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<p>The Lapland border is a term used … <p>The Lapland border is a term used to refer to a fixed border running between the provinces of the old kingdom of Finland-Sweden and Lapland, which lay to the north of them. The the frontier between Lapland and the rest of the realm was not always located in exactly the same place but varied according to the age in question. In other words, one can say that there were several Lapland borders. A missive issued by King Magnus Eriksson in the 1340s speaks of a Lapp Land (<em>Laepmark</em>) bordering on the counties of what were then the Swedish provinces of Ångermanland and Helsingland, which today belong to the province of Norrland. By this definition, the whole northern coastal area of the Gulf of Bothnia belonged to Lapland at that time.</p> <p> In the Modern Age, the distribution of the land had evolved in such a way that the parishes along the northern end of the Gulf of Bothnia were inhabited by Swedish and Finnish peasants, and above each parish there was a Lapland called after it. Thus the area northof Umeå was known as Ume Lapland, for example. There must have been a border already in existence by half-way through the sixteenth century because seven peasants of the parish of Ylitornio were fined in the district court sessions of 1549 for fishing in the territory beyond the Lapland borer (<em>innan Lapperåå</em>) without the permission of the Saami. A letter of safeguard issued by King Johan III in 1584 forbade the peasants of Tornio and others from harassing the Saami of the village of Suonttavaara on their own lands, which were located in Lapland within the border at Sonkamuotka (today a border station between Muonio and Enontekiö). Apparently in the early seventeenth century, the parish of Kemiö on the Ounasjoki River side was considered to extend only as far as the lake above the waterway which flows into the Ounasjoki at Sinettä. At the level of the Kemijoki River, it seems probable that the old Lapland border at Kamsajoki ran along the Kemijoki above the present village of Oikarainen.</p> <p> The determination of the border between the parish of Kemi and Kemi Lapland in the 1670s was connected with the implementation of the 1673 placard concerning the settlement of Lapland. The line drawn by the surveyor, Jonas Gedda, started a long-lasting disagreement between the farming peasants of the parish of Kemi and the Saami of Kemi Lapland. Kyösti Julku, who has studied the location of the border in detail, considers that the line proposed by the Saami represented the true border. </p> <p> The border between the parishes of Västerbotten and Lapland were defined in the years 1750-1754. The demarcation began with the border between the parish of Umeå and Ume Lapland and ended with the definition of the border between the parish of Torne and the Lapp village of Kittilä, which was located in Kemi Lapland. </p> <p> The Lapland border divided two systems of land use that were different in principle. In the countryside (<em>landsbydgen</em>), the distribution of the land was based on the village and the farm, whereas in Lapland the land and waters were distributed according the so-called Lapp village or Lapp tax land system. Thus the Lapland border also constituted a fiscal boundary in the sense that in Lapland a special tax called the Lapp Tax, which dated back to the Middle Ages, was levied on the land.</p> <p> Before the 1673 placard on the settlement of Lapland, the border also separated two areas that were distinct with regard to the livelihood of their inhabitants. The Saami of Lapland practised their own characteristic ways of subsistence (hunting, trapping, fishing and reindeer herding), while the Finnish and Swedish peasants to the south practiced agriculture(farming and cattle raising). In practice, the division was not quite so simple. The seasonal usufruct of the backwoods lakes in the territories of the Lapp villages, which dated back to the Middle Ages, continued into the eighteenth century. Trial records of fishing disputes concerning this usufruct in absentia of the so-called pike lakes have survived, and from them it is clear the objective of the state and the authorities was mainly to safeguard the fishing industry of the Saami in the territories of the Lapp Villages, although the peasants, too, sometimes obtained confirmation of their right of usufruct of the lakes beyond the Lapland border. It is not known how this fishing by the peasants beyond the border originated; in the trials, references were made to the fact that the right had been obtained by purchasing it from the Saami, or that the fishing had begun with the agreement of the Saami, or else that the usufruct had been obtained by various irregular means.</p> <p> With regard to the legal implications of the Lapland border, it has also been suggested that before 1673 there were no legal grounds for establishing a peasant farm in Lapland. However, in the mid-seventeenth century, Finnish peasants were already farming in the Enontekiö area and on the territory of the Lapp village of Kittilä, and they had obtained the right to the land through the courts. In at least some of these cases, the right was obtained in a voluntary sale by the Saami who was the holder of the tax land in question. In any case, it can be stated that the establishment of farms was not sanctioned by the law before the 1673 placard. In the case of Kittilä, it must also be noted that the exact location of the southern boundary of this Lapp village was not clear; in other words, it was always not certain whether the farmed land was part of Lapland or of the parish of Kemi.</p> <p> The placard of 1673 removed the significance of the Lapland border as a dividing line between different ways of livelihood. As a result of the placard,Finnish and Swedish settlers, and later also some Saamis, established farms north of the border. On the Finnish side, the Lapland border is not considered to have any legal significance today, but in Sweden it still constitutes a boundary in connection with the use of the land. The Lapland border (<em>Lappmarkgränsen</em>) is marked, and it is located according to its demarcation in the middle of the eighteenth century. In the north, the border ends at the national frontier with Finland at Sonkamuotka. The farming border (<em>odlingsgränsen</em>) that was defined in the province of Norbotten in 1867 forms a boundary, east of which reindeer husbandry is the people s prime source of livelihood, and where the establishment of farms is in principle prohibited.</p>arms is in principle prohibited.</p> +
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