Norway’s green energy policy could destroy its indigenous people
‘It’s a fantastic feeling when you manage to steer a flock of reindeer, when everything goes well, and you make it home safely. I tend to say it’s like riding the wind.’ Ironically, it is the proliferation of wind farms that is threatening the last bastions of the Sami language and culture, writes Trygve Ulriksen Skogseth
As soon as she learned how to walk, Lena Haugen wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps. When her two triplet brothers started making excuses to stay home as teenagers, she would insist on accompanying their father up on the rugged coastal mountains of central Norway. There she would spend her summers living in a cabin for months on end, and in spring she helped gather the flock of well over a thousand reindeer, so they could keep close watch over calving.
When she was 14, her father handed her a knife and told her she was old enough to carve her own mark into a newborn calf’s ear. The mark is like a signature, showing which herder the animal belongs to in the Sami community – the indigenous people spread through Scandinavia and Russia. “I’ve always known this was the life that I wanted. I never saw myself doing anything else,” says Haugen, now in her twenties, with two children of her own.
In the past couple of years, the Fosen peninsula in central Norway – the mountains where Haugen and her family keep their reindeer – has become home to 208 wind turbines. Standing roughly as tall as Big Ben, with rotor blades that reach as wide as the diameter of the London Eye, they harvest the steady stream of wind from the Atlantic Ocean which hammers the Norwegian coast throughout the year.
“She is going to have a much harder time making a living here than I had,” says Terje Haugen, Lena’s father. Many of the newly erected turbines stand on land that Sami herders rely on for pastures, to keep their flock fed through harsh winters. With plans for more wind farms in the Sami region to meet demands for renewable energy, some fear the loss of territory will stamp out the indigenous practice of herding reindeer through these mountains.
As European countries have pushed to increase their contribution to renewable energy, traditionally oil-dependent Norway has been able to offer the energy market a scarce commodity: vast stretches of land with a steady stream of wind in sparsely populated areas. Fuelled by foreign investment eager to fund green energy projects, Norway has become one of the largest onshore wind farms on the continent. With increasingly efficient technology, paired with lucrative long-term contracts and tax incentives offered by the state, more than 60 per cent of Norwegian wind power is now owned by foreign stakeholders.
For two decades, the Sami herders on Fosen have fought the state’s approval of wind farms on the land they use. Yet despite numerous demonstrations and lengthy court battles, their land is now home to one of Europe’s largest onshore wind farms.
“It’s a paradox. Indigenous people are probably the group that has contributed the least to climate change in this country,” says Johan Stromgren, director at the Norwegian National Human Rights Institution, and an expert on the legal rights of native peoples. “They have lived and practised a sustainable lifestyle for centuries, yet they are becoming the group left with a major part of the bill, and they have to give up space for windmills.”
In 2018 the United Nations high commissioner for human rights issued a plea for the Norwegian government to intervene and halt the construction on the peninsula, while the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (Cerd) considered whether the project constituted a human rights violation.
The Norwegian government declined, arguing that the company involved had a legal permit to build. Cerd is yet to consider the case, because one of the preconditions for the body to do so is that the case must have been tried in the national court system. The government and developers argue that the reindeer will get used to the turbines, and that there is no conflict between herding and expanding renewables. Sami herders and politicians insist the animals will shun these areas; they argue that this loss of territory will put further strain on a traditional trade that has already suffered major setbacks from infrastructure developments and modernisation.
In a ruling last year, a Norwegian Court of Appeal acknowledged that the wind turbines had rendered parts of the land useless for the Samis on Fosen, awarding the herders a total of 89 million kroner – roughly £7.7m – in compensation for their loss. The company behind the turbines, Fosen Vind, appealed the verdict, saying the compensation was too big, and that wind farms were legally erected. The Samis also appealed, stating that the whole project constituted a breach of their rights as an indigenous people. The case is scheduled for the Norwegian supreme court later this year.
According to Stromgren, the conflict between the Sami community and the wind industry should be viewed in light of centuries of tensions between the expansion of the Norwegian state and Sami territorial interests. He noted that this is not the first time tensions have run high between Sami communities and the expansion of renewable energy. During the country’s push to ramp up hydropower in the Seventies and Eighties, large-scale protests were spearheaded by Sami herders who feared the damming of major waterways would ruin their pastures.
Two years ago, the Norwegian government set up a commission to examine the injustices committed against indigenous people in the country. The so-called Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been tasked with mapping the historical effects of the “Norwegianisation process”, the policy to force the assimilation of non-Norwegian-speaking native populations into an ethnically and culturally uniform Norwegian population. In the 1850s, the assimilation of Norway’s indigenous community was enforced by a series of laws prohibiting Samis to own land, and banning the use of their language, history and culture in education – a practice that lasted for more than 100 years. The committee is set to deliver a report in 2022 on how the country can better reconcile with its colonial past.
