Medieval Greenland and the north of Fennoscandia (Sápmi) share a very interesting feature, namely the existence of people who, at least partly, did not become Christians until after the reformation. This is the case even though Christians lived in rather close proximity. Therefore, my research focuses on two main questions: How did the coexistence of Christian and non-Christian groups, namely Saami and Proto-Inuit, look like in the Middle Ages? How where non-Christians perceived, and what influence did these views have on the interaction between them and Christians?
In order to answer these questions, I am looking at all the written sources from the period of 1000 to 1550 that mention Saami or Inuit and try to find out what perceptions the authors had of these groups and why they might have had them. Furthermore, I am evaluating what influence these perceptions might have had on the interaction between the groups. Unfortunately, it is not possible to trace what perceptions Saami and Inuit had of the Christian populations, because neither group had written anything down at the time. Nevertheless, the sources written about them also provide information about how they interacted with Christians, whether they themselves were interested in Christianity, and what role they played in the economy of the northern kingdoms.
Including the broadest available corpus of sources not only prevents from overemphasizing the importance of singular sources, but also offers glimpses into changes, continuities, and disruptions over the course of 550 years. This is especially important as the colonial exploitation that has been clearly visible since the early modern period – another feature both regions share – likely did not occur out of a vacuum, but at the same time has not been an eternal continuity of the regions either.