Cap of the North

The Nordkalotte refers to the northernmost region of the Scandinavian peninsula to the Arctic circle and the area north of it. The term is widely used in Norwegian and Swedish language, but is also used in German-speaking countries in connection with the historical analysis of the living conditions of the local indigenous people, the seeds, and in the travel literature.

The Nordkalotte traditionally covers the following areas:

• In Norway, the counties (Norwegian: ( Bokmål, Nynorsk ) fylke, German ( Norwegian foreign word ): the Fylke that Fylker ) Nordland, Troms and Finnmark
• Sweden in the province (Swedish: län) Norrbotten County
• In the province of Finland (Finnish: lääni ) Lapland ( Lapin lääni )
• Russia in the Murmansk Oblast

Definition of the terms Lapland and Sápmi

Lapland comprises in the strict sense only the Swedish landscape ( landskap ) Lapland ( to 1634 an administrative province ) and Finland's northernmost Lapland ( Lapin lääni ). From the Norwegian point of view, these two provinces to be construed as Lapland only just. This is also a history where Finland until 1809 belonged to the Kingdom of Sweden and thus the current Finnish Lapland. In Norway, most Sami live in Finnmark (although some areas in Norway were also earlier to Sweden). Also for the Kola Peninsula it is not common to use the term Lapland.

Lapland is named after the obsolete name of the natives as " rag ". The origin of this word is derived from the Swedish: lappar = rags, patches. This is especially for today's members of that tribe's an unflattering, but rather offensive term that comes from a time when their ancestors in their clothing sewn together from reindeer skins on the first dealer, settlers, missionaries and explorers from the south actually a corresponding made an impression.

Most Lapland is the actual settlement area of ​​the seeds, namely Sápmi, equated to that context out, but this is enough for the self- understanding of the seeds of the historical Swedish province of Lapland far beyond. Even if the seeds were increasingly supplanted over the centuries in the north - a process that continues to this day - Sápmi now extends from the Kola Peninsula in Russia to Idre in the Swedish province of Dalarna and Engerdal in the Norwegian county of Hedmark.