From the end of the 17th to the middle of the 18th century much of the confrontation between indigenous Saami religion and Christianity was focused on the drums. The Saamis of both Denmark—Norway and Sweden—Finland had been christianized for decade. The main problem for the Church authorities turned out to be that of making the Saamis abandon their indigenous religious customs. From the end of the 17th century, an intense period of propaganda and coercion began to make the Saamis abandon these non Christian elements in their religion. For the Saamis, the drums represented their threatened culture, the resistance against the Christian claim to exclusiveness, and a striving to preserve traditional values. The drums had a twofold role to play in the religious encounter. They were both foci of the confrontation and sources documenting and structuring it. The fight between old and new beliefs is to some extent possible to follow in the records from the district and county courts. These records give us access to Saami arguments and views of the importance of the drums in Saami society. The function of the drums as instruments for a Saami description of the encounter is, however, difficult to make out. The drum figures are difficult to interpret and there are a number of alternative ways of understanding their meaning.

Les mots « chamane » et « chamanisme » s’emploient couramment comme concepts, mais ils sont utilisés de multiples façons, souvent dans un sens si général qu’ils ne définissent rien de précis. D’après l’auteur, la question est de savoir si « chamane » et « chamanisme » sont véritablement utiles comme concepts comparatifs. Il conclut que le temps est venu d’abandonner ces termes, à l’exception des contextes où ils sont utilisés comme auto-désignation.

Researchers from different fields of study agree on the importance of comparison, but debate over how to compare. Rather than comparing globally, on the basis of secondary literature and looking for similari ties alone, the article argues for a limitative approach that restricts itself to just a few cultures, is based on local sources, and takes both resemblances and differences into account. In contrast to the idea of a uniform and transcultural bear ceremonial in North Eurasia, it focuses on plurality and diversity in discussing and comparing the bear rituals found among the southern Khanty (about 1900) and the southern Sami (about 1750).

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Theoretically and methodologically, students of religion are grouped in a borderland with a great variety of competing approaches. Most of these offer heuristic tools for the interpretation of those human activities that we group together with the help of the concept 'religion'. Others present religion as a 'real phenomenon' and offer explanations. The purpose of this article is to discuss some aspects of the most influential of the approaches in the second group, the 'congnitive science of religion'.