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<P align="justify"> Sacrifice was connected in many ways with the ritual practices ({{Artikkelilinkki|10133|Rite}}) of the pre-Christian religion of the Saami. In its most simple form, it might consist simply of the routine pouring of a drop of milk on the floor of a Saami lodge in honour of <i>Sárahkka</i> (<i>Áhkka</i> goddesses) in connection with the birth of a child or throwing a couple of cigarettes for a departed person as one drove past his grave. At its most elaborate, it could involve large-scale (and usually calendrical) ritual sacrifices to the Sky God ({{Artikkelilinkki|10122|<i>Radie</i>}}), who maintained universal order, or the sacrifices made by a whole {{Artikkelilinkki|0741|<i>siida</i>}} to a communal shrine ({{Artikkelilinkki|1011|<i>sieidi</i>}}). The forms of the ritual and the extent to which they departed from the conventions of everyday life varied, but they were all characterized by an encounter with the {{Artikkelilinkki|1056|sacred}}, a recognition in varying degrees of the existence of the numinous world in the form of a gift. <BR> In comparative religion, sacrifice has been studied from three perspectives: <BR> # the offering: as a gift reciprocated; # communal sacrifice: a sacrificial repast gives supernatural power and strengthens solidarity; and # propitiatory and expiatory sacrifice. <BR><BR> The sacrifices of the Saami represented all three types; frequently, however, they tended to be combinations of the first two. In 1903, the phonetician Frans {{Artikkelilinkki|1623|Äimä}}, who was doing fieldwork in Inari was told:</P> :<P align="justify"> The sacrifice took place in such a way that the fish and meat - the best pieces - were brought to the place of sacrifice and there cooked and eaten. The idea was, according to one informant, that the god would be consumed as the sacrificers ate. It was because of this that, however much the people ate, they were always hungry when they returned from the sacrifice. Another informant added that the stone god, the <i>sieidi</i>, was daubed with the stock of the sacrificial victim. Sacrificing was hoped to ensure that good fortune (in fishing, hunting forest game, reindeer herding) would continue or improve. (cit. Aho 1997, 70)</P> <P align="justify"> This was therefore simultaneously a communal sacrifice and a gift sacrifice. Individual sacrifices to shrines were typically reciprocated gifts. It is known that women communally consumed sacrificial gruel in honour of the <i>Áhkka</i> goddesses, which constituted mainly just a form of communion with the divinities. Expiatory sacrifice was made for the breaking of a taboo; for example, if a woman walked round a <i>siedi</i> stone, this had to be atoned for with a sacrifice. </P> <P align="justify"> The worship of a personal fishing, hunting or reindeer herding <i>sieidi</i> was very simple, and it took place together with the actual activity. The sacrifices were also fairly modest: fish bones and heads, reindeer blood and fat or antlers. A communal sacrifice at the common shrine of a clan or village was more elaborate, requiring preparations and the dedication of a day for the ritual. On the basis of sources describing the practices of mainly the Swedish Saami in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, it is possible to distinguish the main features of a typical rather more ceremonious sacrifice. If it was a sacrifice made on a fixed date or in a time of crisis, a whole reindeer, wild or domesticated, would be sacrificed to a <i>sieidi</i> or other deity or to the dead. The sacrificial victim had to be perfect and, in the case of a female reindeer, preferably as big as possible and one that had never calved. Omens were taken concerning the favourable disposition of the recipient from the animal s behaviour before the sacrifice. No work was permitted on the day of the sacrifice. Before the sacrifice, the shaman s drum was consulted to find out whether the proposed sacrifice would be acceptable to the <i>sieidi</i>. The sacrificer fasted and washed, and all the men donned their finest garb. They departed to the place of sacrifice through the <i>[[Boaššu|boaššu]]</i>, the sacred back door of the Saami lodge. The victim was slain by sticking it with a knife through the heart, and it usually fell without a sound. On the other hand, some sound of complaint from the animal was considered a good omen. Bits from all parts of the victim were offered up to the deity, a reflection of the pars pro toto (a part for the whole) way of thinking of the people.