Wednesday, March 25, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org
Friis — Lappish Mythology
Chapters from J.A. Friis's Lappisk Mythologi (1871) on Sami gods, drums, and ceremonies.
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Texts
Friis — Lappish Mythology — Bear Hunt Ceremonies and World TalesThe bear cult ceremonies of the Sami — the origin myth of the Bear-Wife, the full protocol of the bear hunt and feast, the Bear Song, the purification rites, and the bone burial; plus the Sami board game Sakku and the Sami flood legend, from J.A. Friis, Lappisk Mythologi (Christiania, 1871). First English translation.Friis — Lappish Mythology — The Earthly Gods and the Realm of the DeadSections 22–31 of J.A. Friis, Lappisk Mythologi (Christiania, 1871): the earthly gods, the underworld, and the sacred landscape. Læibolmai the Hunt God, Barbmo-akka the Mistress of Migratory Birds, the water spirits, guardian nature-spirits, the ghost-children, Rota the plague-lord, the evil-spirit names, the terrifying gand-flies of sorcery, and the three great afterlife realms — the blissful Saivvo where the honored dead dwell in mountain paradise, the grim Jabmi-aibmo where the wretched dead suffer, and the Noaide's trance-journey to retrieve the living from the dead. First English translation.Friis — Lappish Mythology — The God-Images and Sacrifice CeremoniesSections 32–35 of J.A. Friis, Lappisk Mythologi (Christiania, 1871): the Sami god-images (stone Seite and carved wood images), the autumn reindeer sacrifice (Kovre/Kevre), the sacred calendar of offering-times, and the full ceremonial sequence of Sami sacrifice — preparation, slaughter, feast, bone-collection, and offerings to each specific deity from Radien to the Dead. First English translation.Friis — Lappish Mythology — The Gods of the SamiSections 8–21 of J.A. Friis, Lappisk Mythologi (Christiania, 1871): the complete systematic account of the Sami pantheon. Four classes of gods — Celestial (the Radien family: Radien acce the supreme father, his wife and daughter, and Radien bardne his son), Sky and Atmospheric (Ibmel the primordial heaven-god, Horagales the thunder-god with his cross-hammer and guardian hound Starbo, Varalde olmai the world-man of fertility, Biegga-gales the storm-god with his wind-knotting power), the Sun, Moon and Stars (Bæivve and her rays, the sun-gruel ceremony, star-names), and the Earthly Mothers (Mader-acce and Mader-akka, the root-parents, and their three daughters: Sarakka the Creation-Mother who shaped every child and endured labor with every human mother, Juksákka the Bow-Mother who governed sex, and Uksakka the Door-Woman who guarded the newborn). Friis argues that the Radien family was borrowed from Christian Trinity doctrine, that Horagales (= Norse Thor) is the oldest authentic Sami deity, and that the Akkernes — the mother-goddesses — are the most distinctively Sami, the most beloved, and the only ones still alive in folk memory. First English translation.Friis — Lappish Mythology — The Noaide and the Sacred DrumSections §§1, 3, 4, and 5 from J.A. Friis, Lappisk Mythologi, Eventyr og Folkesagn (Christiania, 1871) — the foundational 19th-century Norwegian-language treatment of Sami religion by the foremost Sami-language scholar of his era. §1 describes the Noaide: role as priest, seer, and physician; the trance state in which the soul journeys via Saivvo-guolle (spirit-fish) or Saivvo-lodde (spirit-bird) to heaven, the realm of the dead, or anywhere on earth; the Sami keuvot (the peculiar trance-susceptibility endemic among Sami people); selection of noaidi candidates in childhood; the Noaide-gass3e (attending spirits and instructors); initiation ceremony at the tent-doorway with joik-singing; journey to Jabmi-aibmo (the realm of the dead) to heal spirit-illness; three types of noaidi — Bahast dakke Noaiddek (harm-doers), Galgge-Noaiddek (problem-solvers), Girdde-Noaiddek (shape-shifters); the Kalevala parallel (Vainemoinen as shaman). §3 describes the Gobdas or Runebom (the sacred drum): comparative survey of Turanian shaman-drums (Greenlandic Angakok, Samojedic Tadibers, Tungus shamans); the Sami drum as simultaneously the people's Bible, their oracle, and a cosmological map of both worlds; etymology of Gobdas (from Govva, image); construction from wood that never saw sunlight and grew with the sun's motion; oval bowl-frame of birch, spruce, or fir with reindeer-antler handle; rings, bear-heart-blood crosses, and brass kill-count nails as votive marks; shammy-dressed reindeer-skin head painted in alder-bark decoction with hieroglyphic figures of all Sami gods in their cosmic domains. §4 describes the Coarve-væcer (horn hammer, T-shaped, wild reindeer horn) and the Vuorbe or Veiko (the divination ring, usually brass, representing the Sun, placed on the sun-image to begin divination). §5 describes the full use of the drum: the household vs. Noaide-led ceremony; the kneeling posture, warming the skin, placing the ring on the sun-image, striking from soft to loud while the congregation sings a song whose meaning no Finn would reveal; reading the ring's movement (sun-direction = good omen; counter-sun = trouble; the ring's stopping at specific figures naming which god requires propitiation); divination for travel timing, fishing, and illness (the Jabmikuri-balges, Road of the Dead); the drum's sacred storage in the tent's Boasso (back compartment), taboo against women; the Nærø Manuscript account of the Sami Andreas Sivertsen who offered his own life to the underworld Noaide so his dying son Johannes might live — the son recovered, the father died, and the son offered a bull-reindeer to his father's soul. §2 (comparative treatment of the Greenlandic Angakok) omitted as digression.Friis — Lappish Mythology — The Sons of the Sun (Bæive Barnek)The only surviving Sami epic — the Sun-son's voyage to the giant's hall, his courtship and escape, and the origin of the Kalla-sons. Recorded by Pastor Anders Fjellner; translated from Friis's Norwegian and Fjellner's Swedish by the Good Works Archive.