In his book Flora Lapponica (1737) Linnaeus depicted the indigenous Sami
people as happy and content northern 'savages' who inhabited a Spartan
but peaceful existence in the very north of Europe. This elevated image
of the Sami was mediated in a large number of foreign sources and was of
particular fascination to British cultural commentators, who debated
the alleged happiness and savagery of the Sami in a range of sources
including philosophical tracts, travelogues, newspapers and
natural-history books. These debates also touched upon the nature of the
Sami relationship with the Scandinavian states. By charting these
concurrent discussions I will show in this lecture the extent to which
the Sami featured in key transnational philosophical debates, and
analyse how Swedish-Sami colonial relations were understood in the
eighteenth century.