“Why should we reconcile with the past, when the same spirit lives to this day?” says Ole-Henrik Kappfjell, a Sami herder in Trofors, a town of 800 people in Nordland county. He is part of a group of four herding families taking legal action to stop 72 wind turbines from being built on Oyfjellet, a mountain they rely on for herding. While the power plant will only occupy an estimated 50 sq km out of the roughly 4 ,000 sq km where the herders keep their 2,200 reindeer, the turbines will stand along a mountain pathway used by the Samis to herd the animals from their winter to their summer pasture. According to Kappfjell, if the plans to have the turbines up and running by the autumn are not stopped, it could be the end of traditional herding in the region.
“The risk is that the Sami herding tradition vanishes, and that it will all be industrialised,” says Kappfjell, while carving a piece of dried reindeer meat on his kitchen table. “There is a threshold for how much you can modernise a traditional craft before it ceases to exist,” he adds.
Kappfjell has been a herder his entire life, and in the 50 years since he first followed his grandparents up the mountains, he has seen major shifts in how his trade is carried out. Most herders now use technology like GPS and helicopters to locate and gather their flocks, but Kappfjell insists that cultivating a close bond between the animals and the herder remains one of the most important parts of his job. The winter move of his flock is done with the help of motorised vehicles, where the animals are shipped on large trucks to get them safely across highways and railroads. But the spring move is done the old way – animals are led through the mountains. For Kappfjell, the spring move is a remnant of the tradition his grandparents taught him.
“The young calves learn how to walk to a beat. Young herders who want to learn this craft learn to walk to a beat. The shepherd dogs walk to a beat. It’s an intensive schooling period for everybody,” Kappfjell says. “It’s a fantastic feeling when you manage to steer a flock of reindeer, when everything goes well, and you make it home safely. I tend to say it’s like riding the wind. That’s what it feels like.”
There is no census for how many Sami live in Norway but a conservative estimate suggests 40, 000. While herding reindeer is the most important craft for the Sami people, there are only 3,000 Samis left in Norway that still carry on the practice, according to the Norwegian government. Some 2,200 work in the county of Finnmark, the country’s northernmost region, bordering Russia. Numbers of Sami living in the south, culturally and linguistically distinct from those living further north, are also declining.
“These reindeer herders are the last bastions of the Sami language and culture,” says Aili Keskitalo, president of the Sami parliament, a political body governing indigenous affairs in Norway. She believes the Norwegian government’s decision to erect large-scale power plants on land the Sami rely on is a violation of their rights.
“We don’t know when we can expect international human rights and conventions to be followed in this country. Norway has been vocal on questions on human rights internationally, so it’s pretty surprising and frustrating to see these rights sidelined at home,” says Aili Keskitalo, president of the Sami parliament.
Tony Christian Tiller, state secretary at Norway’s energy ministry representing the country’s conservative governing party, underlines that that the Norwegian government has gone to great lengths to ensure that Sami concerns are heard. But as 40 per cent of all Norwegian land territory is touched by Sami reindeer herding, he argues that major industrial projects will inevitably lead to levels of interference with Sami interests.
Tiller says that while the government is in close contact with Sami communities over these issues, when it comes to the question of expanding infrastructure on land the Samis use, there are clear differences of opinion. “They have views that are almost incompatible with the need we have had to expand power supplies. The important thing is that it happens in a way that is in line with the principles of the rule of law, that everyone gets heard, and that it holds up legally. We believe that is what we have done; we have maintained the obligations the state has when it comes to international law,” Tiller says.
In December of last year, the Norwegian parliament passed a resolution that ensures more stringent oversight of new wind farm projects in the future. According to Tiller, Norway is likely to see far fewer new power plants in the coming decade. While a majority of Norwegians have remained positive about the expansion of wind power, opposition in areas with large-scale expansion of new wind farms has grown. Sixty-eight per cent of Norwegians polled in a 2020 survey said they were against wind power that encroaches on nature, and 74 per cent said there were against any expansion that disturbs wildlife.
A spokesperson for Eolus Vind, the company building the powerplant on Oyfjellet, says they firmly believe their turbines will not impair the Samis’ ability to herd in the area. “We are committed to reaching an agreement with the reindeer herders that ensures the coexistence between the need for green energy on the one hand, while allowing the reindeer herders to practice their trade,” says Johan Hammarqvist, head of communications. According to him, they have suggested a series of mitigating measures, like using the roads they have constructed through the mountain to drive the reindeer for parts of the move.
Kappfjell sees that as an acceptable compromise. “You could probably put reindeer in a barn as well – I’m sure that’s possible too. But that’s not a Sami practice,” Kappfjell says. “An animal that’s driven in a trailer back and forth in the dark doesn’t have the faintest idea of where it is.” He rejects the notion that the wind industry can compensate the herders for the inconvenience of having turbines on their territory. “For my part there isn’t any amount of money that can replace the life I lead.”
Back on the Fosen peninsula, Lena Haugen is eager to take on the full responsibility for the herd when her father retires in a couple of years. “My father has fought hard for someone to carry on after him,” she says. Although she is determined to carve out a future for herself in reindeer herding, she fears she might be the last generation who can live off the proceeds.
“There has been a lot of hatred towards Samis, but I think there is a value in and of itself that you stand for who you are. That is the reason I fight. There were reindeer on Fosen long before other things came here – it’s a part of this place. And it’s a part of nature’s path, that someone uses and borrows from it. This isn’t something you just quit.”
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