KARASJOK, Norway— They are the indigenous people of Europe, a tribe that spent centuries quietly keeping to themselves in the dark and frozen expanse across the continent's roof but who are now raising their voices to get the attention of the people who live below.

Known as Samis, they are making themselves heard quite purposefully in their own language, a tongue once forbidden in Norway, which they feel defines and sustains them as a separate and lasting culture.

In this town 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle -- less than 10 miles to Finland, 100 miles to Sweden or Russia -- the Samis have just inaugurated a stirring symbol of their presence, a silvery larchwood and stainless steel complex, part of which rises out of the snow in the shape of a lavvu, the Sami tepee. It houses a parliament that Norway has set up to indicate the Samis' right to cultural protection and their status as an ethnic minority.

On a morning in late February, the temperature outside is a numbing minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit, and the sun, which makes its daily passage just above the horizon for only six hours, casts a light so weak it produces only shades of gray. Inside, though, the soaring hall of blond Norwegian wood glows from light bulbs suspended from the ceiling, and the men and women of the Sami parliament fill the halls and corridors with a warming blur of color from the blue, red, green and yellow patterns of their clothing.

So far, the assembly's power is limited to counseling the Norwegian Parliament in Oslo on issues of particular importance to the Samis, like education, conservation, farming, land and reindeer herding, the profession that still occupies 10 percent of Samis. But the assembly's meaning to them goes deeper.

''People come up to me and take my hand and say, 'Thank you for what you have done,' '' said Ole Henrik Magga, 54, the Sami parliament's first president. ''It has to do with a deep-rooted negative thing that governed them for so long and made them unable to stand up and say, 'I am a Sami.' ''

Johann Mikkal Sara, 47, a member of the parliament said, ''O.K., you can say this is just symbolic, but when Norway built this building, they accepted the Samis as people, and that's supremely important to us.''

Long known as Lapps, a term they now disdain as colonial, the Samis are an ancient people who form the ethnic minority in Norway, Sweden and Finland. Their total number is estimated at 80,000, with more than half of them in Norway. An additional 2,000 live on the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Their land has been partitioned by national borders so unceasingly that they have often found themselves paying taxes to several countries at once.

They believe they were here before the Swedish, Finnish or even Viking culture had developed, and that their land, long classed by Norway as ''ownerless,'' is rightfully theirs.

Researchers have found they have no genetic resemblance to any other people. ''The Samis are about language and culture, they are not about a tribe wandering in from the East,'' said Audhild Schanche, an anthropologist at the Nordic Sami Institute in Kautokeino.

While they are members of international indigenous peoples' organizations and consider themselves akin to the Indians and the Inuit of the Americas, they have not experienced the same historic levels of violence and repression, do not feel the kind of deep antagonism that some native peoples do toward colonizers and have been less demanding in pressing their cause.

''For people like Indians who have been really oppressed in their lands,'' Mr. Magga said, ''they can't understand how we can have friendly meetings with representatives of the Norwegian government.''

In addition, Samis don't have skin color or facial features that make them stand out from Norwegians. ''I went to Canada and met Indians, and they didn't believe I was one of them,'' said Nils Gaup, 45, a sandy-haired, pale-skinned film director whose Sami-language movie ''Pathfinder'' was an Academy Award nominee for best foreign-language film in 1987.

Sami complaints have centered on disputes with farmers and other settlers about ownership and land use and about Norway's efforts, however well intentioned, to blend them into its culture. An official policy of assimilation gained force in the 19th century and resulted in laws banning the instruction or speaking of the Sami language and outlawing the sale of land to people who spoke Sami at home.

Over the years, many Samis blended in with Norwegian society, abandoning their language and sometimes changing their last names to disguise their origins.

''In some ways, our looks and appearances were a curse for us because it enabled Samis to stay hidden,'' said Tove Anti, 35, a staff officer with the parliament. ''If we looked different, it would have been easier for us to win back the people we lost through assimilation. It would have been easier to band together.''

The Samis are pacific by nature. ''We don't even have a word for war in our language,'' said Ms. Anti. But a dispute in 1979 over a Norwegian plan to construct a dam on the Alta River 100 miles north of here that would inundate the Sami town of Masi and lay roads through prime reindeer grazing and calving areas made them suddenly aggressive.

For three years, the Samis engaged in civil disobedience, picketing the site and the national Parliament in Oslo and attracting young supporters to the cause.