Viewing Ethnicity from the Perspective of Individuals and Households: Finnmark during the Late Nineteenty Century

Abstract

In Norway, historical sources which yield first-hand information about how different ethnic groups defined themselves are scarce. Second-hand information on the other hand is available in the population censuses undertaken from 1845 onwards. The first part of this article gives a brief description of the source material, and in order to evaluate the strength of the ethnicity variable given in the population censuses a comparison is carried out with J.A. Friis’s population table attached to his ethnographic map of 1861 and his estimate of the Sámi population (Friis 1861: 1-5). In the second part of the article the focus will be on the instructions given to census takers and how they carried out their work in pract ice. There will also be a discussion of the usefulness of a reorganisation of census data into household units and how this strengthens our understanding of ethnic registration. A key finding here concerns the degrees of ethnic homogeneity and heterogeneity in households. The extent of mixed marriages, both in time and space, will also be an important issue for discussion. Mixed marriages can be a key variable in understanding social interaction between different ethnic groups.