a Pite Sámi legend from Arjeplog, from Ignácz Halász, Svéd-lapp nyelv V (1893)

The kitniha are the underground people of Sámi belief, who may try to draw people over into their own world. This legend was told in Pite Sámi by Sámi of Arjeplog parish and taken down by Ignácz Halász at Saltdalen in Norway in 1891. A man hewing timber in the forest is brought his midday meal by a woman who looks like his wife; because he reads before he eats (a grace, as the story means), he sees her tail, and when he strikes the log with his axe she vanishes and her food turns to horse droppings. The place is named at the end.

Translation

There was a man hewing timber, and midday came. He had already told his wife that she should bring him food at midday. And then he hears a woman calling, and the man answered. Then the same man sees that his wife is coming there, very joyful, and laughing to her husband.

Then she indeed gives him the food, and the man sits down on a timber log. The woman too sits down beside him and gives him food. The man takes the food and is about to begin eating. Then he remembered that he should read before he ate.

And when he had read, then he sees that the woman's tail is trailing out from beneath her onto the log. Then the man stands up and grips his axe and strikes into the log with that axe. Then the log split, a great lōmī to the other side, and the woman vanished too, and the food that the kitniha woman had brought became horse droppings (or: stunčin).

If that man had eaten without reading, then he would have been tainted by the kitniha and would have had to become a kitniha man. But because he read, the kitniha woman vanished together with her food. It is a bad place there, where that happened of old. The name of the place is Kûhcaj-lopmi.

Colophon

Translated from the Pite Sámi of Ignácz Halász, Svéd-lapp nyelv V: Népköltési gyűjtemény a Pite-lappmark arjepluogi egyházkerületéből (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1893), no. 27, p. 36, in the section of kinē (kitniha) legends. Halász took these texts down in 1891 at Saltdalen from Sámi of Arjeplog parish, and printed a Hungarian translation after each, which was not consulted: it was masked out of the page images before translation.

The words that decide the reading were checked in K. B. Wiklund's Lule-lappisches Wörterbuch (1890), in Lindahl and Öhrling's Lexicon Lapponicum (1780), in Halász's South Sámi dictionary (Svéd-lapp nyelv IV, 1891) and in Joshua Wilbur's A Grammar of Pite Saami (2014). Kinē is one of the kitniha, the underground people (Wiklund p. 35 s.v. katnɪhe-, nom. kanej, "unterirdischer Mensch"), kept in Sámi in the English; khuinan, khuidna, khuina is "woman" (Wiklund p. 47 s.v. kuɪᵉna-, "Weib, Frau"). Kaska-päʼivē, kaska-pēivē is "midday" (Wiklund p. 34 s.v. kaska-, "Mitte", with kaska-peive, "Mittag"); ača pᵘœ̣ktet and aċāi lohkot are "that she should bring", "that he should read", with the auxiliary of purpose (Halász IV p. 4 s.v. ača-); hofēṭ is "calls" (Wiklund p. 19 s.v. huoffeote-, "rufen, schreien"); tāvēsti is "answered" (Lindahl–Öhrling p. 460 s.v. TAWESTET, "respondere, svara"); āvūn is "joyful" (Wiklund p. 8 s.v. avuse-, "froh, freudenvoll"); čaʼimat is "laughing" (Lindahl–Öhrling p. 465 s.v. TJAIMET, "ridere, le, skratta"); stōhkon, stōhka, stohhka is "log" (Wiklund p. 131 s.v. stuɔḳe-, "Stock, Klotz"); tusstū is "takes, receives" (Wiklund p. 150 s.v. tuɔstu-, "empfangen, annehmen"); uihtos is "indeed" (Halász IV p. 20 s.v. oihte, uihte, "in der tat, wirklich, fürwahr"); muihtaj is "remembered" (Wiklund p. 70 s.v. mui'otaje-, "sich erinnern"); lohkot, lohkom, lokōi and lokōk are "read", "having read", "read" and "without reading" (Wiklund p. 58 s.v. looko-, "lesen; zählen; beschwören"); säʼipē is "tail" (Wiklund p. 116 s.v. sei'pe-, "Schweif, Schwanz"); kēssat is "trails" (Wiklund p. 38 s.v. ḳese-, "ziehen"); ċɵǯǯēl is "stands up" (North Sámi čuožžilit); akšūw, akšuin is "the axe" (Wiklund p. 3 s.v. akšu-, "Axt"); cāpmēst is "strikes" (Halász IV p. 108 s.v. cäpmet, "schlagen, hauen"); raukai is "split off" (Lindahl–Öhrling p. 373 s.v. RAUKET, "decidere, affalla"); kātui is "vanished" (Wiklund p. 35 s.v. kaɔtu-, "verschwinden"); hēsta-paʼihkan is "(as) horse droppings" (Wiklund p. 18 s.v. hæsta-, "Pferd"; Halász IV p. 174 s.v. paihka, "dreck (merda)"; compare Lindahl–Öhrling, Swedish index p. 661 s.v. Prevet, "privy": paika káte); päidnut is "tainted" (Lindahl–Öhrling p. 306 s.v. PAINET, "imbuere … inficere", to stain or steep); vastēs is "bad, ugly" (Lindahl–Öhrling, Swedish index p. 654: wastes); tolēn is "of old" (Wiklund p. 147 s.v. toluče-, tole-, "ehemalig, einstig").