</P> <P align="justify"> When the sacrificial victim had been slain, the sacrificer had to cut off the muzzle, an eye, an ear, the brains, a lung and a bit of meat from each part of the body. Nor could the organ of gender be forgotten if the victim was a male animal. When all the remainder had been cooked and the guests had eaten it, the sacrificer collected all the bones and arranged them in their natural order in a kind of bark coffin. The parts and bits of meat that had been removed earlier were also placed in the coffin. Then the sacrificer sprinkled and daubed the coffin and its contents with the collected blood of the animal. Finally everything was ceremoniously buried in the ground before the image of the idol to whom the sacrifice had been made. (Jessen, cit. {{Artikkelilinkki|1661|Laestadius}} 2000, 139)</P> <P align="justify"> In the same way, the pieces saved from the meals eaten by a household in boat sacrifices ({{Artikkelilinkki|1003|<i>Mannu</i>}}) given in honour of the {{Artikkelilinkki|1049|<i>Juovlagázz</i>}} (the Christmas Folk) served to represent the totality of the food. It is also possible that the earliest Saami conception of the soul was a pluralistic one a separate part of the soul resided in every member and organ of the body in which case, the removal of bits of the limbs and organs was a relic of this belief. The antlers were also left at the place of sacrifice, and all the bones were carefully collected and buried there; in the mountains and fells they might also be left in a crevice in the rock. Behind this practice lay the idea that a victim that had been sacrificed according to correct ritual procedure might be born again in the → <i>sáiva</i> providing its skeleton was intact. A kind of life principle was believed to attach to both a human and an animal skeleton; if it remained whole, re-birth was possible (→ Soul; → Death and the Dead). Thus sacrifice was connected with the great cycle of the entirety formed by the elements of this and the transcendant world in the cosmos. It is related that if a dog stole a bone of the sacrificial animal, it was killed and a corresponding bone was taken from it to replace the missing one. Everything apart from the meat of the hind quarters, which was often taken home for ordinary food, was left at the foot of the shrine or the sacrificial tree. Alternatively a reindeer might be buried whole in the ground; this was done when the victim was exclusively a gift or an expiatory sacrifice. Such a sacrifice was probably made mainly in times of crisis. Over the years, a large number of bones frequently accumulated in the rock crevices at the sites of some popular fell shrines.</P> {{Kuvalinkki|luu-uhri.jpg|Long used sacrifice place and lot of reindeer bones}} <P align="justify"> Other sacrificial offerings are known to have included metal objects, tobacco and liquor. The sacrifice of silver and copper coins when going fishing especially on a <i>sáiva</i> lake, may have been a relatively early custom and was probably based on the particular value attached to silver and copper in Saami culture. The coins were offered up to the spirits of the <i>sáiva</i> to ensure their favour, and sometimes also to ask for good health and generally success in life. On the other hand, the offering up of imported goods to a sieidi was probably only a feature of the late tradition, used to solicit health and other benefits that were unconnected with livelihood. The late tradition also contains mentions of burnt offerings, but this custom was probably a very late innovation in Saami culture formed on the basis of Biblical models. </P> <P align="justify"> A <i>siedi</i> sacrifice was performed at the shrine itself. Sacrifices to other deities were made at the foot of a sacrificial tree or on a platform. In the Swedish Saami area it is known that sacrificial platforms were constructed behind the sacred back entrances of individual lodges and the sacrificial trees erected on them. During the rituals the semantics of the numinous world were strictly adhered to. In a sacrifice to the Sky God, for example, the sacrificial tree a birch trunk remained upright with its roots at the bottom (to use the language of comparative religion, the sacrifice was performed upwards ), whereas sacrifices to <i>sáiva</i> beings and the dead ({{Artikkelilinkki|1055|Death and the dead}}), and also according to some sources to <i>Sáráhkká</i>, were made downwards with the sacrificial tree upside down, the roots at the top. The God of Thunder ({{Artikkelilinkki|1038|<i>Bajánalmmái</i>}}) had