| TekstiThis property is a special property in this wiki.
|
Missionary work: history. <P align="jus … Missionary work: history. <P align="justify"> The pre-Christian cosmology of the Saami had been infiltrated by Christian influences from both east and west long before organized missionary work got under way. Thus the earliest sources for the ancient religion of the Saami reveal only a more or less syncretic view of the world. In the east, Christian merchants from Novgorod arrived on the coast of the White Sea in the early eleventh century, and from the twelfth century on the Kuola Peninsula was under the sphere of influence of Novgorod. However, missionary work among the eastern Saami did not begin until the years 1471-78, when Moscow took over the area, and subsequently in 1489 after the independent Patriarchate of Moscow was established. The [[Eastern Orthodox Church and Saami|Russian Orthodox]] religion spread into the Kuola Peninsula and the Pechenga area in the early sixteenth century, since when the eastern Saami have been within the sphere of the cultural influence of Orthodoxy. The dependent parish of Pechenga was founded in 1524, and the [[The Petsamo monastery|Monastery of Pechenga]] was built in 1553. In 1565 the Church of Sts Boris and Gleb was built on the bank of the River Patsjoki (Pasvikelva) as a border marker with the territory of Denmark-Norway, and in the 1570s the Church of Sts Peter and Paul was built for the Ter Saami at the mouth of the Ponoi River. Altogether over ten functioning churches were constructed in the Kuola Peninsula in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. St Trifon, the founder of the Monastery of Pechenga, is regarded as the most important missionary who spread the Christian religion among the eastern Saami. Although nominally the presence of the Orthodox church was strong in the area, its influence on the beliefs of the Saami was not particularly pronounced, or at least not very rapid. The Orthodox Church had a fairly lax attitude towards conversion: it attempted to make the fundamental principles of Christianity comprehensible to the heathens by relating them to elements of their own pre-Christian religions. Thus it in a way intentionally created a syncretic faith (syncretism), which it then tried to turn into full Christianity by gradually strengthening the Christian elements in it. In practice, the eradication of this syncretism proved to be a fairly difficult task. </P>
<P align="justify"> The co-existence of the Orthodox Church with the Saami was not without its problems; the latter found the church and its services a financial burden. For example, the Church of Ponoijoki demanded the Saami to surrender half of their catches of fish from the river to the brethren of the church, which aroused rancour and initially led to the closure of the church. However, Ivan the Terrible permitted the church to be reopened in 1581 and awarded it usufruct of half of the Ponoi River. The Saami of the Kuola Peninsula were finally all converted and baptized in the first half of the eighteenth century, but elements of their old religion continued to exert a powerful influence alongside the Christian ones. </P>
<P align="justify"> In the west, the Orthodox Church hardly did any missionary work except among the maritime Saami of the Finnmark coast, whom it strenuously tried to convert especially during the reign of King Haakon V. However, Christian influences spread along with trade, and churches were built early on for non-Saamis living in the Saami areas of Norway and Sweden. The maritime Saami mission also indirectly transmitted Christian influences among other Saami groups, for in summer many of the Saami of the fells came down to the coast for a while in the summer and thus came into contact with the new religion. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the most northern church in Norway (and indeed the world) was in Lenvik in the vicinity of Tromsø, while in Sweden the northemost church was located just north of Umeå. Later, in the Middle Ages, churches were built on the coast of the Finnmark and on the Gulf of Bothnia. During the Roman Catholic period in the Middle Ages, a Swedish Saami woman called Margareta carried out an individual crusade to spread Christianity among the Saami. Not without significance, also, were influences spread by the [[The Birkarlar|<I>Birkarlar</I>]], peasants from the Gulf of Bothnia who traded with and taxed the Saami. </P>
