Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Introduction: Looking across the Baltic Sea and over Linguistic Fences
- Section 1 Mental Maps
- 1 The Northern Part of the Ocean in the Eyes of Ancient Geographers
- 2 Austmarr on the Mental Map of Medieval Scandinavians
- 3 The Connection Between Geographical Space and Collective Memory in Jómsvíkinga saga
- Section 2 Mobility
- 4 Rune Carvers Traversing Austmarr?
- 5 Polish Noble Families and Noblemen of Scandinavian Origin in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: The Case of the Awdańcy Family: By Which Route did they come to Poland and why?
- 6 A Medieval Trade in Female Slaves from the North along the Volga
- Section 3 Language
- 7 Ahti on the Nydam Strap-ring: On the Possibility of Finnic Elements in Runic Inscriptions
- 8 Low German and Finnish Revisited
- Section 4 Myth and Religion Formation
- 9 Mythic Logic and Meta-discursive Practices in the Scandinavian and Baltic Regions
- 10 The Artificial Bride on Both Sides of the Gulf of Finland: The Golden Maiden in Finno-Karelian and Estonian Folk Poetry
- 11 Local Sámi Bear Ceremonialism in a Circum-Baltic Perspective
- 12 Mythologies in Transformation: Symbolic Transfer, Hybridisation, and Creolisation in the Circum-Baltic Arena (Illustrated Through the Changing Roles of *Tīwaz, *Ilma, and Óðinn, the Fishing Adventure of the Thunder God, and a Finno-Karelian Creolisation of North Germanic Religion)
- Contributors
- Indices
11 - Local Sámi Bear Ceremonialism in a Circum-Baltic Perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Introduction: Looking across the Baltic Sea and over Linguistic Fences
- Section 1 Mental Maps
- 1 The Northern Part of the Ocean in the Eyes of Ancient Geographers
- 2 Austmarr on the Mental Map of Medieval Scandinavians
- 3 The Connection Between Geographical Space and Collective Memory in Jómsvíkinga saga
- Section 2 Mobility
- 4 Rune Carvers Traversing Austmarr?
- 5 Polish Noble Families and Noblemen of Scandinavian Origin in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: The Case of the Awdańcy Family: By Which Route did they come to Poland and why?
- 6 A Medieval Trade in Female Slaves from the North along the Volga
- Section 3 Language
- 7 Ahti on the Nydam Strap-ring: On the Possibility of Finnic Elements in Runic Inscriptions
- 8 Low German and Finnish Revisited
- Section 4 Myth and Religion Formation
- 9 Mythic Logic and Meta-discursive Practices in the Scandinavian and Baltic Regions
- 10 The Artificial Bride on Both Sides of the Gulf of Finland: The Golden Maiden in Finno-Karelian and Estonian Folk Poetry
- 11 Local Sámi Bear Ceremonialism in a Circum-Baltic Perspective
- 12 Mythologies in Transformation: Symbolic Transfer, Hybridisation, and Creolisation in the Circum-Baltic Arena (Illustrated Through the Changing Roles of *Tīwaz, *Ilma, and Óðinn, the Fishing Adventure of the Thunder God, and a Finno-Karelian Creolisation of North Germanic Religion)
- Contributors
- Indices
Summary
Abstract
The article deals with the preserved Sámi drums from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Sweden and their relationship to the written sources of the period. The main focus is on the bear ritual and its mythology and possible connection to the appearance of the drums. Pehr Fjellström tells us in his 1755 recollection of the ritual that there is a special connection between the bear and the drums. This is strongly verified, but the drum tradition also shows a clear regionality, dividing south from north. This result correlates with recent research on the development and emergence of the Sámi languages on the Scandinavian Peninsula in the Iron Age. The results are contextualised with the Baltic mythological discourse on bear motifs.
Keywords: Bear ceremony, Sámi mythology, Circum-Baltic, religious regionality
Introduction
The preserved Sámi drums from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are a precious first-hand source on indigenous Sámi religion. I will discuss how recent discoveries in linguistic and mythological research may relate to the drums of the seventeenth century and after. The timespan of the article will be from early in the Common Era to the eighteenth century, showing that the regionality of the drums may go back to the formation of what we today identify as Sámi ethnicity. I will then widen the discussion of the Sámi bear-hunt ritual and the drums to incorporate a Circum-Baltic perspective. The long timeframe will hence show the beginning and the end of a long, slow process over the period covered by this book, as well as the processes within the geographical area of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia.
The drums are probably the most well-known artefacts of the indigenous Sámi religion. They are also mentioned in the written sources, and Pehr Fjellström claims in his description of the bear ritual (1755) that the drums are closely associated with the bear-hunting ritual. I intend to show that Fjellström's text is corroborated by the preserved drums and the strong variation in regional expression.
The linguistic connection
Ante Aikio suggests that the Sámi language originated in the Lakeland district Finland and spread north; this would be a relatively late development occurring around AD 300-800, a time of great change in the region.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Contacts and Networks in the Baltic Sea RegionAustmarr as a Northern Mare Nostrum, ca. 500–1500 AD, pp. 235 - 262Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019