Lappland

From the treaties the city state Novgorod concluded in the 14th century with its Scandinavian neighbours, Sweden in 1323 and Norway in 1326, together with a Norwegian border delimiting note (before 1330), we know that north of the respective sedentary populations the northern part of Fennoscandia constituted a vast shared territory - a Common (Alminding/Erämaa), where agents of these populations had overlapping and mutually accepted interests in exploiting the riches of the territory, including taxation of and trade with the local Saami populations. Thus the Novgorodian taxational rights extended to Tromsø on the Atlantic coast, the Norwegian rights to the southern White Sea coast of the Kola Peninsula. From other sources we know that the Swedes and their agents among the Finns taxed the Saami in the interior of Northern Fennoscandia. This situation did not change during the next two centuries although the border of sedentary populations in the south gradually but slowly moved northwards and eastwards.
By the mid-16th century, at a time when war in the Baltic region obstructed Russia's trade with the West through the Baltic Sea and the Danish Sound, the Arctic Coast suddenly became a political hot spot. English and Dutch merchant sailors had just re-discovered the route north of Norway and the Kola Peninsula to the Russian market. The affected governments now considered trade along the Arctic route taxable, as it had been at the Sound, and the amount of tax to be levied depended on the length of the coastline the ships had to pass. Consequently it became of paramount importance to lay claim to as much of the coastline as possible and to exclude competitors.
However since the treaties of the 14th century Norway had more or less become a vassal state of Denmark and Novgorod had been conquered outright by the Muscovite state. Therefore decision making concerning the new situation at the Artic Coast had moved from local authorities in Norway and Novgorod to Copenhagen and Moscow. Here officials were unfamiliar with the concept of shared sovereignty as well as overlapping taxational borders.
The paper focuses on the schizophrenia that arose when officials in the Muscovite Chancery of Foreign Affairs (posol’skii prikaz) tried to square the information they received from their collector of the Lapp-tax and their firm belief that borders in the region had to a fixed line. This led them 1) to duplicate the Norwegian town/fortress Vardø 2)that an otherwise unknown Polna River in the vicinity of Varanger Fjord constituted the fixed border between Muscovy and Norway.
With regard to 1) see,
https://www.academia.edu/8974739/The_Tsars_Patrimony_And_the_Duplication_of_Vardø_Vargav_Borders_at_the_Arctic_Ocean_and_Levels_of_Information_in_the_Late_Middle_Ages_and_Early_Modern_Times
2)
https://www.academia.edu/37052483/Lind_Polna_Rivers_and_Russias_Medieval_Borders_with_the_Scandinavian_West.pdf

The intra-population morphological variability in two calanoid species and cases of teratology in lower crustacean from the orders Calanoida and Cyclopoida (Copepoda), and from Diplostraca (Branchiopoda) from sub-polar and polar regions are presented. For the morphological analyses of the calanoids we focus on the most variable body part: the fi fth pair of legs. The teratological morphology affects the number and the shape of setae on exopod 3 of P5 in females of Boeckella poppei, and the number of segments of the endopod of the right P5 in males. In Eurytemora velox we observe additional teratological spine on exopod 2 in females, and from one to three transversal folds on the distal end of exopod 3 in males. In half of the male specimens of E. velox we also fi nd one or two additional teratological articles. In the cyclopoids from Iceland, there are morphological aberrations affecting the posterior part of the body. In one specimen of Bosmina longispina from Swedish Lapland we observe teratologically reduced upper ramus of the right antennule. We assume as a probable reason for the above described teratologies the expression of genetically unstable morphological characteristics under the combined effect of circumpolar abiotic factors. As opposed to the opinion of other researchers, who consider morphological stasis a common phenomenon in copepods, we observe exceptional variability at morphological level in the populations from the studied polar and sub-polar regions.

I ett arkeologiskt perspektiv finns det fortfarande mycket oklarheter när det kommer till förhistorien och historien om den nordskandinaviska befolkningen. Med hjälp av stabila isotoper såsom kol, kväve och svavel kommer vi närmare individernas matkultur som i sin tur bidrar till kunskapen om sociala, ekonomiska och politiska förutsättningar.
I ett forskningsprojekt som leds av Thomas Wallerström och Kerstin Lidén har ett större antal individer som grävdes upp i början på 1900-talet av arkeologen Eskil Olsson varit föremål för en sådan studie. Materialet består av 17 stycken individer från en ödekyrkogård i Rounala från Karesuando socken i Lappland. Ett av syftena med studien har varit att kolla närmare på matkulturen (diet och mobilitetsmönster) hos samtliga individer, både som enskilda individer och i grupp. Men vad har egentligen diet och mobilitet att berätta för oss om de som gravlagts på platsen? Och hur förhåller vi oss till resultaten från isotopanalyserna och 14C-dateringarna?
Det som isotopvärdena visar på när det kommer till dessa individer är att de har haft ett blandat födointag. Utan att avslöja för mycket har det med andra ord bestått av en väl diversifierad kost av både marint och terrestriskt ursprung. Enligt 14C-dateringar på individerna som gravlagts på kyrkogården visar det att den varit i bruk mellan 1300 till 1720 och därmed finns både en katolsk och protestantisk inverkan. 
I dagens läge finns det en nödvändighet att studera materialet vidare, speciellt när det kommer till det animala arkeologiska benmaterialet. Med ett bredare urval av animala ben får vi även en bredare och mer precis begränsning för komma närmare individers diet och mobilitet. Vilket också skulle bidra till kunskapen om den sociala strukturen för nordskandinaviska grupper.