a song from Arjeplog and Lycksele, from Otto Donner, Lappalaisia lauluja (1876)

A joik is a Sámi song that calls up a person, an animal or a place. P. Læstadius heard Sámi sing this one in Arjeplog and Lycksele Lappmark, in Swedish Lapland, and the Finnish collector C. A. Gottlund took it down from him and printed it in 1832; Otto Donner reprinted it in 1876. In three lines the singer calls to the bear to get up, for the leaf is now as big as a little mouse's ear.

Translation

My bear, my bear,
Get up, get up!
The leaf is as big as a little mouse's ear.

Colophon

Translated from the Sámi of Otto Donner, Lappalaisia lauluja (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1876), no. 9. C. A. Gottlund took the song down from P. Læstadius, who had heard Sámi sing it in Arjeplog and Lycksele Lappmark, and printed it in his Otava II, p. 224 (1832); it comes from the same source as no. 8. Donner printed a Finnish translation after each song; it was not consulted. The text used is the Project Gutenberg transcription of Donner's book, with the Sámi lines proofed against the Sámi of his German edition, Lieder der Lappen, 1876.

The song is not in North Sámi but in the Sámi of Arjeplog and Lycksele (Pite and Ume Sámi), in Gottlund's spelling. Its words were checked in Lindahl and Öhrling's Lexicon Lapponicum (1780), which records the Sámi of Swedish Lapland, in K. B. Wiklund's Lule-lappisches Wörterbuch (1890), in Ignácz Halász's South Sámi dictionary (Svéd-lapp nyelv IV, 1891), and in J. A. Friis's North Sámi glossary (1856) for Donner's own variant. Every word was found. Bijern in the title is the bear (Lindahl–Öhrling's index s.v. Björn, bire, and s.v. Margaset, Bire margas "the bear growls"; Wiklund s.v. pịena, "Bär", from the Norwegian), and jöijuhtahta is built on the verb for joiking (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. Juoiket; Halász IV s.v. juóiket), though its ending is not explained in the dictionaries at hand. Puoltaja is a name for the bear (Halász IV s.v. puoltaja, "medve | Bär", with puoltaja ajjā; compare puᵒlta, "Hügel, Bergabhang", a hillside), and Lindahl and Öhrling give the related puoldakats, "ursus, björn". Tjoddscheleh is "get up, rise" (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. Paije: paijas tjodtjelet, "surgere, stiga up"), and Donner's variant čuöǯǯeli, printed in parentheses, is the same word in North Sámi (Friis 1856, čuöǯǯelet, "staa op, reise sig"); being the same word, it is not repeated in the English. Lasta is a leaf (Wiklund s.v. lasta-, "Blatt, Laub"; Halász IV s.v. laste); lä is "is" (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. Utse: ila utse le, "it is too little"); stuores is "big" (Lindahl–Öhrling's grammar, Stuores, "magnus, stor"); koh is "as, like" (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. Ko, "sicut, tanquam, såsom"); snjeratscha is "of the little mouse", from snjåra, "mouse", with its diminutive snjårats (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. Snjåra); and pelje is the ear (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. Pelje, "auris, öra"; Wiklund s.v. pelje-).

Puoltajam, both times, ends in the possessive "my" (Lindahl and Öhrling's grammar: Attjam, "pater meus", in the nominative and vocative). The -eh of tjoddscheleh is Gottlund's spelling of a command to one listener: in his text of no. 8, from the same source, Påtheh and keseh end the same way, and Donner and Laiti render them with the North Sámi singular commands Poađi, "come!", and keäsi, "pull!"; Donner's variant čuöǯǯeli here is the same singular command. No word is left in Sámi.

No English translation of this song is known to us.

© 2026 Tianmu Anglican Church. This English translation is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: you may share and adapt it for non-commercial use with credit to the Good Works Library, tianmu.org. The source text keeps its own terms. For other uses, see Rights and Reuse.

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Source Text: Bijern-jöijuhtahta

The Sámi text as printed by Donner (1876), no. 9, from the Project Gutenberg transcription, proofed against his German edition.

Puoltajam, puoltajam,
Tjoddscheleh, tjoddscheleh (čuöǯǯeli)!
Lasta lä stuores koh Snjeratscha pelje.

Source Colophon

Otto Donner, Lappalaisia lauluja (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1876), no. 9, in Gottlund's spelling as Donner reprinted it. Public domain. Text from the Project Gutenberg transcription of the book (PG #73262, 2024), proofed against the Sámi lines of Donner's German edition, Lieder der Lappen (1876; Internet Archive identifier liederderlappen00unkngoog). Donner prints no verse numbers with a song this short. His variant in parentheses is kept as printed. His letters are kept as printed, including ö, ä, č and ǯ. The German edition sets the third line as two, breaking after koh; it stands here as one line.

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