Sámi language revival depends not only on schools and public policy, but also on what happens at home. Across Sápmi, the Indigenous homeland stretching through northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and into Russia, parents are trying to pass on languages that previous generations were discouraged or prevented from speaking. For some, that means learning the language themselves while raising their children.
The importance of this everyday transmission was highlighted on 21 October by Swedish broadcaster SVT Sápmi, which interviewed Anette Briksdal, a doctoral researcher at the University of Oslo. Her research examines parents’ role in reclaiming Sámi languages. The challenge is not simply to teach children vocabulary, but to give them people, places and reasons to use a language regularly.
Sámi language revival can begin when adults become parents
Briksdal and University of Oslo linguist Pia Lane have explored the experiences of three Sámi mothers in Norway who began speaking Sámi when they became parents. Their findings, presented at a sociolinguistics conference in July 2026, are part of an ongoing research effort rather than a representative survey of all Sámi families.
According to the University of Oslo’s research project and a report from the conference host, the University of Fort Hare, the mothers wanted to avoid passing on the insecurity associated with generations of language suppression. They worked to make home a place where speaking Sámi felt possible, even as they were rebuilding their own confidence.
There are public examples of this change beyond the research interviews. David Kroik, a South Sámi researcher in Sweden, told an SVT documentary reported in 2024 that he had not learned South Sámi at home as a child and had instead learned it as an adult. He was determined to make a different choice for his children:
“I’m not going to make the same mistake. I’ll speak Sámi with my children.”
His experience illustrates a central difficulty of language reclamation: parents may want to pass on a language without having grown up using it naturally themselves. In those circumstances, encouragement matters, but so do opportunities to practise and gain confidence.
When children know a language their parents do not
The change can also move in the opposite direction. In a 2025 report from Stockholm, SVT met siblings Ossian and Ava Rosén, who were receiving Sámi lessons at school. Their father had not been taught the language while growing up. Ava described Sámi as something she and her brother could share without their parents understanding them.
Such stories are a reminder that language transmission is no longer always a straightforward passage from fluent adults to children. A child may acquire skills through education that a parent was denied, potentially creating a new opportunity for the whole family to reconnect with the language.
Official Swedish figures show both the reach and the limits of formal teaching. During the 2025/26 school year, 466 pupils in mainstream compulsory schools attended Sámi mother-tongue instruction, while another 195 pupils studied Sámi at the specialised Sámi schools, according to the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket). These are participation figures, not a count of Sámi speakers or of children using the language at home.
Under Swedish education rules, pupils belonging to a national minority can receive mother-tongue instruction without already speaking the language at home. Unlike other mother-tongue classes, a single request can be sufficient, but the school authority must be able to find a suitable teacher. Distance teaching is one possible alternative. Rights on paper therefore still depend on access to staff and lessons.
Speaking Sámi needs places beyond the classroom
Not all Sámi languages face the same conditions. North Sámi has a larger educational and institutional presence than several other Sámi languages, and provision differs across national borders. In Sweden, Agnes-Máriddjá Rimpi, a young Lule Sámi speaker from Jokkmokk, told SVT in October 2026 that she struggled to find natural opportunities to use Lule Sámi in everyday life. She had taken courses to deepen her knowledge with future generations in mind.
Other research reinforces the need for support outside the family. A study published in the International Journal of Bilingualism, drawing on information about 169 Sámi children in Norway, found that parental language use and the surrounding Sámi-speaking context were associated with whether children learned the language. Some children also acquired Sámi without their parents speaking it to them. The researchers caution that their sample cannot be used to estimate how widespread Sámi languages are across the population.
Early-childhood programmes offer one way to create those opportunities. The Sámi Parliament of Finland describes language nests as immersion settings in which staff use a Sámi language throughout ordinary activities, including with children who initially understand little of it. One early example is Vuonak sámemáná, a Lule Sámi nursery established in 1989 in Drag (Ájluokta), Norway, which the Finnish Sámi Parliament says continues to operate.
In Norway, 802 children attended preschools offering some form of Sámi provision in 2025, according to government figures based on Sámi Parliament data. The total covers different arrangements, including Sámi preschools, Sámi departments and ordinary preschools with language provision; it does not mean every child attended full immersion. Of these children, 710 were counted under North Sámi, 53 under South Sámi and 39 under Lule Sámi.
For families reclaiming a language, the distinction matters. Learning Sámi in a lesson is one achievement; finding a community in which it can be used without hesitation is another. Briksdal’s work points to parents as important participants in language revival, but the examples across Sápmi also show why their efforts need sustained support from schools, early-years services and everyday public life.
