Mons Aslaksen Somby (14 February 1825 – 14 October 1854) was one of the leaders of the

Sami Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...

rioters that attacked several

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

shops during the

Kautokeino rebellion The Sami revolt in Guovdageaidnu, also known as the Kautokeino uprising, was a revolt in the town of Kautokeino in northern Norway in 1852 by a group of Sami who attacked representatives of the Norwegian authorities. The rebels killed the local ...

of 1852. During the uprising a merchant and the town sheriff were killed and others were whipped. Several buildings were also destroyed during the riots. Somby was executed by beheading in 1854. Mons Aslaksen Somby was married to Inger Johannesdatter Hætta, with whom he had a son.

Early life

Mons Somby and his siblings were converts to the Laestadian Movement at the end of the 1840s, but because of the excesses of the Norwegian locals and government they became an extremist group and by the early 1850s they were no longer receiving advice from

Lars Levi Laestadius Lars Levi Laestadius (; 10 January 1800 – 21 February 1861) was a Swedish Sami pastor and administrator of the Swedish state Lutheran church in Lapland who founded the Laestadian pietist revival movement to help his largely Sami congregations ...

, the leader of the religious movement. During the summer of 1851, Mons was arrested and sentenced to 15 days imprisonment on bread and water for the disruption of the religious services in the

Skjervøy Skjervøy kommune ( sme, Skiervvá suohkan; fkv, Kieruan komuuni) is a municipality in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Skjervøy on the island of Skjervøya, where most of the in ...

Church. His brother, also involved in the disruption, suffered the same punishment, while his sister was sentenced to 10 days in prison on bread and water. After their release, they traveled to a large

siida The siida is a Sámi local community that has existed from time immemorial. A ''siida'' ( se, siida; smn, sijdâ; sma, sïjte; smj, tjiellde; sjd, сыййт, translit=syjjt; sjt, се̄ййп, italic=no, translit=siejjp; sms, paalǥâskå ...

headed by their father Aslak Olsen Somby during the summer of 1852. It was from this siida which the Kautokeino rebellion was carried out.

Aftermath of the Kautokeino rebellion

Mons also had a 25-year-old brother who participated in the uprising, named Ole Somby, who died of a brain injury after being hit in the head with a bat while trying to escape capture during the transport from Kautokeino to Alta. The death penalty was not invoked for his sister Marit Somby, but she died in prison before her case came to trial. His father, Aslak Olsen Somby, was sentenced to life imprisonment. Their mother, Inger Mons Siridotter, who was 60 years old during the rebellion, was prosecuted, but was found innocent of the charges. Mons Aslaksen Somby and Aslak Jacobsen Hætta were sentenced to death and

decapitated Decapitation or beheading is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the au ...

at Elvebakken in Alta, Norway on 14 October 1854. After their execution, their bodies were buried in graves just outside the Kåfjord church graveyard in Alta, which meant that they were outside the

Norwegian State Church The Church of Norway ( nb, Den norske kirke, nn, Den norske kyrkja, se, Norgga girku, sma, Nöörjen gærhkoe) is an evangelical Lutheran denomination of Protestant Christianity and by far the largest Christian church in Norway. The church b ...

's blessing. However, their heads were sent on to the ''Anatomisk Institute'' at the Kong Medical Frederiks University in Oslo, where they became part of the university's skull collections.

Retrieval of Mons Somby's skull

In 1985, a relative of Mons Somby,

Niillas Somby Niillas Somby (formally known as Nils Somby)
from 1996. Retrieved July 15, 2008 is a

tried to obtain Mons skull for proper burial, but the ''Anatomisk Institute'' refused the extradition, claiming that the skull was the department's property. The department also stated that Mons Somby was a convicted criminal and a murderer and that no attempt should be made to describe Mons as a martyr to any cause. After the Norwegian Television

NRK NRK, an abbreviation of the Norwegian ''Norsk Rikskringkasting Aksjeselskap, AS'', generally expressed in English as the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, is the Norwegian government-owned radio and television public broadcasting company, and ...

of Finnmark aired a story about the case in 1996, the president of the

Sami Parliament Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise n ...

took up the issue up with university and shortly afterward, the skulls of both Mons and Aslak Hætta were released to relatives. In November 1997, the skulls of both Mons Somby and Aslak Hætta were buried in a grave at the Kåfjord Church in Alta, at the same spot as their bodies were buried over one-hundred and forty years earlier. The story of the extradition of Mons Sombys skull to Niillas was the focus of the 2000 movie, ''

Give Us Our Skeletons ''Give Us Our Skeletons!'' (Antakaa Meille Luurankomme in Finnish, Oaivveskaldjut in North Sami) is a 1999 documentary film directed by Paul-Anders Simma about Niillas Somby, a Sami man who retraces his family ancestry as he searches for the hea ...

''.

General references

* Nellejet Zorgdrager. ''De rettferdiges strid : Kautokeino 1852 : samisk motstand mot norsk kolonialisme'' ; omsett frå nederlandsk av Trond Kirkeby-Garstad. - Nesbru : Vett & viten ; Oslo : i samarbeid med Norsk folkemuseum, 1997. - 558 s. .(Samiske samlinger ; B.18, red.: Ove Pettersen).
Audhild Schanche, Nordisk samisk inst.; Knoklenes verdi: Om forskning på og forvaltning av skjelettmateriale fra samiske graver (PDF)

External links

Finnmark fylke, Kautokeino, Karasjok i Kistrand, Klokkerbok nr. 1 (1821-1829), Fødte og døpte 1825, notat- og visitassider m.m. 1825, side 20-21.

Kåfjord i Talvik, Ministerialbok nr. 16 (1847-1857), Døde og gravlagde 1855, side 161

Kautokeino, Ministerialbok nr. 2 (1843-1861), Døde og gravlagde 1854, side 199

{{DEFAULTSORT:Somby, Mons 1825 births 1854 deaths Executed Norwegian people Norwegian Sámi people People executed by Norway by decapitation People executed for murder 19th-century executions by Norway Sámi rebels Kautokeino rebellion People in Sámi history People from Kautokeino