Europe · Scandinavia / Sapmi General Public 5 September 2026

The Sami peoples of northern Scandinavia and the Kola Peninsula, together with Nordic rural communities, developed healing practices adapted to extreme cold, long darkness and a restricted plant palette. Reindeer supplied more than food. Blood, marrow, organs and fat were used nutritionally and medicinally, and fresh reindeer blood was a significant source of iron and vitamins in a diet with almost no plant produce for much of the year. Plants used include angelica (Angelica archangelica), valued for respiratory and digestive complaints and eaten as a vegetable; cloudberry, exceptionally rich in vitamin C and important in preventing scurvy; and arctic bramble and crowberry. Lichens, particularly Iceland moss, were boiled for coughs and used as famine food. Birch featured heavily: sap was drunk as a spring tonic, bark was used for wounds, and birch twigs were used in sauna practice to stimulate circulation. Tar distilled from birch served as an antiseptic. Healing practice also involved the noaidi, a spiritual specialist using drumming and joik, the traditional song form. Christianisation suppressed these practices heavily, and drums were confiscated and destroyed. As with Rongoa, contemporary interest in Sami healing is bound up with cultural and linguistic revitalisation.

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