29
The Sami shaman’s drum was
used to make contact with the spirit
world. Some of these drums survive,
although many were burned by
Christian missionaries.the 8th and 11th centuries; and
shamanic elements appear in the
medieval myths of the Norse god
Odin, who hanged himself in an
initiation sacrifice on the World
Tree (“the axis of the universe”).
In the 16th and 17th centuries,
shamanic traces were evident in
the Benandanti spirit-battlers (an
agrarian fertility cult) of Friuli,
Italy, and in the night-flying seely
wights (fairylike nature spirits) of
Scotland. In more recent times, the
mazzeri dream-hunters of Corsica
show clear shamanic influence.
Sami shamans
The longest recorded history of
shamanism in Europe, however,
is in northern Scandinavia, in the
area now known as Sápmi (formerly
Lapland). Here the Sami people,
semi-nomadic reindeer herders and
coastal fishers, maintained a fully
shamanic religion into the early
18th century, which has been
partially revived in recent decades.
Their religion can be reconstructed
from historical sources as well as
from close comparison with related
cultures in North Asia and the
American Arctic.
Sami shamans, or noaidi, could
inherit their calling or be chosen
directly by the spirits. In some
other cultures, those chosen to
be shamans often experienced a
period of intense illness and stress,
as well as visionary episodes in
which they might be killed and
then brought back to life.
Sami shamans had helping
spirits in the form of animals, such
as wolves, bears, reindeer, or fish,
whom they imitated when entering
a trance. Shamans are often said to
become the animal they imitate;
this occurs through a process of
interior transformation rather than
by visible, exterior change.
Three things helped the Sami
shaman enter a trance. The first
was intense physical deprivation,
often achieved by working naked
in the freezing Arctic temperatures.
The second was the rhythmic beat
of the sacred rune drum (among
similar peoples, such as the Yakut
and Buryat, the drum is calledthe shaman’s horse); the drum was
decorated with images of the world
of the gods above, the world of the
dead below, and the world
inhabited by humans (the earth)—
the three realms connected by
the World Tree. The third way the
shaman was helped to enter a
trance was through the ingestion
of the psychotropic (mind-altering)
fly agaric mushroom (Amanita
muscaria). After taking the
mushroom, the shaman would
fall into a trance and become rigid
and immobile, as if dead. During
this process, male Sami guarded
the shaman, while the women
sang songs about the tasks to be
performed in the upper or lower
realms, and songs to help the
shaman find his or her way home.
Stories are told of Sami
shamans who never returned
from the other world, often ❯❯See also: Making sense of the world 20–23 ■ Animism in early societies 24–25 ■ Divining the future 79
PRIMAL BELIEFS
Mankind does not end
its existence because
sickness or some other
accident kills its animal
spirit down here on
earth. We live on.
Nâlungiaq, a Netsilik
woman