Everyday Environment

The whole area of Sámi Homeland in Finland is local communities’ everyday environment which is also called living cultural landscape. In everyday environment, local people practice traditional livelihoods and find natural products for their everyday activities all around year. Outsiders may mistakenly assume that this place, where daily life happens, is untouched wilderness. But untouched wilderness has no names that tell about the meanings and events that have occurred there in different places. Names that tell about their utilisation which, however, has left no traces that outsiders’ eyes can detect. There are place names that tell stories of those whose hands or feet have touched a certain location in a way that the event still lives in the memories and stories of the ones who live their daily lives in these places today.