Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 October 2009
This article is based on studies of existing, rather limited, reports on health and disease among the Lapp population, and on my personal experience during 16 years of ‘front-line’ health work (1945–61) in northernmost Sweden. My work in Jukkasjärvi, Norrbotten county, some 300 km north of the Arctic Circle in the heartland of the Lapp world, provided daily contacts with Lapps and their problems; extensive travel and official field visits to camps and settlements helped to give me detailed knowledge of social and health conditions among the Lapp population.