Paper short abstract:

The perceived need to protect the Norwegian mountains against the environmental threat of Sámi reindeer herding was first articulated in Norwegian jurisdiction 150 years ago. This paper describes how this unchanging risk construction is continuously extended into new areas of legislation, while curiously remaining outside public debate.

Paper long abstract:

It is in the nature of security to be relational; one party is protected from another. Protection is matter of world-view, based upon a perceived threat. Every justice system include laws created for purposes of protection within particular zeitgeists, since diminished in importance; as the perceived threat ceases to exist; or because the perceived threat later seem unfounded. Within the Norwegian constitution the most quoted example of dated legal perceptions is the original paragraph two, which denied Jews and Jesuits access to Kingdom of Norway. This paper will explore another set of dated jurisdictions designed to protect the Norwegian majority against the indigenous population. I will trace existing laws of reindeer herding to a time where the non-Sámi majority saw the internal colonisation as the most pressing tasks of the recently established Norwegian state. The protection of farmers and environment against the Sámi has remained the frame of reference of jurisdiction. As a result, the Sámi Rights Commission recently concluded that there is only one other line of work with a comparable level of regulation to the reindeer herders, that associated with working with explosives. This paper will emphasise how domination, institutionalised in jurisdiction, and as a bureaucratic tool often do not need legitimsation, on the grounds of always having existed.