| Summary: | Rosengren, Anna, 2006: Samiska kvinnor och osynlig historia. En komparativ studie av svenskar och samer vid 1600-talstinget. (Saami Women and Invisible Histories. A Comparative Study of Swedes and Saamis in Court during the 17th Century.) The purpose of the paper is to gain new knowledge about Saami women in the 17th century using court protocols in the Luleå and Torneå Lappmarks, supplemented by secondary sources. Saami women did not write their own history, nor did Saami men. Information available about Saami is written by male representatives of the Swedish crown and church. The scholarly challenge therefore lies in reconstructing history about a group of people from meagre sources written by an altogether different group. To this end, the postcolonial research field was chosen as a theoretical framework as it provides us with important issues suitable for this paper. Among these issues we find the view that history of colonised people written by the coloniser is biased and incomplete, that we should be prepared to discover not one but several different histories as well as signs of resistance. As for research on women, I use the concept of dynamic hierarchies by which should be understood that the combination of variables such as age, sex, socio-economic standing and cultural background determine the degree of influence that a person will have. Together with the theoretical framework, the substantial empirical material and methodological considerations are of great importance for this paper. Close to 300 court cases from the Lappmarks have been analysed. In addition, a quantitative and qualitative study was made including a comparison with two regions in Sweden in order to tell whether the activity of Saami women in court differed from that of other women. The results are of three kinds. First, it identifies and explains differences in the situation of Saami and Swedish women. Second, it indicates that Saami history of the 17th century is less homogeneous than has hitherto been assumed and furthermore ...
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