Arvidsjaur

Arvidsjaur is a meeting place in the forest Sámi country of Lapland. Families travelled here from their hunting, fishing and reindeer grounds to attend church, trade and meet kin. Around the church grew Lappstaden, a cluster of Sámi timber dwellings and storehouses whose arrangement reflected family ties and the areas from which their owners came.

A chapel existed here in the sixteenth century. In 1606 the crown's representative Daniel Hjort designated Arvidsjaur a market and court site, and a new church was completed in 1607. The crown sought to bring trade and taxation under closer control, while church attendance brought together people whose livelihoods required seasonal movement. By the eighteenth century Forest Sámi families had built their own shelters near the church. Swedish farming settlement spread slowly: in 1695 the local Sámi tax lands had over thirty taxpayers, while a larger increase in new farms came only after 1800. When a new church was built in 1826, Lappstaden moved to a new site beside it.