“I was called by the reindeer herders. They were telling me that we have a situation; could you please help us,” Paul Bendikk Jama, a member of the Norwegian Sámi Parliament Council, recalls. NATO soldiers had set up tents in Troms, a county in northern Norway, without realizing the land they were on was a traditional reindeer grazing route.
In March 2026, over 32,000 NATO soldiers from 14 member states gathered in the Arctic as part of Cold Response 26, a large-scale military exercise spanning northern Norway and Finland aimed at strengthening the bloc’s security in the High North. Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, NATO has ramped up its military presence in the Arctic and welcomed Finland and Sweden as the alliance’s two newest members. Military exercises in the north largely help prepare for a potential conflict with Russia, which shares borders with Norway and Finland above the Arctic circle.
This geopolitically tense region overlaps with Sápmi, the traditional lands of the Sámi indigenous peoples inhabiting Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia’s Kola Peninsula. In Norway, Sámi people have spent decades navigating the state’s use of Sápmi for energy infrastructure, which has severely impacted traditional livelihoods, including reindeer herding. Now, increasingly frequent and larger-scale military exercises risk exacerbating the existing strain on Sámi life.
This doesn’t mean Sámi are opposed to addressing security threats in the Arctic, however. Sámi governance organizations such as Norway’s Sámi Parliament, an elected body representing the country’s Sámi community, and the Saami Council, an international NGO protecting Sámi rights across Sápmi borders, support increased military preparedness and collective defense. But they also push for early and regular consultation, meaningful participation in defense planning, and integration of traditional Sámi knowledge.
In Tromsø, a city in Norway’s Troms county dubbed the “Arctic capital,” the waterfront is lined with tour vessels offering excursions to the surrounding fjords. One boat flies a red, green, yellow, and blue striped flag bearing a large ring — a symbol representing the Sámi people. Located within Sápmi, Tromsø foregrounds its Sámi heritage. In the city center, museums feature Sámi exhibits, gift shops sell Sámi souvenirs, and bathers visit a sauna shaped like a lavvu, a traditional Sámi dwelling.
Along Telegrafbutka, a sandy beach at the southern tip of the city, a wooden plaque art installation depicts the view of the fjords visible across the strait. The carvings on the plaque illustrate the changing scenery over the course of three centuries, beginning with untouched cliffs in 1920, developing into a few modest settlements in 2020, and culminating in a completely urbanized landscape of wind turbines and skyscrapers in 2120. The progression evokes the area’s rapid development and expansion of energy infrastructure, a process that has disproportionately affected Sámi communities, who rely on the land for reindeer herding.
For generations, Sámi faced the state’s “Norwegianization” policy, which intended to assimilate Sámi people and strip them of their culture, language, and traditions. This was followed by major land use disputes over energy infrastructure. In the mid-1970s, the Norwegian state’s plans to dam the Alta-Kautokeino river system in Finnmark, a region with a strong historical Sámi presence, threatened to displace the Sámi village of Masi and interfere with local reindeer herding. Despite years of protests, the river was eventually dammed. The Alta struggle became a turning point in the Sámi people’s relationship with the Norwegian state, served as a catalyst for larger debates about Sámi people’s rights, and led to the establishment of Norway’s Sámi Parliament in 1989.
More than 40 years after Alta, Norway continues to use Sámi land for energy infrastructure without effective consultation, now shaped by the country’s green energy transition. In 2023, following the government’s inaction to address the construction of Europe’s largest wind farm on traditional reindeer herding land in Fosen, a district in Trøndelag county, activists began a series of protests in Oslo. That same year, Norway approved the planned electrification of the Melkoya LNG plant and, consequently, the installation of wind turbines in Finnmark. The development of vast wind farms across Sápmi in the name of transitioning Norway to renewable energy, referred to as “green colonialism,” has a myriad of impacts on Sámi livelihoods, including fragmenting grazing lands, causing noise pollution that stresses reindeer, and disrupting traditional migration patterns.
In early September 2026, Christina Henriksen, a Member of the Saami Council, received a letter at her cabin near Kirkenes, a town in Finnmark. “‘There is going to be a military exercise,’” Henriksen recalls the letter stating. “‘There might be some need for your property.’ And so I was thinking, are they going to use my cabin? Then I realized a lot of other people also received this.”
Now, beyond expanding energy infrastructure, Sápmi is increasingly used for sprawling military exercises. Recounting the impact of NATO troops unwittingly setting up tents on reindeer grazing land, Paul Bendikk Jama remembers being contacted by distressed herders. But indirect communication channels made efficient information-sharing complicated. This means the environmental officer responsible wasn’t able to contact the troops in advance to warn them about the reindeer herding taking place in the region. “We have to contact the Norwegian government first and then they contact NATO, or we have to go through NATO headquarters,” Jama says.
“I got a letter back apologizing and [saying] they would do some messaging so it wouldn’t happen again,” explains Jama. “And actually the Norwegian army has been better at informing soldiers and telling them about reindeer herders’ livelihoods.” The Norwegian military has also started providing NATO troops with information about reindeer herders and relevant contact details, Jama tells me.
Else Grete Broderstad, professor of indigenous studies at the Arctic University of Norway’s Center for Sámi Studies in Tromsø, adds that it’s more than just about notifying Sámi communities: “How early is the information available? Do the Indigenous parties have access to different options of solutions?”
What’s more, NATO exercises typically require temporary airspace restrictions in the areas of operations. This prevents herders from flying civilian drones over their pastures, a common method of tracking their reindeer, Jama tells me. “We have to make some agreement with the National Aviation Office to accept that reindeer herders can fly drones when they need to,” Jama says.
Alongside concerns over impacts on reindeer herders, ramped up military drills also affect northern fishing communities. “They hadn’t consulted with the fishermen, so there was this exercise in the middle of the fish stocks, where the fishermen were going to get their income,” Henriksen explains. “If your entire yearly income depends on the fisheries in that week in that particular area, and there is no fish in that area because the Ministry of Defense just didn’t bother to consult with anyone, that is problematic.”
When it comes to addressing security threats, Sámi governance organizations aren’t watching from the sidelines. Both the Sámi Parliament and the Saami Council are working on security and preparedness strategies. Jama hands me the Sámi Parliament Council’s 2026 Statement on Security Policy and Civil Preparedness. The document emphasizes assessing the impact of military activities “in the context of cumulative impacts from energy development, infrastructure, mineral extraction and other land-use pressures.”
Reflecting on the compounded effects of energy and military development, Broderstad shares similar concerns: “It’s all about how to secure Indigenous Sámi rights in that development, how to make sure that the reindeer herders don’t lose land.” Broderstad adds, “More land than they already lost.”
The Sámi Parliament Council’s statement calls for a holistic understanding of security and recommends integrating Sámi knowledge, known as arbediehtu, into defense. “Arbediehtu constitutes a strategic capability based on extensive knowledge of local environments, natural conditions, and survival in Sámi areas,” the document reads, including “terrain, weather patterns, ice conditions, travel routes, alternative routes and emergency shelters.” All critical information used in alerts and crisis communication must also be available in the Sámi language, the document stresses.
The Saami Council is also developing a security strategy in close dialogue with the Sámi Parliament, Henriksen tells me. “Many people think about security as the military, but for us, it’s about food security,” she explains. “How we can be safe if something happens. So, cultural knowledge, traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples.”
