The Swedish Mission Society (Swedish: Svenska Missionssällskapet (SMS), later Svenska Missionssällskapet Kyrkan och Samerna), was a Swedish Christian organization to promote mission work among the Sámi in Sweden.
In 1839, SMS established three mission schools for Sámi children in Knaften, Mårdsele and Bastuträsk. A few years later, a school for Sámi girls was started in Tannsele. Further mission schools were established in the 1850s, including in Gafsele, Bäsksele and Glommersträsk.[4] About fifty catechists and teachers, male and female, were sent out. The Swedish Mission Society also supported several foreign missionary societies and sent Theodore Hamberg as a missionary to China in 1846.[5] The organization was a forerunner of the Swedish Church Mission [sv], founded in 1874, after which it focused exclusively on activities in Sápmi. Sámi activist Torkel Tomasson attended a Swedish Mission Society school for a time.[6]
The Swedish Mission Society took over the activities of the Friends of the Lapland Mission [sv] in 1934, when the latter was closed down. The preacher August Lundberg [sv] and the Friends of the Lapland Mission had also taken the initiative to build Lannavaara Church [sv], which was consecrated in 1934. The Swedish Mission Society was responsible for running the church until 1954.[7]
The Swedish Mission Society, with Bishop Bengt Jonzon [sv]ofLuleå as the driving force, founded the Sámi Folk High School [sv] in Jokkmokk in 1942 and financed its activities until 1972.[8]
In 1961 the society changed its name to Svenska Missionssällskapet Kyrkan och Samerna ('the Swedish Missionary Society Church and the Sami'). It was dissolved in 2001. It has to some extent lived on in the Foundation Missionssällskapet Kyrkan och Samerna, based in Luleå and linked to the dioceses of Luleå and Härnösand.[9]
Sundkler, Bengt (1937). Svenska missionssällskapet 1835–1876. Missionstankens genombrott och tidigare historia i Sverige (in Swedish). Uppsala: Almqvist och Wiksells boktryckeri. OCLC1049309952.
