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      • There has not always been a country called Sweden.

      • Thousands of years ago there were people who lived in the north: the Sámi.

      • The Sámi lived in northern Norway, northern Sweden, & northern Finland.→
         Also in a neighbouring part of Russia.

      • Nowadays there are still many Sámi people who live in the same area.
      • The Sámi have their own flag but not a country of their own.

 • There are still thousands of Sámi people who live close to nature,
 ←caring for reindeer, fishing, and/or hunting.

 • A Sámi in the north of Sweden, wearing traditional clothes. →

 • Many Sámi live in Stockholm and lead ordinary lives.

 • The Sámi people have the legal right to develop their own culture.

      • People have been speaking Samic for thousands of years. But a couple of hundred years ago many Swedes thought that everyone in Sweden should speak Swedish in school and in town, even with their siblings. Many Sámi children didn't learn to speak their mother tongue properly.

      • Nowadays in Sweden, everyone has the right to speak any langauges they want to.

      • To support the Samic language, there is a fairly new law which makes Samic an "official minority language." The term "minority language" means that it is the language of a part of the population (less than half).