Kemi Sámi
Kemi Sámi was a Sámi language that was originally spoken in the southernmost district of Finnish Lapland as far south as the Sámi siidas around Kuusamo.
Kemi Sámi | |
---|---|
Native to | Finland |
Extinct | ca. 1900 |
Uralic
| |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | sjk |
Linguist List | sjk |
Glottolog | kemi1239 |
A complex of local variants which had a distinct identity from other Sámi dialects, but existed in a linguistic continuum between Inari Sámi and Skolt Sámi (some Kemi groups sounded more like Inari, and some more like Skolt, due to geographic proximity).
Extinct now for over 100 years, few written examples of Kemi Sámi survive. Johannes Schefferus's Lapponia from 1673 contains two yoik poems by the Kemi Sámi Olof (Mattsson) Sirma, "Guldnasas" and "Moarsi favrrot". A short vocabulary was written by the Finnish priest Jacob Fellman in 1829 after he visited the villages of Salla (Kuolajärvi until 1936) and Sompio.