page_title: Sáhkku
section_title: The lack of sources and artifacts
hierarchical_section_title: Sáhkku / History / The ancestor issue / The lack of sources and artifacts
caption_attribution_description: English: Mother with child in Finnmark during World War II, probably following the scorched earth tactics and the German withdrawal from September 1944.
context_page_description: Sáhkku is a board game of the Sami people. The game is traditional among the North Sámi, Skolt Sámi, Inari Sámi and Lule Sámi but may also have been played in other parts of Sápmi.
context_section_description: All of these theories have in common that there is little to no textual or material evidence to back any of them up. In addition to the sparse written sources, a key difficulty is that the tâb types of game were generally made from “ephemeral” materials which do not leave long-lasting material remains: often wood in the North, and in the Middle East the game has often simply been drawn in the sand, using twigs and stones for pieces and dice.
  As regards sáhkku, this lack of material artifacts problem was made worse by Nazi Germany's burning of Finnmark and North Troms in 1944-45. Operation Nordlicht targeted the region with scorched earth tactics, and destroyed the pre-World War II material culture of the Coast Sámi almost in its entirety. The Wehrmacht had done the same in Finnish Lapland before initiating the destruction of Finnmark and North Troms. Since this calamity struck precisely the region where sáhkku had mainly been played, it is unlikely that any game sets older than 1944 survived, except those that were stored in museums outside of the region.
caption: Mother and child in Finnmark with the scarce possessions left to them after the burning (1944)
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