The ‘Bear Ceremonial’ and Bear Rituals among the Khanty and the Sami

Rydving, Håkan

doi:10.33356/temenos.6940

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The bear (guovza) features prominently in Sámi culture as the holiest and most powerful of animalsin the Sámi worldview, bears have souls just like all living beings. Bear hunting was a ritual event, and in Sámi mythology there are stories of an erotic relationship between a bear and a woman, as well as bear-human mergers and transformations (Rydving, 2010;Heith, 2016). The bear in the inserts is presented, however, in present-day situations, like it was just some youth looking to get away, get high, and have sex.…”

Section: Bears Lemmings and Queer Non-human Indigenous Worldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Queer Indigenous World-Making in the Sámi Tv Comedy Njuoska Bittut

Kyrölä¹

2022

The Sámi World

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How can laughter unravel gendered, sexual and settler colonial power dynamics, and help imagine other ways of being? In this chapter, I examine the Sámi TV comedy show Njuoska bittut (in Finnish Märät säpikkäät, produced by Tarinatalo, broadcast by the Finnish public service broadcasting company YLE 2012-2013) by Sámi creatives Suvi West and Anne Kirste Aikio as a project of queer Indigenous world-making. I suggest that Njuoska Bittut offers an alternative vision of a world of Indigenous laughter, erotics and audiovisuality, where settler understandings of gender, sexuality, and the workings of the world are made strange and ridiculous. Aimed at Sámi and non-Sámi audiences alike, the show navigates between making its humor legible for a settler audience and creatively imagining queer Indigenous worlds, disinterested in such legibility."Njuoska bittut" is North Sámi language and refers to leg warmers made of reindeer skin that got wet. West and Aikio explain in an interview that they picked up the phrase from a hundreds-ofyears-old yoik (Sámi traditional vocal genre) where it refers to a treacherous woman with unruly sexual appetites (Huru, 2012). The humor in Njuoska bittut does indeed center sex and sexuality, playing with the stereotype of the exotic Native with voracious sexual appetites (Green 2007; Lehtola, 2000, pp. 138-141) but the laughter is also geared at the Sámi themselves, and tensions or prejudices within Sámi communities. Every episode introduces a broad theme, such as tourism, Helsinki, homosexuality, boobs, babies, and animals. Across the episodes, there are also recurring characters and sketch types, for example mock-ethnographic documentaries about the Helsinki tribe of people whose habits of living in concrete bunkers and of banishing people who cross to the other side of the beltway. In every episode, West and Aikio introduce a Finnish or Sámi human type in nature documentary style. These types include the white meat-eating

show abstract

Section: Bears Lemmings and Queer Non-human Indigenous Worldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Queer Indigenous World-Making in the Sámi Tv Comedy Njuoska Bittut

Kyrölä¹

2022

The Sámi World

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“…13 Ingold (1980). 14 Korhonen (2007), Rydving (2011), Hansen and Olsen (2014). 15 , and Mulk (1994).…”

Section: Hunting In Research About Samimentioning

confidence: 99%

Hunting

Larsson

Sjaunja

2021

Self-Governance and Sami Communities

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The chapter outline which species were hunted in the boreal forest and how they were hunted or trapped, and which animals were hunted in the mountains. The conditions for hunting were better in the boreal forest than in the mountains due to differences in topography, habitats, and species composition. Hunting led to extinction of wild reindeer and depopulation of fur animals; while small-game hunting for subsistence continued to be important. In the forest region, strong property rights to game developed through the skatteland, and hunting was a private enterprise. Hunting in the mountain region developed in the opposite direction and was open access after the wild reindeer was extinct. Hunting became important for social justice, and poor Sami had access to hunting grounds

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“…Their empirical findings were underpinned by Ingold's (1980) theoretical work. The fourth theme deals with hunting rituals and ceremonies, and scholars have shown that there was a strong link between religion and hunting in societies that depended on hunting (Korhonen, 2007;Rydving, 2010;Hansen and Olsen, 2014). Beyond these themes, there are other aspects of pre -early modern hunting.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hunting by Early Modern Lule Sami Households

Larsson¹,

Sjaunja²

2021

ARCTIC

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Hunting was one of three pillars, along with fishing and reindeer husbandry in the early modern Sami economy, and understanding of Sami hunting has increased during recent decades. However, most research has concentrated on time periods before AD 1600. After AD 1600 and the initial formation of modern Nordic countries, hunting ceased to be the backbone of the overall Sami economy but continued as an integral part of household economies. Our aim is to advance understanding of early modern hunting in northwestern interior Fennoscandia. Using source materials including court rulings and historical accounts, we set out from a self-governance perspective focusing on how actors solved resource distribution with regards to hunting. We show that ecological differences between mountains and forest impacted decisions about hunting. From the 1500s to the end of the 1700s, hunting led to the extinction of wild reindeer and depopulation of fur animals, while small-game hunting for subsistence continued to be important. In the forest region, strong property rights to game developed when skatteland (tax land) was established and hunting became a private enterprise. We suggest that the institution of skatteland was a response to changes in Sami economy, and the transition from collective to individual hunting was a contributing factor.

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The ‘Bear Ceremonial’ and Bear Rituals among the Khanty and the Sami

Cited by 6 publications

References 17 publications

Queer Indigenous World-Making in the Sámi Tv Comedy Njuoska Bittut

Queer Indigenous World-Making in the Sámi Tv Comedy Njuoska Bittut

Hunting

Hunting by Early Modern Lule Sami Households

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