Hålogalandsallmenningen is the proposed name for the organization which is expected to manage about 50% of the land and inland water resources in the counties of

Troms Troms (; se, Romsa; fkv, Tromssa; fi, Tromssa) is a former county in northern Norway. On 1 January 2020 it was merged with the neighboring Finnmark county to create the new Troms og Finnmark county. This merger is expected to be reversed by t ...

and

Nordland Nordland (; smj, Nordlánnda, sma, Nordlaante, sme, Nordlánda, en, Northland) is a county in Norway in the Northern Norway region, the least populous of all 11 counties, bordering Troms og Finnmark in the north, Trøndelag in the south, N ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. It expected that the members in the board of directors will be elected from the ''County Council of Troms'', the ''County Council'' of Norland, and the Sami Parliament of Norway. A similar organization, the Finnmark Estate, is already established in the county of

Finnmark Finnmark (; se, Finnmárku ; fkv, Finmarku; fi, Ruija ; russian: Финнмарк) was a county in the northern part of Norway, and it is scheduled to become a county again in 2024. On 1 January 2020, Finnmark was merged with the neighbouri ...

Background

The background for the Finnmark Act is the Sámi people's fight for their rights to manage their land and culture. In 1978 the

Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate ( no, Norges vassdrags- og energidirektorat or NVE) is a Norwegian government agency established in 1921. It is under the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and regulates the country's water reso ...

published a plan that called for the construction of a dam and hydroelectric power plant that would create an artificial lake and inundate the Sami village of Máze. This plan was met by a strong opposition from the Sámi, and resulted in the Alta controversy. As a result of the controversy, the Norwegian government held meetings in 1980 and 1981 with a Sámi delegation appointed by the

Norwegian Sámi Association The Norwegian Sámi Association ( se, Norgga Sámiid Riikasearvi , no, Norske Samers Riksforbund), also known as NSR, is the largest Sámi people, Sámi organization in Norway. The association was founded in 1968. Purpose The NSR actively ru ...

, the

Sámi Reindeer Herders’ Association of Norway The Sámi ( ; also spelled Sami or Saami) are a Finno-Ugric-speaking people inhabiting the region of Sápmi (formerly known as Lapland), which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and of the Murmansk Oblast, R ...

and the Norwegian Sámi Council. The meetings resulted in the establishment of the ''Sámi Rights Committee'' addressing Sámi legal relations, that proposed among other things the establishing the Sami Parliament, and finally the adoption of the Finnmark Act in 2005. The Sámi rights to lands, waters and resources were strengthened after 1990, when Norway recognized the Sámi as an

indigenous people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

by adapting the

ILO convention 169 The Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 is an International Labour Organization Convention, also known as ILO Convention 169, or C169. It is the major binding international convention concerning indigenous peoples and tribal peopl ...

concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries. The convention states that rights for the indigenous peoples to land and natural resources are recognized as central for their material and cultural survival. In addition, indigenous peoples should be entitled to exercise control over, and manage, their own institutions, ways of life and economic development in order to maintain and develop their identities, languages and religions, within the framework of the States in which they live. In 2001 a committee known as ''Samerettsutvalget'' Samerettsutvalget - regjeringen.no
/ref> was established to evaluate the Sámi rights to lands, waters and resources in Troms and Norland. The committee finished its work in 2007, and proposed to establish Hålogalandsallmenningen.

References

Sámi in Norway Troms Nordland {{Norway-org-stub