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<P align="justify"> By the Middle Ag … <P align="justify"> By the Middle Ages at the latest, the Saami of northern Fennoscandia were being taxed by the representatives of the Crowns of Sweden, Russia and Norway. It is known that the King of Norway had taxed the fishing Saamis of the Arctic coast in the twelfth century. Russian interests in the area were represented first by Karelian traders, and later by a danzikka (tax bailiff) resident in the Kuola Peninsula. The Crown of Sweden, for its part, awarded the birkarlar (peasant merchants from the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia) the right to trade with the Lapps and levy taxes from them in the thirteenth century. As a result of these developments, by the beginning of the Modern Age some of the Lapp villages in the northern area of influence of the realm of Sweden-Finland had come to constitute a common tax region for the various states. The Lapp villages of Sompio, Kuolajärvi, Kitka, Maanselkä, Kemikylä and Sodankylä, which lay within the Swedish tax area, also paid taxes to Russia, and the Lapp villages of Inari, Kautokeino, Aviovaara, Lappojärvi, Teno ja Utsjoki were taxed by all three states. However, dual taxation by Norway and Sweden ended in 1751 in conjunction with the Peace of Strömstad, and taxation by Russia in the westernmost Lapp villages of Torne Lapland had already ended in the late sixteenth century. Those living in Kemi Lapland continued to pay taxes to Russia until 1814. </P><P align="justify"> After 1553, in the reign of Gustav Vasa, the levying of taxes by Sweden was transferred directly to the Crown. The actual collection was carried out by Crown bailiffs who travelled round from one Lapp village to another in late spring and early summer together with their bookkeepers. All male adults (which in the eighteenth century meant seventeen years of age and over) who were capable of hunting were liable to pay the Lapp tax (lappskat). The tax was a personal one, like that levied by the birkarlar, and it was paid in the form of hunted prey. For example in Kemi Lapland at the end of the sixteenth century, a full tax contribution consisted of two pine martin skins, eighty squirrel furs or eight talents (68 kilos) of dried pike. In the westernmost parts of Lapland, the tax was also frequently paid in money. Not everybody paid his taxes in full, but rather each according to his ability to pay. At the very end of the sixteenth century, the individual s taxpayer s ability to pay began to be assessed in a land measure called a hide (mantal): a one-hide Saami paid his tax in full, a half-hide Saami paid only half, and a quarter-hide man paid only a fourth. Except in Kemi Lapland, lists of fishing grounds in Lapland were also drawn up in order to tax lake fishing.</P><P align="justify"> At the beginning of the seventeenth century, King Carl IX initiated extensive reforms in the administration and taxation of the Saami, but his attempts to regularize the taxation on the basis of tithes failed, and in the end the tithes became a small additional tax alongside the traditional annual tax. In 1605 he reformed guidelines for the annual tax levy in such a way that each taxpayer was required to pay his tax to the Crown only in reindeer hides (two bulls or ten cows) or eight talents of dried pike. This concentration on single items placed a heavy burden on the Saami, and in 1621 King Gustav II Adolf released the payers of the Lapp tax from half of their annual tax burden for three years. Despite the time limit, the tax reduction in fact became a permanent one. It is difficult to ascertain the reason for this, because in the 1620s and 1630s the taxation of Lapland was chartered out to the burghers of the coastal towns and the source material for this period is scant. In addition to their annual tax, the Saami paid small extra taxes such as an entailment tax, tithes, a lagman s tax. From the 1640s on, the Saami began to pay their taxes in money in the eastern parts of Kemi Lapland as well. Each taxpayer continued to pay his contribution according to his hide rating.</P><P align="justify"> In 1695, the Swedish Crown began a thorough reform of the Lapp tax. In this reform, each Lapp village was made into a separate tax unit, the levy on which was a fixed annual sum. The payment of this sum was the collective responsibility of all the males capable of paying. It was intended that the amount of tax levied on each Lapp village should be determined according to the lands that belonged to it. And the first land registers containing details of the taxpayers and their lands were in fact made in conjunction with the reforms. However, the contents of the land registers are very summary apart from those relating to Ume Lapland. The meagre information about the lands of the Lapp villages contained in the land registers has aroused doubts about whether the tax on the villages was really assessed according to them. Some scholars suggest that the assessment was in the end made according to the number of taxpayers in the village or possibly the number of reindeer owned by the villagers. In 1760, the bailiffs were given more precise instructions which permitted them to assess the tax burden on the village for the use of the land by settlers on it. After 1780, the parishes, too, began to levy a tax. With the spread of settlement, the Lapp tax gradually came to lose its relevance. This development was more rapid in Finland, where in the early nineteenth century the Lapp tax was no longer paid except in the municipalities of Utsjoki, Inari and Enontekiö. The Lapp tax was abolished in Finland in 1924 along with other land taxes. Although settlement in Sweden advanced more slowly, there too the significance of the Lapp tax decreased, partly as a result of a fall in the value of money. The Lapp tax was officially abolished in Sweden in 1928.</P>lly abolished in Sweden in 1928.</P> +
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