Fragments of Lappish Mythology

{{Artikkeli |sivun nimi="Fragments of Lappish Mythology" |kieli=englanti |id=1720

|artikkeliteksti=

Fragments of Lappish Mythology is a work about Saami folk myths written by Lars Levi Laestadius (1800-1862), who is better known as a revivalist leader. It was published in abbreviated form in 1959 and in extenso in 1997 in its original language, Swedish, and in English translation in 2002. At the invitation of the King of Sweden, Laestadius took part as a Lapp in a French expedition called La Recherche to northern Scandinavia in the years 1938-1840. He made ecological observations and wrote a mythology of the Saami at the request of the leader of the expedition, J. P. Gaimard. Part 1 of Fragments, which deals with the deities, was finished on 8 March 1840, and Parts 2 4 (sacrifice, divination and a selection of Lapp legends) and Part 5 (an addendum containing Laestadius comments on J. Fellman s manuscript dealing with the folk myths of the Finnish Lapps mainly from Kemi Lapland) were ready to be dispatched to Paris by 1st January 1845. Fellman appended Laestadius comments to his own manuscript and they were published with it in 1906, in other words before Laestadius own work.

On the subject of the original monotheism of the Saami and their relation to it, Laestadius adopted the opposite stance of that of A. Gottlund and E. Lönnrot, who considered that Ukko was the supreme god of a monotheistic original Finnish religion. Laestadius did not believe that the Saami as a primitive people were capable of such philosophical sophistication, but he did emphasize the Saamis genuine and profound religiosity. Although Laestadius criticized attempts to present Lapp mythology (Myth) in more precise and systematic forms than could ever have actually existed among the people, he named his own reconstruction of it a mythology . The pantheon of the Lapp gods was five-tiered, as Laestadius illustrates with the shaman s drum of K. Leem. The gods above the sky, Radien, Veralden Olmai (Raedie) and Ruonaneid (the names are here given in the forms used by Laestadius) he considered to be papist , i.e. foreign imports from the time of the conversion of the Lapps in the Middle Ages. The Sun God Beiwe and Ailekis Olmak the Men of the Holy Days constitute the category of sky gods, the Scandinavian origins of which are apparent in the name ({{{2}}}