a very ambivalent nature, and sacrifices to him were also made upside down. Again, if the offering was made to <i>Ruto</i>, the God of Pestilence, the sacrificial tree had to be a conifer, which corresponds to the general north Eurasian association of coniferous trees with the nether world, particularly the realm of the dead. The concepts of higher and lower in the sense in which the terms are used in comparative religion − were not connected by the Saami only with the assumed dwelling places of the divinities but also, and primarily, with their characters being associated with life or death, and also with their possible life-preserving or destructive nature ({{Artikkelilinkki|1038|<i>Bajánalmmái</i>}}, <i>[[Ruto]]</i>). Life and elements that maintained it were associated with the higher , while death and things that caused it were linked with the lower . The <i>sáiva</i> had a clear if somewhat blurred connection with the realm of the dead, so sacrifices to <i>sáiva</i> beings were performed downwards despite the fact that these beings had come to be regarded as exclusively favourable protective spirits. Colour was another important semantic element. An animal sacrificed to the higher gods had to be white, and one made to the lower divinities (<i>Ruto</i>, {{Artikkelilinkki|1053|<i>Jábmiidáhkka</i>}}, the ruler of the realm of the dead) and to the departed was correspondingly required to be black. If it was not possible to choose the colour of the animal, the colour symbolism appropriate for the situation was effected by sewing a coloured thread to the ear of the victim to mark it after it had been picked out for the purpose. An exception to the semantics of black or white was constituted by sacrifices to a <i>sieidi</i>, when the thead had to be red, and those made to the God of Thunder, in which, because of the ambivalent nature of the deity, it was grey. The sex of the victim followed that of the deity; in the case of a <i>sieidi</i> sacrifice it was irrelevant.</P> <P align="justify"> Blood sacrifices to the dead were common after a shamanistic curing ritual; usually the shaman had to promise an offering to the dead person who had caused the illness or to <i>Jábmiidáhkka</i>. The cult of <i>Ruto</i> had a dual nature. On the one hand, as the ruler of night and darkness, <i>Ruto</i> s protection was sought for journeys to be undertaken at night and generally against any adversities that were considered to be his responsibility. In such sacrifices, it was sufficient that the victim be black. On the other hand, it is known that there was a particular horse sacrifice associated with <i>Ruto</i>. This was an expensive offering, which was generally sacrificed only when a particularly bad plague threatened the community, for Ruto was considered to be the sender of such rapidly spreading epidemics. In the ritual the whole horse was buried in the ground. This offering can be interpreted as meaning either that the people hoped that <i>Ruto</i> would ride away to his home <i>Rotaimo</i> on the horse this is indicated by the symbols on the skins of the shamans drums or that this was not a sacrificial ritual as such but rather a transition rite: the plague was transferred to the horse, and it was hoped that the latter would take it away with it when it was buried.</P> <P align="justify"> Most blood sacrifices were taboo to women, but the cult of the Sky God ({{Artikkelilinkki|10122|<i>Radie</i>}}) was an exception to this. Otherwise sacrificial practices were mainly linked to sex. The gruel eaten as an offerings or communion sacrifice to the Sun ({{Artikkelilinkki|1067|<i>Beaivvi</i>}}) could be consumed by both men and women, and in the late tradition, as a result of Christian influences, the bloodless cult of <i>Sáráhkká</i> was for a while common to both sexes. However, the majority of the rituals seem to have been the province of men, and it is about these that we have most information. Women had their own sacrificial ceremonies, which were mostly limited to the sphere of the home, but about these very little is known. In a way, sacrificial practice continued in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the offerings made by the Saami through their priests to the churches in the same kind of situations in which they had previously sacrificed to their <i>sieidi</i> shrines. These sacrifices were not made to the church as an institution but to churches as local buildings, so that functionally they corresponded to sacrifices made to a <i>sieidi</i>.</P>
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