Lundius, Nicolaus, Swedish Saami priest
From Saamelaiskulttuurin ensyklopedia
Lundius, Nicolaus
Risto Pulkkinen
Lundius, Nicolaus, Swedish Saami priest
Lundius, Nicolaus (1656-1726), a Swedish Saami priest and recorder of Saami culture. His father, Andreas Petri Lundius, was one of the first Saami-born ministers in the kingdom of Sweden. Nicolaus Lundius is presumed to have been born in Nasa in Pite Lapland, but to have moved from there while still a child to Kvikkjokk after the Norwegians had laid waste to the Nasa mining community. He attended the Skytte School for Saami children and young persons in Lycksele in Ume Lapland. Like many other clergymen, Lundius wrote a description of the Saami for Johan Schefferus work Lapponia, but his contribution did not arrive in time to be included in the book. His manuscript was published by K. B. Wilkund in 1905. There is no reliable information available about his later life.
Lundius description, which contains no sub-headings and jumps from one subject to another, concerns the Ume and Lule Saami. He gives a fairly broad account of Saami shamanism, including a detailed description of curing rituals and of the process of becoming a shaman (Noaidi) with the shaman s visions of his vocation; he also describes the Saamis conceptions of life after death (Death and the dead). Lundius account also contains a great deal of ethnographic information about sources of livelihood and the Saami household. Because he himself was a Saami and had a perfect command of the language, his highly informative work must be considered extremely valuable and relatively reliable despite its turgid style.
Risto Pulkkinen
