The Samoyeds who comes from the northern part of Russia between the Ural Mountains and the river Jenisej belonged to nomadic people who used the dogs to guard their reindeers and sometimes to lead their sledges.

They called the dogs Bjelkier which means "white dogs who have white puppies".

In Russia they have also been called Nenetsky dogs after the Nenetsky people who lived close to the Arctic Circle. In our part of the world the dogs have been named after the tribe called The Samoyeds. However there is no guarantee for the dog we know as the Samoyed today comes from the original Samoyed region.

The nomadic people were very primitive. They lived in tents and migrated from place to place searching for moss which the reindeers fed on. It was a hard life especially in the winter season. The dogs went in and out of the tents as they pleased and at nights they slept as closely as possible to their people. People and dogs were depended on each other and lived in close contact with nature. Today the original life of these nomadic people has been changed by the industrialism.

On his first expedition to the North Pole in 1893 Fridtjof Nansen used Samoyeds as draught animals. He had fetched the dogs at Alexander Trondheim in Tobolsk. Trondheim had bought the dogs at the nomadic people. And a good price was to be paid for the best dogs. Also Roald Amundsen, the first man on the South Pole, used Samoyeds on his expeditions. One might read about it in his narrative regarding the Northeast-passage among others.