Read from context, or not settled by the dictionaries, and named here: lohkot is rendered plainly "read": the Sámi does not say what he reads, and the reading meant is taken to be the grace before the meal. Tī (at the start of the fourth sentence) is read as "then"; tūle as "there, thither"; čaukast as "grips" (compare Wiklund p. 155 s.v. čau'ka, "hart, fest"). Lōmī, the piece or cleft of the split log, and stunčin, Halász's other word for what the food became, are not in the dictionaries and are kept in Sámi. Kûhcaj-lopmi is a place name and is kept in Sámi. Halász's bracketed variant (jalā: stunčin), "or: stunčin", is given in the English as he prints it. Pite Sámi is close to Lule and South Sámi; where no dictionary of those languages decides a word, the reading is named here.

No English translation of this text 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: Supcas timpar-čōllaj olᵒbman ja kinē khuinan pirra

The Pite Sámi text as printed by Halász (1893), no. 27, transcribed from the page images in his phonetic spelling. Line-end hyphens are joined; Halász's first paragraph is divided here at the same places as the English.

te lī akta olmāj timparit ċōllamen ja kaska-päʼivē šattai. tē lē jō son ahhkai hōllom, ača pᵘœ̣ktet suńi kaska-pēivē pēpmuit. ja tē kullā son, āhte khuidna hofēṭ ja tut olmaj tāvēsti. tī vɵidnā tat sammā olmaj, āhte tūle pōhtā tat sū ahhkā alvūs āvūn ja čaʼimat tan olᵒbmāsis.

tē vaddā uihtos pēpmuit ja olmaj čọhkėṭ timpar-stōhkon nalā. khuidna āi ċuhkėt kûrrai ja vaddā pēpmuit. olmaj tusstū pēpmuit ja kalhka aʼlĕḳēt porrot. tē son muihtaj, aċāi lohkot, ouṭol ko porraj.

ja ku lī lohkom, tē vɵidnā son, āhte säʼipē kēssat khuina vûlest stōhka nalā. tē olmaj ċɵǯǯēl ja čaukast akšūw ja cāpmēst taina akšuin stohhkọi. tē raukai stohhka muppē pēllai stûrra lōmī ja khuidna āi kātui jah pēpmū, maiṭe kinē-khuidna lī pᵘœktam, šiddin hēsta-paʼihkan (jalā: stunčin).

jus lī tāt olmaj lokōk porrom, tē lī son päidnut kitnihist ja virĭhtit kitnihi olman šaddat. vala ku’ son lokōi, tē kātui kinē aktan pēpmuis kum. vastēs lannṭa lē taht, kosne tat lē tolēn šaddam. lānṭan namma lē Kûhcaj-lopmi.

Source Colophon

Ignácz Halász, Svéd-lapp nyelv V: Népköltési gyűjtemény a Pite-lappmark arjepluogi egyházkerületéből (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1893), no. 27, p. 36. Public domain. Transcribed from the page images of the scan of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (REAL-EOD 4154). Halász's spelling is kept letter for letter, with his length marks, dots above and below (including the dot under œ in pᵘœ̣ktet), breves, raised vowels, ɵ, œ, č and ċ as printed, the raised stroke of the checked syllable (written here ʼ), and his bracketed variant. His Hungarian translation and his notes are not reproduced.

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