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Reviewed by:
  • Fragments of Lappish Mythology
  • John Lindow
Fragments of Lappish Mythology. By Lars Levi Læstadius. Ed. Juha Pentikäinen. Introduction and Afterword, Juha Pentikäinen. Trans. Börje Vähämäki. (Beaverton, Ontario: Aspasia Books, 2002. Pp. 335, acknowledgments, translator’s foreword, introduction, afterword, bibliographies, index, illustrations.)

The revivalist form of evangelical Lutheranism common to northernmost Scandinavia and deeply rooted in the Sami community takes its usual name, Læstadianism, from the author of this work, Lars Levi Læstadius. Ordained in 1824, Læstadius was a pastor in parts of the Torne River valley in northern Sweden until his death in 1861. Of partly Sami background himself, he spoke both the Sami and Finnish that were widespread in the area. His pastoral duties required him to travel throughout Swedish Norrland, and he also worked and gained a certain reputation as a botanist. In 1838–40 he joined a French research expedition in northern Scandinavia and agreed to draft a "mythology" of the Sami, to be published in France. The work reviewed here is an English translation of the Swedish original, which was completed in 1845. It was never published in full in any language until quite recently, though one part was appended to Jacob Fellman's Anteckningar under min vistelse i Lappland (1906) and a selection of the rest was edited by Harald Grundström [End Page 247] in 1969 from a microfilm copy of the manuscript in the Uppsala dialect archives (ULMA) and published in Svenska landsmål. Juha Pentikäinen's claim that the manuscript was lost for 150 years (p. 50) is therefore an exaggeration, though the parts of manuscript certainly had a curious and complicated fate, as Pentikäinen shows. He tracked down a great deal of interesting information in French archives, and this makes up the most diverting part of the "Introduction" (not least for the curious French; pp. 37–8 for the most apt examples). Pentikäinen also seeks to present a general introduction to all aspects of Læstadius and lingers over the theological writings. At times the "Introduction" reads like conference papers stitched together, and readers not already familiar with Læstadius may have difficulty following it. For example, Anders Fjellner is mentioned in passing as "the author of the Sami epic," with no additional information (p. 35). The brief afterword devotes a page or so to each of the sections of the manuscript and considers especially what Læstadius has contributed to the subject. The "Bibliography for Pentikäinen's Introduction and Afterword" (327–28) does not cite all the works referred to in these two sections (e.g., Drijvenes 1992, Marmier 1999, Pentikäinen 1968 and 1998, and Rydving 1993 and 2000).

Læstadius's Fragments consisted of a "Reminder to the Reader," followed by five parts, treating, respectively, gods, sacrifice, divination (that is, as carried out by the noaide or shaman), traditional tales (common Sami legends, with Stallo at the center), and a response to a manuscript on Sami mythology sent to Læstadius by Fellman after the other parts were complete. As a rule, Læstadius worked with printed texts, and especially the sections on gods and sacrifice comprise large quotations from earlier Lappologists such as Schefferius, Jessen, Lehm, and Tuderus. Læstadius followed these quotations with comments based on his own experience or theories, and these are of interest not just as examples of 1840s scholarship or because Læstadius underwent his own conversion in 1844 while the work was still in progress, but also because he was a clear-eyed and relatively open-minded observer of the Sami community.

Probably the main value of the work is for specialists in Sami tradition or the origins of Læstadianism, and they will need to stick to the Swedish original. Börje Vähämäki's English translation thus offers the world a scholarly luxury. The editorial decision to retain and translate the footnotes from Risto Pulkkinen's Finnish translation, apparently without much editing or thought for the needs of an English-reading audience, seems questionable, and I must confess that I was sometimes uncertain, despite the information in Vähämäki...

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