (in rus. ‘pogost’). 35 Correspondingly, summer settlement in Sámi is called kiess’ sijjt 36 and winter settlement tall’v siijt . 37 Sijjt refers to kinship-based communities as socioeconomic and cultural unit of the Kola Sámi settlement system. 38 However, a number of studies do discuss if sijjt correlates with the Northern Sámi term siida , which is quite broadly used to talk about a settlement unit in the Sámi discourse. 39 2.2 Sámi ‘sijjt’ on the Kola Peninsula before the 1930’s Active Russian influences on the Kola Sámihad already started in the 16 th century with arrival of Christian missionaries. 40 Up to the late 19 th century almost all 1800 Sámis were members in the Russian Orthodox Church. 41 The anthropologist Wheelersburg mentions that the pre-revolutionary government with the Orthodox church had negative impactson the Kola Sámi culture; 42 one of the historians of the Kola Peninsula, Kiselev A.A. notes that the Christian influences on the Kola Sámi started almost one century earlier than the Sámi in Scandinavia: though the Christianity came to the Russian Sámi one hundred years earlier than to the Sámi in Scandinavia, however it didn’t reveal the situation in economic sense and household, at the time the whole notion of the Christianity was still strange and foreign for the Sámi people. 43 Thus, the early Russian Empire developments emerged on the Kola Sámi with promotion of the Christianity, building first churches and monasteries, though without changes in the settlement spatial distribution, which continued up to 1917, when the monarchy was overthrown and started the Soviet period. 44 Another contemporary historian Kalstad mentions that up to the late 1930’s Sámis had their own system of law, social organization, and natural resources distribution known as sijjt , which was abolished up to the 1930’s with the start of the 34 Wheelersburg, Gutsol 2009:224; Informant B. 35 in Kildin sámi: plural sijt , singular sijjt. 36 rus. letnij pogost. 37 rus. zimnij pogost. 38 Sergejeva 2000: 9-12, Kalstad 2009: 24-28 39 According to Wheelersburg, Gutsol “Sami pogosty may have been remnants of indigenous reindeer herding communities, called siida.” (2009: 222). They also mention that “nineteenth century Kola Sami pogosty exploited common pasture and inherited fishing and hunting areas within a defined territory through extended families as siida […] Besides having common social and economic interests, pogosty participated in a shared spiritual life and ideology.”(2008:79). 40 Kiselev 1987:15. 41 Wheelersburg, Gutsol 2009: 222. 42 Wheelersburg, Gutsol 2008:80. 43 Kiselev 1987:19. 44 Kalte 2003:65.