BTW, the pro-Finn side in this debate argues that Sa'ami languages are part of a group better typified by Finnish. There's another school of thought that the Sa'ami languages form two small groups, and that the Finno-Ugric, Hungarian and Estonian languages derive much of their grammatical structure from both ~ in roughly different measures. This is rather like the situation involving the Iroquoian languages ~ the central core warrior elite among the Mingo/Iriquoian ethnicity were tributary to the Huron for several centuries. Words were traded. Grammatical rules were swapped. Accents merged and divided.
The same thing happened when Sa'ami began contact with the more primitive proto-Indo-European tribes in the BC period (way back there).
My personal theory about that period is that the Sa'ami were sufficiently capable in Southern Scandinavia to pretty much chase the proto-Indo-Europeans South of the Carpathians, and maybe even into the Urals.
Through time their presence in a more Southern district gave them access to agricultural advances, and they began to push back.
This doesn't mean war ~ in paleolithic and neolithic societies simply having greater access to local resources gave you an insurmountable reproductive success rate. Those who were better hunters moved North and lost the adantage.
Except for trade these people may have had no other contacts.
In the 1600s the Iroquois took the position of middle-men in the English fur trade. They made the long treks to the interior. In New France, white men played thesame part. We call them Courier du Bois. The lifestyle of the Iroquois and the Courier from about 1650 to 1750 was pretty much identical. I envision the Sa'ami and the proto-Finns being pretty much the same.
‘Europe’s Last Pagans’ Worship in Marii El Grove
http://mariuveren.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/europes-last-pagans/
Traditional Mari also lived much like Plains Indians, with typees and buckskin. I first heard of them when studying Native Americans.
the saami and the berbers are related
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15791543