The Shamanic Drum as Cognitive Map

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The Sami peoples of northern Scandinaviaand the Kola Peninsula in Russiapracticed an indigenous form of shamanism until the religious repression of shamanic practices in the mid 17th century. The runebomme, an oval frame or bowl drum, was an important trance and divination tool of the noaidi, or Sami shaman. Sami shamanic drums depict their mythical representation of the world. Sami drumheads are decorated with cosmological rune symbols and drawings of heavenly bodies, plants, animals, humans and human habitations; sometimes divided into separate regions by horizontal or vertical lines. Sami drums are characterized by a central sun cross with arms protruding in the four cardinal directions. The cross symbolized the sun–the source of life. 

The horizontal or vertical lines represented the three realms of the shaman’s universe.

The drum is a key to the cosmology of the Samis. The figures of the drum were a kind of cognitive map for the journey of the shaman’s ego-soul between the three levels of the universe. At the same time it was the collective side of the drum, open to the public to be observed collectively and interpreted publicly by the shaman to the audience who shared the same cosmologic beliefs. The cyclic world-outlook of shamanism became manifest in the oval shape and the heliocentric figures of the drum. It was probably used, read and interpreted from different directions in a way that shifted annually in accordance with the seasonal variation. To learn more read “TheShamanic Drum as Cognitive Map” by Juha Pentikäinen. This article presents this rich iconography and ends on a comparative analysis of the “message” painted on these drums with Finnish folklore, its mythology and, especially, its ancient oral literature.