The Sámi National Day is an ethnic national day for the Sámi (Saami) people that falls on February 6, the date when the first Sámi congress was held in 1917 in

Trondheim Trondheim ( , , ; ), historically Kaupangen, Nidaros, and Trondhjem (), is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. As of 2022, it had a population of 212,660. Trondheim is the third most populous municipality in Norway, and is ...

, Norway. The congress was the first time that Norwegian and Swedish Sámi came together across national borders to work on finding solutions to common problems. In 1992 at the 15th

Sámi Conference The first international Sámi Conference was officially opened in Jokkmokk, Sweden on August 31, 1953 and closed four days later on September 3. Since then, the Sámi conferences have come to be important venues for the Sámi across Norway, Sweden, ...

Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...

, Finland, a resolution was passed that Sámi National Day should be celebrated on February 6 to commemorate the first Sámi congress in 1917, that Sámi National Day is for all Sámi, regardless of where they live, and on that day the Sámi flag should be flown and the

Sámi anthem Sámi soga lávlla (English language, English: ''Song of the Sami Family/People'') is the anthem of the Sami people, Sámi people. The text was written by Isak Saba, and Arne Sørli composed the music. Originally a poem, it was first published in ...

sung in the local Sámi language. The first time Sámi National Day was celebrated was in 1993, when the International Year of Indigenous People was proclaimed open in

Jokkmokk Jokkmokk () is a Urban areas in Sweden, locality and the seat of Jokkmokk Municipality in Norrbotten County, provinces of Sweden, province of Lapland, Sweden, Lapland, Sweden, with 2,786 inhabitants in 2010. The Lule Sámi name of the place (compos ...

, Sweden by the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

. Since then, celebrating the day has become increasingly popular. In Norway, it is compulsory for municipal administrative buildings to fly the

Norwegian flag The national flag of Norway (; ; ) is red with a navy blue Scandinavian cross bordered in white that extends to the edges of the flag; the vertical part of the cross is shifted to the hoist side in the style of the ''Dannebrog'', the flag of D ...

, and optionally also the Sámi flag, on February 6. Particularly notable is the celebration in Norway's capital

Oslo Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022 ...

, where the bells in the highest tower of

Oslo City Hall Oslo City Hall () is a municipal building in Oslo, the capital of Norway. It houses the city council, the city's administration and various other municipal organisations. The building as it stands today was constructed between 1931 and 1950, wi ...

play the Sámi national anthem as the flags are raised. Some larger places have taken to arranging festivities in the week around the Sámi National Day. The National Day has been included in the

almanac An almanac (also spelled almanack and almanach) is a regularly published listing of a set of current information about one or multiple subjects. It includes information like weather forecasting, weather forecasts, farmers' sowing, planting dates ...

s published by the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

since 2004. The Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish authorities recommend general flagging on the day. By coincidence, February 6 was also the date representatives of the Sámi of the

Kola Peninsula The Kola Peninsula (; ) is a peninsula in the extreme northwest of Russia, and one of the largest peninsulas of Europe. Constituting the bulk of the territory of Murmansk Oblast, it lies almost completely inside the Arctic Circle and is border ...

gathered annually to meet with Russian bureaucrats to debate and decide on issues of relevance to them. This assembly, called the Kola Sobbar, has been dubbed the "first Sámi Parliament" by the researcher Johan Albert Kalstad. However, the founding of the Kola Sobbar did not influence the choice of the date for Sámi People's Day, as the assembly existed only during the late 1800s and was largely forgotten until the early 2000s.

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* {{authority control Sámi culture National days February observances Indigenous peoples days

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