<P align="justify"> After the Reformation, missionary work was momentarily active in Sweden-Finland. In 1550, King Gustav Vasa obliged the rectors of the coastal parishes (i.e. those of Kemi and Tornio in Finnish Lapland) serve the Saami of the areas north of their respective parishes. However, this order was soon rescinded, for in 1559 the King appointed the first special pastor for Lapland and at the same time forbade the rectors of Kemi and Tornio to visit Lapland more than once a year. The reason for this was concern about the rectors possible illegal trading in furs. In practice, the missionary work and organizational activities of the church were initially ineffective, but at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth the situation changed, when a race for control of the Arctic Ocean began between the great powers of Sweden-Finland and Russia. </P>
<P align="justify"> In the Peace of Täyssinä of 1595, Russia ceded the right to the western coast of the Arctic Ocean to Sweden, and the northern part of the border between Russia and Sweden-Finland was drawn along approximately its present course. However, the northernmost stretch was left undefined because a dispute within the border commission. Because Sweden-Finland was become the leading power in the region, Russia now began to take an interest in the Arctic Sea and attempted from there to safeguard its threatened sea routes. In the 1613 Peace of Knäred, Sweden for its part lost control of the Finnmark coast to the kingdom of Denmark-Norway. When Sweden s dream of becoming the supreme power in the Arctic Ocean was thus dashed, it turned its attention to its own Lapland areas and began to develop their administration and economy in order that its ownership of them should be reaffirmed against any claims by Norway or Russia. When Sweden finally became a great power with the Peace of Stobova in 1617 and Russia was completely shut off from the Baltic, it began to take the threat that the latter constituted in the north more seriously. </P>
<P align="justify"> Another reason for the intensification of missionary activities was that the spirit of the reformed church was more doctrinal and zealous in converting the heathen than the Catholic church had been.: Lutheran theology soon began to emphasize the view that the existence of paganism in the realm would bring doom upon the whole society (including its Christian members), and that for this reason it was important that the Saami be converted. Charles IX initiated the political annexation of Lapland and at the same time the real conversion of the Saami of Sweden-Finland when in 1603 he issued a decree authorizing the building of churches in the Laplands of Sweden-Finland. During the ensuing century churches were erected as landmarks on the outer fringes of Tornio and Kemi Laplands against Norway and Russia. Among others, the churches of Markkina in Enontekiö (1607), Inari (1648), Sodankylä (1689), Kuusamo (1695) and Utsjoki (1700) came into being in this way. As a rough approximation, one can say that the Laplands of Sweden were converted to Christianity at least superficially in the seventeenth century in the spirit of both Lutheran orthodoxy with its doctrinal emphasis and the related high church faith with its emphasis on the observance of ecclesiastical form (for example, regular church attendance). </P>
<P align="justify"> In Sweden-Finland, the Lapp Schools ([[School of Skytte|Skytte School]]) and the publication of religious tracts in the Saami languages were also considered effective ways of Christianizing the Saami; in 1632 Gustav II Adolph founded two schools for Saamis; one in Piteå and the other in Lycksele in Ume Lapland. The first book in a Saami language was a small edition written in Pite Saami by the headmaster of the Piteå Lapp School in 1619, and in the 1630s and 1640s numerous other books were published in Saami, although the lack of a formal written language posed a serious problem. Even so, these activities expedited the conversion of the Saami in that they produced about ten Saami clergymen who worked in Swedish-Finnish Lapland. The actual missionary crusade in Sweden-Finland, however, did not take place until the end of the seventeenth century, when it was notice that regular church attendance was only part of the picture; in the Saami lodges and out in the wilds, the old paganism still flourished. One product of this missionary offensive was the seventeenth-century sources that Johannes [[Schefferus, Johannes|Schefferus]] used in his famous book [[Lapponia (a book)|<I>Lapponia</I>]] (1673). </P>
