The Personal Rituals of the Finnic Peoples with Forest Trees (original) (raw)
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This thesis contains a study of the role of trees in Old Nordic religions during the Iron Age and Viking Age from a phenomenological and comparative perspective and includes three discussion chapters, each with its own main topic: the world-tree; trees as people and vice versa; and real living trees. It has been conducted in order to clarify certain issues regarding how ancient Scandinavians might have perceived the world and then in particular trees, metaphysical trees and real trees. In the discussion chapters, the thesis reflects upon narratives in the extant written source material which would have been part of the phenomenology of trees, in the light of the ever-growing bulk of archaeological material reflecting remnants of symbolic and ritualistic behaviour relating to trees. The project argues that we need to sidestep with our modern perception of the world if we wish to understand how trees might have been understood in a religious sense in the Old Nordic world. It argues also that we need to make a clear distinction between emic and etic terms, underlining the need to be aware of the implications of the terms that we use in each case. Building on recent anthropological ethnographies, it argues furthermore that we need to reconsider aspects of animism in Old Nordic religions with regard to trees, and that some trees appear to have been seen by the Iron-Age and Viking-Age Scandinavians as doorways to the world of death and intermediaries of knowledge.
Trees in sacral and utilitarian practice: the value of nature and ecology in the life of the Selkups
International Journal of Environmental Studies, 2014
The study represents an interdisciplinary analysis of the material and symbolic nature of the trees in the culture of Siberian indigenous people. The work is based on the archaeological, ethnographic and linguistic materials related to one of the Siberian aboriginal peoples, the Selkups. The results of the linguistic study of mythology, ethnographic research and archaeological excavations of the burial sites (16th–17th) allowed us to build up a model of the Selkup attitude to the most important elements of nature, in their view, the tree. To make a comparative analysis, the work considers the materials related to the neighbouring ethnic groups that were similar in their culture and the worldview. The study discusses the problem of continuing of the tradition in the period of 16th–20th centuries. Based on the structural analysis of the gathered materials, the authors came to the conclusion that the Selkup traditional perception of the trees remained unchanged within the discussed period. The continuation of the tradition allowed the Selkups to preserve the metaphysical perception of nature and their place in it. The close connection of man and nature became the basis for keeping the ecological balance and, as a result, protecting the society.
In Conversions: Looking for Ideological Change in the Early Middle Ages. Ed. Leszek Słupecki & Rudolf Simek. Studia Mediaevalia Septentrionalia 23. Vienna: Fassbaender. Pp. 53–97. , 2013
North Finnic religions underwent a transformation during the Iron Age. This paper argues that the transformation occurred through the assimilation of Scandinavian ritual practices that produced a new type of ritual specialist that gradually displaced inherited forms of shamanism (and later displaced Sámi shamanism). Within the context of the volume, this is addressed in the framework of conversion. This paper concentrates on changes in conceptual modeling systems and the relationships of Finnic gods to the corresponding gods carried with the Germanic models. The text is oriented to scholars interested in Scandinavian or Germanic traditions with little or no knowledge of the Finnic traditions discussed. The study shows that comparisons of these traditions can be mutually illuminating. Der Aufsatz behandelt eine auf germanischen Modellen beruhende religiöse Umwälzung in den nordostseefinnischen Kulturen. Dieser Prozess passierte, bevor das Christentum eingeführt wurde, und verdrängte den traditionellen Schamanismus, wodurch das mythologische System vollständig verändert wurde. Dieser Aufsatz konzentriert sich auf die Veränderungen in den Vorstellungssystemen und auf die Beziehungen der finnischen Götter (Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, Ukko) zu den entsprechenden germanischen Göttern (Odin, Thor), wobei gezeigt wird, dass ein Vergleich dieser Traditionen gegenseitig erhellend sein kann.
Globalization and tradition in Forest Sámi commemoration rituals
2019
The Mukkala burial ground consists of eight excavated inhumation burials that all date to the middle of the 17th century and 1-2 nearby shaman burials from the beginning of the century. The site was excavated by Jorma Leppäaho in the 1930s. Since its discovery, Mukkala is of importance as one of the few excavated Sámi burial grounds and the only one representing the later extinct Forest Sámi population in Finland. The aim of this paper is to reveal the quality of the Forest Sámi culture of the Sompio Lapp village, when the cultural assimilation into the neighbouring populations was already under way. The paper concentrates on the organic material excavated in Mukkala, the burial ground of the Sompio Lapp village. First, we present the textiles which were made for everyday use by weaving, knitting, naalebinding (nål(e)binding, one needle knitting), and braiding. Second, we study the remains of animal skins, which were used for wrapping the deceased and for fur shoes and pouches. Finally, we recognize both the continuity of age-old circumpolar traditions, novelties in local production and dyeing of textiles, and the acquiring of commodities by trade.
