world cultures & travelanalysisThe Public Domain Review1682 · Sápmi, Fennoscandia
A 1682 etching preserves a Sámi drum that Swedish authorities later burned
Sámi shamans used reindeer-hide drums to enter trance states, travel in spirit across lakes and marshes, and restore balance between the visible and invisible worlds. Europeans who documented them, like the scholar Johannes Schefferus in his 1673 Lapponia, often misread their symbols as maps or devil's charts. Colonial officials feared the drums: in 1688 a shaman named Lars Nilsson had his drum confiscated, then was executed by burning along with it. Almost all Sámi drums were destroyed, and fewer than one hundred historical examples are thought to survive.
The drum face was painted with symbols arranged in either a sun-centred or divided layout. The shaman beat the drum while chanting, and the rhythm and images together were used to enter a trance and divine answers to problems affecting the community.
The drums show how colonial religious and state policy erased Indigenous knowledge, and why repatriation of objects is still a live issue. Many surviving drums now sit in museums, separated from the communities that used them.
Across colonial history, Indigenous ritual objects were routinely confiscated and destroyed by missionaries and officials, from Sámi drums to ceremonial items elsewhere. Repatriation claims over the last decades have sought to return many of them.
background
Traditional Sámi spiritual practices and beliefs are based on a type of animism, polytheism, and what anthropologists may consider shamanism. The religious traditions can vary considerably from region to region within Sápmi.
Traditional Sámi religion is generally considered to be animism. The Sámi belief that all significant natural objects (such as animals, plants, rocks, etc.) possess a soul, and from a polytheistic perspective, traditional Sámi beliefs include a multitude of spirits. Sámi traditional beliefs and practices commonly emphasizes veneration of the dead and of animal spirits. The relationship with the local animals that sustain the people, such as the reindeer, are very important to the kin-group.
From Wikipedia: Ancient Sámi religion (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗
Image: The Public Domain Review
