Indigenous Norwegian Travellers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Agder and Rogaland | |
| Languages | |
| Norwegian, Rodi | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Yenish people |
Indigenous Norwegian Travellers (better known as Fantefolk or Skøyere) are an ethnic minority group in Norway. They are a wandering people who once travelled by foot, with horse-drawn carts and with boats along the southern and southwestern coastline of Norway.
They are not to be confused with Romanisæl (also known as Tater, who are a subgroup of the Romani people in Norway and Sweden, and have a larger presence).
Indigenous Norwegian Travellers have traditionally almost exclusively been centred around Southern Norway and the very southern parts of Southwestern Norway. They have managed to prevent their culture, language, identity, traditions and history from being absorbed by the larger Romanisæl group of Norway due to being isolated from where they have historically travelled, as Romanisæl have traditionally travelled other parts of Norway, particularly Eastern Norway.
Similar to indigenous Dutch Travellers,[citation needed] there is very little information on the history of Indigenous Norwegian Travellers. They may have mixed with the Yenish people and Romani people in the past, and they may have Yenish and Romani loanwords in their language.
Names for the group
Known to the settled majority population as fant/fanter/fantefolk or skøyere, they prefer the term reisende ('travellers'). This term is also used by the Romanisæl[citation needed] (the largest population of Romani people in Norway and Sweden), though the two groups are distinct. There are also groups in German-speaking countries who refer to themselves as Reisende, which is German for 'travellers' as well.
Eilert Sundt, a 19th-century sociologist, termed the indigenous Travellers småvandrer or småvandringer ('small travellers’), to contrast them with the Romanisæl (Tater), which Sundt called storvandrer or storvandringer (‘great travellers’) who ranged further in their journeys.[1]
