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Escape from Catastrophe: The Saami’s Experience with Smallpox in Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth-Century Sweden

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Peter Sköld
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This article, which deals with the Saami’s experience with smallpox in the three northern Swedish parishes of Jokkmokk, Gällivare, and Enontekis during the latter half of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century, focuses on these epidemiologic questions: (1) Why were the Saami—a native people living in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia—not affected by smallpox until this period? (2) What happened once smallpox was introduced into the area? (3) Did the Saami’s experience with smallpox differ from that of the rest of the Swedish population? (4) If so, what were the most important differences? (5) And how are they to be explained? Finding the answers to these questions requires considering whether smallpox inevitably resulted from the number of susceptible people and whether the disease affected other aspects of demography besides mortality (Figure 1).

Type
Special Section
Information
Social Science History , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Spring 1997 , pp. 1 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1997 

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