The Cap of the North (Nordkalotten in Norwegian and Swedish, or Pohjoiskalotti in Finnish) is the regions of Norway, Sweden, and Finland located north of the Arctic Circle. It usually consists of the counties Troms og Finnmark and Nordland in Norway, Norrbotten in Sweden, and Lapland in Finland. The region has a subarctic climate and is home to the majority of the Sámi people.
The region contains over 30% of the total area of the three countries, but it houses less than 5% of their population.[1]
The Kola Peninsula was considered a part of this region until 1917, but this was changed after the Russian Revolution, with the new Soviet Union closing their borders.[1]
Sámi historian Per Guttorm Kvenangen has criticized the term Nordkalotten for displacing the overlapping term Sápmi and hiding the "Sámi character" of northern Fennoscandia.[2]
References
- 1 2 "Nordkalotten", Store norske leksikon (in Norwegian Bokmål), 2021-01-30, retrieved 2022-03-31
- ↑ Kvenangen, P. G. (1996), Samernas historia [History of the Sámi] (in Swedish), Jokkmokk, Sweden: Sameskolstyrelsen, p. 11, ISBN 9177160525