Goahti
Bear cult
According to Johan Randulf, who in 1973 wrote about the South Sámi,'The Sámi consider all animals sacred... but they consider the bear to be the most sacred of all.'
The bear was believed to come from the sáiva. There existed between man and the bear a kind of unspoken agreement about the obligations of each.
Man must respect the bear, and when he killed it he must observe strict ritual rules, while the bear must not kill human beings. This rule was confirmed by experience: generally bears avoided people. In one approached humans, they considered it an indication that it as not a natural bear, but one conjured up by a shaman and sent to harm a particular person, or then even a metamorphosed human being. If a bear killed a person, the taboos were no longer respected, and its carcass might be desecrated; its reincarnation was prevented by cutting off its right front paw and burying it separately. In this way, the skeleton was no longer complete, and the bear's cycle of lives ended.
A bear hunt was a completely ritualistic and cultic series of events. Bear hunting had no essential significance among the Sámi as far as nourishment was concerned; rather it was an operation that had its own intrinsic value. A properly performed bear ritual guaranteed that the bear would be born again in the sáiva, where it was expected to tell its fellow bears what a great honor it was to be killed and worshiped by humans. There is more detailed information about the bear ritual in Sweden and Norway than in other areas where the Sámi lived. There a complete bear hunt included the following stages:
1) tracking down the bear when the first snow came, often with the oracular aid of the shaman's drum;
2) the formation of the hunting party. In Scandinavia, hunting seems to have been a social event of some importance, and the tracker held a celebration in which the participants committed themselves to take part in the hunt. In Finnish Lapland, hunting was more centered round the family;
3) the actual hunt in the late winter or early spring. Before setting out, the hunters consulted the shaman, who used his drum to ascertain whether the hunt would be successful. If the response was favorable, the men were obliged to remain celibate for several days before the hunt. They fasted on the eve, and on the day itself, after washing they exited from the Sámi tent via the boaššsu, the sacred back door. They went to the bear's lair in a procession. The tracker first, the drummer, he person who had been chosen from the best hunters to slay the bear, and then the other hunters in order of precedence. At the lair, the bear was woken up from its winter sleep. The purpose of this was ensure that the soul of the bear, which might have been wandering outside its body while it was asleep, would return and not remain to roam around and possibly cause problems after the bear was killed. When the bear rushed out of the lair, the hunter chosen to bring it down killed it with a special 'bear spear.' The carcass of the bear was left until the following day 'in the position of death' on its left side with its head facing left from the lair. The purpose of this too was probably to ensure that the soul would settle in the body. During the whole procedure of the kill, the bear was addressed with euphemisms in the 'secret language' of bear hunters.
4) the return to the village. The reindeer that pulled the bear's carcass was protected by a brass ring talisman, and it was taboo to women for the following year. Nor were women during the ceremony permitted to cross the tracks of the returning hunting party. During the journey, the hunters sang the first bear song. The only song that has survived is one from Kemi Lapland recorded in Finnish by Gabriel Tuderus; it emphasizes the divine origin of the bear and the intrinsic purpose of the bear ritual. The women received the hunters by looking at them through talismanic brass rings and pouring red juice made from alder bark over them; this was done in honor of the God of Hunting, Leaibeolmmai. Then other songs were sung in which the bear was called sáivo olmai, 'man of the sáiva' if it was a male and sáivo neit, 'girl of the sáiva' if it was a female;
5) the cooking and eating of the bear's meat, the actual bear feast. The bear was skinned and its meat was cooked, at least in Norway and Sweden, in a separate hut erected especially for the bear feast which women were prohibited from entering. In Finland, the women would seem to have been permitted to participate in this. The skinning was accompanied with songs in which the bear was assured that its death had not in fact been caused by the hunters, but that it had fallen down a steep precipice, or that men from other lands had killed it. When the meat was butchered, care was taken not to break a single bone, and all the bones were scrupulously collected. The meat had to be cooked without salt; this rule indicates that the bear ritual was very ancient, going back to a time when the Sámi of the interior had no salt. In Norway and Sweden the men took the cooked meat to their tents, and the women were allowed to eat it, albeit only meat from either the front or the rear ends (although the information on this varies). However, once again they had to take the precaution of eating it through the brass ring;
6) purification rituals and the carnivalistic element. The bear hunters cleansed themselves with fire and lye. This purification was followed by fames in which the men and women participated, and which may have been erotic in nature. Omens concerning the time of the next bear hunt were also sought in these games;
7) the burying of the bear. The bear's bones, the skin of its snout and its tail were arranged and buried in positions that were the same as those of a whole carcass. The purpose of this was to ensure that the bear would be born again in the sáiva. For this it was necessary that all the bones be saved and that predators had not been able to get at them;
8) shooting at the bear's skin. There then followed a second carnivalistic stage, in which the bear's skin was stretched on a wooden frame, and the blindfolded women of the village were allowed to shoot arrows at it. It was believed that the husband of the first woman to hit the mark would be the next slayer of a bear, or -if the woman was unmarried- that her future husband would be a great bear hunter;
9) a period of three or four days celibacy. Only after this period has been observed were men permitted to approach their wives.
The relationship between the bear and the women of the village was extremely critical at all stages of the bear ritual. There were two dimensions to it: the sexual threat presented to the women by the bear, and the women's threat to the success of the hunt. Generally speaking, the bear and the women seem to have constituted a threat to one another. The women had to protect themselves from the force of the bear, but on the other hand their sexuality would seem to have been a threat to the bear. It was believed that a male bear did not kill a woman unless she was carrying a male fetus, and that a female bear would not kill a man. There was a widespread belief that if a woman was molested by a meal bear she should raise her skirt, and the bear would cover his eyes with his paws and turn away in shame.
In fact, the bear ritual of the Sámi of Norway and Sweden is based on a legend according to which there existed an erotic relationship between the woman and the bear. In this legend, a Sámi girl spends the night in a bear's lair and this becomes the wife of the bear; in the end, the bear is slain by her brothers after the bear has taught the girl all the stages of the bear ritual and the taboos relating to him. As such it merely provides a justification for the bear cult and emphasizes the possibility of a sexual relationship between the bear and the woman; it does not directly suggest that the bear was the progenitor of the Sámi, as some scholars have supposed. Nor can the honorifics used of the bear like 'grandfather' be regarded as evidence of totemism, because this epithet was generally an honorary title for any highly regarded person. Rather, the bear cult was probably a manifestation of the fact that the bear was an animal with which the Sámi wished live on amicable terms, but whose strength they also wished to share. The bear was the more sacred of the animals, but in the rituals its strength became part of the Sámis' own strength.
Source courtesy of: The Saami. A Cultural Encyclopaedia. Ed. Kulonen, Seurujärvi & Pulkkinen (2005)