The Forestland’s Guests: Mythical Landscapes, Personhood, and Gender in the Finno-Karelian Bear Ceremonialism, 2019
The goal of the thesis is to provide new approaches for the interpretation of the elaborate Finnish and Karelian bear ceremonial’s songs, which were intensively collected in the 19th Century and in the early 20th Century. The study aims to furnish a better understanding of the meanings of the ceremonial taking in consideration the context of folk beliefs at the time. The chapters will cover all the ritual phases, adapting the classic Hallowell’s typology to the Finno-Karelian case. However, each chapter aims to provide some answers to the main research questions. Why did the bear hunt require such a complex ritualized reciprocity? How were the passages of borders between the village and the forest ritualized? How and why were the forest, its spirits and the bruin personalized? Why do many Bear Songs contain references to wedding songs? How did the Christian faith and the rich cattle holders’ beliefs communicate with the hunter’s rituals, forming a historically stratified tradition? The study reveals that the vernacular definitions of the bear’s personhood changed often in the ritual phases: it was the offspring of the forest spirits or a hunter’s relative; a bride or a groom; a boy or a respected elder. On a general level, the bear had a shifting double identity: it was strictly bounded to the family of the forest spirits, but at the same time the hunter emphasized its human features to make the ritual communication easier and to transform the bruin into the guest of honor of the village feast, in which the bear meat was consumed. The hunter’s self could also change in the ritual: in the songs, he presented himself as a mighty man protected by mythic iron belts and shirts; as a handsome and mimetic seducer of female forest spirits, or as a humble orphan who needed their guidance. During the feast, the roles of the women toward the bear also varied: the mistress warmly welcomed the bruin as a guest or groom, but the women were also guided to protect the cattle. The landscapes acquired mythic features and they could be presented as welcoming or dangerous. These apparently kaleidoscopic changes followed a precise ritual logic: they were elaborate rhetorical devices to make the 'guests' – the bruin and the forest spirits – behave or react in certain ways in different ritual phases and to influence their perception of the hunters’ actions.
Ivan-da-marja // Pro Ethnologia. 2004. 18. Tartu. P. 87-95.
The aim of the article is to analyse the process of giving some semiotic status to a plant on the basis of its features; to demonstrate the casual relationship between its appearance on the one hand and the phytonyms, superstitions, and rites on the other hand; to observe the ways of reflecting and semiotization of their features (color, smell, form) in traditional thought and creation. In this way it is possible to find some cognitive principles of including natural objects into the cultural sphere, their place in cultural and language models of different traditions and, finally, ethnocultural features by analysing the difference in such models. Here I would like to examine the ideas about several plants which are rather popular in traditional Slavonic culture and are named ivan-da-marja.
MASF 7. Helsinki harvest: proceedings of the 11th nordic conference on the application of scientific methods in archaeology., 2019
The Mukkala burial ground consists of eight excavated inhumation burials that all date to the middle of the 17th century and 1-2 nearby shaman burials from the beginning of the century. The site was excavated by Jorma Leppäaho in the 1930s. Since its discovery, Mukkala is of importance as one of the few excavated Sámi burial grounds and the only one representing the later extinct Forest Sámi population in Finland. The aim of this paper is to reveal the quality of the Forest Sámi culture of the Sompio Lapp village, when the cultural assimilation into the neighbouring populations was already under way. The paper concentrates on the organic material excavated in Mukkala, the burial ground of the Sompio Lapp village. First, we present the textiles which were made for everyday use by weaving, knitting, naalebinding (nål(e)binding, one needle knitting), and braiding. Second, we study the remains of animal skins, which were used for wrapping the deceased and for fur shoes and pouches. Finally, we recognize both the continuity of age-old circumpolar traditions, novelties in local production and dyeing of textiles, and the acquiring of commodities by trade.
The Forest Finns of Norway and Sweden and their use and conception of landscape
2005
In this paper, I will discuss the concept of ‘utmark’ by using Finnskogen, the forest of the Finns, an area on the border between Norway and Sweden, as a point of departure. I will discuss a society which used the forest intensively for multiple purposes, and look at the use of the utmark by Skogfinnene, the Forest Finns. These are a group of people who originally lived in Savolaks in Finland, where during the Middle Ages, they took up a special form of farming. In the old spruce forests they grew a certain type of rye in a slash-and-burn technique. At the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, some of them moved to Sweden and Norway, mainly because war and the scarcity of forest made the living conditions very poor in Finland. The slash-and-burn technique demanded vast areas of old spruce forest. In this way, it was an expansive element inherent in their culture. The Forest Finns found attractive forest areas on the border between Norway and Sweden, wher...
Mythic Transformations: Tree Symbolism in the Norse Plantation
This thesis explores tree symbolism as interpreted from a selection of Old Norse poetic and prose mythological sources. The primary poetic sources include the Eddic poems Völuspá, Hávamál, Grímnismál, Vafþrúðnismál, Lokasenna and Baldrs draumar. Selected fragments from these poems are arranged and analyzed with particular attention to the symbol of the tree. Fragments are also selected from Gylfaginning of Snorri’s Edda, and are explored alongside the poetic sources. The focus topics progress from a description of the tree at the beginning of time, as the spatial structure of the mythic cosmos, the object of sacrifice, weapon of death, material of mortal creation, instrument of fate and, finally, source of rebirth after the cosmic destruction. The aim is to observe the transformation of the symbol of the tree both spatially, within the Eddic cycle, and temporally, as the prose accounts drawn from Gylfaginning are believed to be younger than the mythological poems. The abstract concept of the book is developed in relation to the symbol of the tree, and as the thesis progresses the relationship between tree, book and human is developed that ultimately seeks to mobilize the dynamism of such associations. The hopeful outcome undertakes to provide some insight into the human condition. This thesis is also theoretical and two important sources are applied to the poetic subject: the socio-philosophical work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, along with the psychoanalytic interpretations of Carl Gustav Jung. Both of these voices address the symbol of the tree and its significance for the human condition, which, when considered alongside the close analyses of the textual fragments approach what is common to the tree, the book and the human, but also discerns where the three points diverge.