<P align="justify"> After the Reformation, there was in principle some concern in Norway about the conversion of the Saami, but the practical results were scant; those who made the attempt to Christianize them did not speak Saami well enough, and therefore they did not attempt to appeal to the Saami in their own language. Moreover, the methods used were fairly crude. When King Christian IV of Denmark-Norway heard in 1609 that in his realm there still lived complete heathens, he ordered that all the Lapps who could be proved to practise paganism and who refused to renounce it be put to death; for example, the death penalty was used in Finnmark in the years 1620-33 in attempts to eradicate [[Shamanism|shamanism]]. However, the Norwegian Saami only became converted to Christianity in the eighteenth century as a result of the [[Pietism|Pietist]] missionary work of Thomas [[Von Westen, Thomas (engl. ver.)|von Westen]], which was highly effective, among other reasons because it used the [[Modern Saami languages|Saami languages]]. The reason for this delay in Norway was probably that, on the one hand, there was no political pressure to make the local population conform, and, on the other, the Saami had great difficulties in understanding Norwegian, whereas in Finnish Lapland and partly also in Sweden (Torne, Lule and Pite Laplands) the people had long spoken Finnish, and thus a sermon in Finnish reached its audience reasonably effectively. In addition, it should be mentioned that in Sweden-Finland the authorities had earlier realized the importance of proclaiming the faith in Saami. Von Westen also served the cause of [[Research History of the Lappology|Lappology]] in that he and his colleagues produced another group of classic sources for the subject. His work inspired others in Norway and Sweden to undertake both missionary work and ethnographic research, and thus in the eighteenth century some other important sources and the first modern ethnographic descriptions were produced, such as Knut Leem's description of the Lapps of Finnmark (1767), which also includes Erik Johan Jessen s work on the pagan religion of the Lapps. </P>
<P align="justify"> Towards the end of the eighteenth century all the Saami had come under at any rate the nominal control of a Christian church. The most striking and communal rituals of the Saamis ethnic religion - shamanism and the associated use of the troll s drum and the cult of the [[Sieidi (engl. ver.)|sieidi]] shrines by the [[Siida, Saami village|siida]] communities - had been successfully eradicated from the whole of Lapland. The church authorities were also so successful in making chanting a sin that condemnation of it genuinely passed into the popular culture as well. The Christianization of Saami culture was nevertheless an extremely slow process, and in fact it was not until the advent of [[Laestadianiam|Laestadianism]] that the great ability of Saami culture to adapt was broken. Many pagan rituals survived for a long time in the Saami lodges and out in the wilds in secret, as manifestations of a banned tradition; for example, <I>sieidi</I> worship by individuals probably continued down to the 1950s at least. The narrative tradition preserved part of the cognitive material of the old beliefs. Some it can again be intuited from certain beliefs of the late tradition; for example the ancient explanation of illness as loss of one s soul can be adduced from the idea of falling into a state of [[Raimmahallan|<I>ráimmahallan</I>]] (apathetic debility). Some phenomena of the old religion, like a belief in premonitions still live on in popular culture. </P>
<P align="justify"> The very strong orientation of the pre-Christian religion of the Saami towards the maintenance of success in their occupations, health, and generally towards matters connected with this life caused great problems for missionary work, especially in the west. For example, with regard to the curing of illness, the church and social institutions had little to offer in place of shamanism. A proselytizing sermon tended to deal basically with matters of an altogether different order: the salvation of the soul and the afterlife. The missionaries did not preach about good fortune in one s occupation or recovery from illness in connection with conversion to Christianity. The strategy of the Russian Orthodox Church temporary, based as it was on a temporary state of syncretism, produced a result that was less correct in terms of doctrine but internally more integrated. </P> <P align="justify"> Another factor which contributed to the survival of the old religion alongside the new one and thus slowed down the complete success of missionary work was the system of people s having two first names, one Saami and one Christian. In both Sweden-Finland and Norway, the conversion of the Saami passed through a short but distinct phase in which there existed two religions and two separate identities. It was not a question of a syncretic stage, because the two identities were both genuine: the Christian faith governed their view of the world in matters related to the church, while their ethnic (pagan) beliefs came into play in their domestic affairs. Since a person s name was an extremely important marker of identity for a Saami, he was because of his two names genuinely two different persons. When the Christian culture eventually prevailed and the Saami forenames disappeared, the latter were often made into surnames; this was the origin of many typical Saami surnames like Päiviö, Aikio, Eira and Magga. </P> Päiviö, Aikio, Eira and Magga. </P> +
|
