Invisible beings

The invisible beings (ovvdajnoes voejkenh) of the South Sami can be divided into two main groups, beings without, and beings with, individual names. Those without individual names appeared as collectives and can be divided into two sub-groups, helping spirits and rulers.

Collective invisible beings

There were considered to be many types of helping spirits in each Sami region. One of the South Sami types was the aforementioned “name-fish” (nimmeguelie') that every child received in connection with the naming rituals, but the most important category was the so-called saajvh. These were of different types, some entities being in the shape of men, women and children and who were regarded as people, even if smaller than normal humans, and who lived in certain mountains, while others were the zoomorphous helpers of the ndejtie: a bird for his contacts in the visible landscape, a fish as his messenger and spy in the invisible one, and a reindeer bull for the probably annual fights at the Great Autumn Festival, who helped to decide who would assume the position of the ndejtie in the community for the coming year. There was a whole ideology related to the saajvh. For example, they could be bought, sold and inherited by both men and women, and status in society depended on how many saajvh a person owned and how valuable they were. The saajvh appeared in dreams and could help and give advice if prayed to.

The second sub-group consisted of beings that were regarded as ruling over geographical areas and over animal species. The most important was the bear, despite the fact that it was visible for as long as it lived in our world. It was through the bear ritual that the animal was believed to make its passage to the invisible world.

Invisible beings with individual names

We have already seen that the ancestors had important functions as helpers in the world of the living. They were regarded as able to help in herding reindeer or guarding children. After moving on to the world of the departed during a funeral, a person still kept his or her name and vuelie, but the kinship term was changed to one that indicated his or her current status as a departed member of the family. But “current” only, since the departed were thought to long for our world and for a child to be given his or her name, which would secure a new life in our world.

Much more has been written about the other large sub-group of invisible beings with individual names, the divinities, for the simple reason that the clergymen who compiled our sources were interested in “beliefs in gods” and asked the Sami they interrogated much about this theme. However, although at least some of the divinities, and especially the female creator and birth divinity Saaraahka, seem to have been important in daily life, it is very probable that ancestors and saajvh were far more frequently invoked.

Some of the divinities were male, others female, and some were conceived of as male in some regions, female in others. Among the male divinities, the most important were Raedie (the Ruler), Hovragaellies (Old Man Thunder), Biegkalmaj (the Wind Man) and the hunting god Liejpalmaj (the Alder Man). In the female group one finds Maadteraahka (the First Female Ancestor) and her three daughters Saaraahka, Oksaahka and Joeksaahka. We have already met Saaraahka, the most important of all the divinities, not to say of all the invisible beings.

During the eighteenth century, most of the visible forms of the pre-Christian religion disappeared, although some drums were preserved and sacrifices were still performed on rare occasions during the ensuing centuries. Knowledge about the divinities also faded, whereas reverence for the ancestors continued, albeit in new forms, and stories about some of the helping spirits and rulers are still told today in many areas. Despite being condemned by the church authorities, the chant (vuelie) lived on in secrecy and has been revitalized in recent decades. Similarly, the ritual drum is once again being cultivated as an ethnic symbol and has as such even been used in church services.

In traditional Sami thought, a person’s name was regarded as an important aspect of his or her personality that carried religious connotations, since it related the person to the ancestors. The indigenous Sami names were therefore regarded as “pagan” and forbidden by the authorities from as early as the sixteenth century. It was not until 1996 that a names-day calendar that included traditional Sami names was first published. For many Sami today, certain aspects of the traditional ideology behind the names have become important in the process of cultural revitalization. The name ideology thus exemplifies the continuity from pre-Christian times to the present post-Christian era, despite centuries of religious and secular change.