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Production of articles for everyday life from local and delivered raw materials never became a kind of handicraft being able to part from the rest of occupations. Division of labour was based on gender roles but not on making some branches of labour complicated and abolishing the others.

That was why the Saami`s economy was mostly natural. Men were occupied not only with reindeer-breeding, hunting and fishing. They also had some other responsibilities:

1) building of a house,

2) construction of boats,

3) making of light and heavy reindeer harness,

4) making of furniture and various articles from wood and bones: small wooden tables, benches, wooden kitchen utensils, parts of сбруя made from bones, etc.

The main tools used for the production of the enumerated articles were an ax, a knife, a drill, a chisel and a saw. Fishing, reindeer-breeding, making and repairing of fishing tackles, even cooking were occupations for both men and women.

Women had also to manufacture skins as well as to make clothes and shoes. Not long ago women`s needlework included skilful weaving of baskets from the ropes made of wooden roots, decorating of holiday harness with cloth and beads. However, not many women were clever in it.

Making of bags, small bags for women`s articles, small pillows for needles decorated with beads, suede tobacco-pouches were also included into women`s needlework. All this was made for personal usage but sometimes it was sold in the same Saami community.

The Saami found it important to gather berries (murij) and mushrooms (kumbor). The most favourite berry was cloudberry (leman). Starting from the second part of July numerous swamps of tundra became pink because of cloudberries. It was used not only for direct eating or adding to food, but it also was gathered into bark baskets (kush), boiled and stored in barrels for winter. Black berry (chennish) was also stored for winter. This berry called "Saami`s berry" by the Russians had amazing properties: it couldn`t be spoiled by frosts and it was possible to store it the whole winter. It was gathered with special "grabilki" (murigreblja) and put into sacks. So the berries were stored in large amounts till spring. The Saami also gathered and stored cowberry (en) which ripened in the beginning of September. It was stored in the same way as cloudberry with the exception that it was not boiled but put into water and frozen in barrels.

Great bilberry (eht`mut) and blueberry (sar`) were stored in small amounts in the same way as cloudberry. The Saami never dried up the berries. An average Saami`s farm stored from 5-8 to 12-15 poods of berries (cloudberry, black berry, cowberry).

Speaking about mushrooms the Saami mostly gathered birch boletes (brown mushrooms) but never stored them for winter. Mushrooms were eaten boiled but not by everyone. In spite of the fact that there were a lot of mushrooms in the forest part of the Kola Peninsula, they weren`t used for food very often.

The Saami gathered not only food but also things which could be used in economy. Women gathered grass and sedge which were used as insoles in shoes, scraped down and dried up alder bark, stored pine roots, scraped down, dried up and pounded pine bark which was added to flour, collected reindeer moss in order to feed labour reindeer in winter. Men looked for eligible trees in order to cut out runners for sledges and cut down birches in order to make kitchen utensils from it, etc.

Some Saami were occupied with looking for pearls in stony rivers. The pearls were of high quality but the time spent wasn`t rewarded by the price of it. The pearls were not of big size, and very often oval or even flat. It is known that pearl production wasn`t very popular. Only few Saami looked for pearls in distant rivers which only they were aware of.

Women took care of sheep. In spite of the Saami`s long-term acquaintance with sheep (lamp`) and its industrial value, this animal wasn`t very much appreciated - rather despised. Saami women made socks, stockings, mittens, gloves and caps from sheep wool. Almost all housekeepers had 2-3 sheep animals. In summer sheep found enough food near the settlement, but in winter they had to starve. For sheep the Saami built huts (lampespuvyr`) not larger than one square meter. The Saami didn`t like meat of sheep saying that this animal ate sewage.