Useful citizens, useful citizenship: cultural contexts of Sami education in early twentieth-century Norway, Sweden, and Finland

This article investigates Sami elementary education in early twentieth-century Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The main focus lies on cultural contexts that frame and limit language use. The key analytical concepts are useful citizen and useful citizenship. Through these concepts the article probes the ways in which governmental educational authorities and Sami teachers talked about education and citizenship. Studying these concepts and the cultural contexts behind them sheds light on the formation phase of Nordic citizenship. Full-scale citizenship was not offered to all individuals inside the nation state. Where it was, it had certain conditions that excluded cultural elements of minority populations. Sami teachers defined citizenship mainly within the Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish nation states. However, some tendencies towards a more cross-national notion of Sami identity can be discerned.