Northern Saami (also, Sámi or Sami, formerly Lapp) can be divided into a three major dialect groups: Torne, Finnmark and Sea Sami. All together, North Sami spreads out across the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland. Depending on the survey, this estimate can bring the population of North Sami speakers to be somewhere between 15,000 speakers and 25,000 speakers.

Northern Sami makes use of the latin alphabet, and contains the following characters: A/a, Á/á, B/b, C/c, Č/č, D/d, Ð/đ, E/e, F/f, G/g, H/h, I/i, J/j, K/k, L/l, M/m, N/n, Ŋ/ŋ, O/o, P/p, R/r, S/s, Š/š, T/t, Ŧ/ŧ, U/u, V/v, Z/z, Ž/ž.

Possible variants may be found for Č/č, Š/š, and Ž/ž, in which they are written as (respectively): Ć/ć, Ś/ś, and Ź/ź. Sometimes, Á/á is written instead as À/à.