The Sami in Northern Scandinavia and Finland are often considered to be the single most fortunate and advanced Northern minority people in the world as far as both their political status and their material standard of living are concerned. Nevertheless, the Sami territory is traversed by several state borders, and the fates of the Sami in the different Nordic countries are not identical. The paper discusses the impact of the state borders on various aspects of the inherited Sami language and culture.