OF NORTHERN LIGHTS AND SOUL BIRDS
SAMI ESSAY #2 Written in partnership with Sami healer and artist Åsa Andersson Martti!
I am flying to China tomorrow and then on to Vietnam on Friday! I am not sure if I am going to find the uninterrupted time and space (and good enough internet) to send out any essays, so there may well be a two-week lull while I try to cope with speaking Vietnamese! We will see! I thought I’d get out one more essay in the “Sámi Series” before I go.
The recent essay introducing Åsa, a Sámi healer and artivist (her unique word for “activism through art”), was so popular that we have decided to continue working together on bringing you more indigenous, earth-based, Sami wisdom from the Sápmi and the Arctic! Once again I will put Åsa’s words in cursive print, so you can tell who is speaking! I have also put Sámi words in bold print again (in case you would like to learn some!)
Today’s piece explores beliefs about the Northern Lights.
I have explained before that Åsa and speak Swedish (with phrases from Finnish, North Sámi and English thrown in). Åsa said recently: “Imelda, Du behöver en kiosk eller “hag shack” här uppe. Det är om inte solklart så norrskensklart!”
Translation: Imelda, you really need a kiosk or Hag Shack up here! It is not quite a clear sunny day but it is clear enough to see the Aurora Borealis!
The Swedish word for Aurora Borealis is, poetically, “norrsken”: North Shine!
Of course I asked Åsa the obvious question, and the North Sámi word for the aurora is guovssahasat.
The word guovssahasat – is derived from the root word guovssu, meaning morning or evening glow. Guovssahasat is also the Sámi name of a bird called the Siberian jay, which has colourful feathers and a lively temperament. Ancient Finns believed that the soul of a hunter passes on to a Siberian jay, which were thus regarded as soul birds. Killing a Siberian jay would bring bad fortune to a hunter. Auroras, like the Siberian jay, have often been thought of as the spirits of the dead. SOURCE
In Arctic Norway I took this photo of “a Green Raven” flying over Narvik, a few weeks ago!
Åsa: However, our North Sámi conceptualization is a bit problematic, because the Northern Lights are perceived as the souls of dead people, that the living are not allowed to talk about. As children we would hide from them and sit completely silent under, for instance, a turned-up rowing boat.
This is not unlike the Inuit. In pre-Christian times they believed that the Northern Lights formed a bridge between our world and the spirit world. It consists of the souls of the dead, and the stars in the firmament (flickering through the lights) were believed to be the houses where the Dead live, in the Afterlife.
Some Inuit tribes saw the lights as dead people playing football with a walrus skull. Other tribes believed that they were the souls or spirits of stillborn children, kicking their umbilical cords in the night sky.
Åsa: Whistling at the Northern Lights was completely inappropriate and even dangerous. Your presence was immediately detected and you could be abducted. Not unlike those abduction stories involving aliens, you would be taken up into the sky to join the souls of the dead!
But… As teenagers we rebelled against all these taboos. We yelled greetings at the lights and stared freely and intensely at them.
It was scary as a child to hear these cautionary tales. But obviously these stories contain a moral lesson. When children become captivated by the aurora they can follow other people into the far distance, or take off in any direction (for a better view). They can easily get lost, freeze to death, die by misadventure etc. The Arctic is an extremely dangerous place in Winter. Sami parents prefer to keep their children within their range of vision (and supervision).
Having said that, it is an incredibly powerful phenomenon. As a human being it makes you feel very small. And humility is a good thing, in many ways!
I pointed out that Dutch people have always done the same thing. Not as regards the aurora borealis (we never it saw it once during my entire childhood there!) but children are told scary tales to keep them away from the sea, canals, ditches and other bodies of water. In my book about the pre-Christian spirituality of the Netherlands (North Sea Water in my Veins) I provide a long list of various monsters and horrors, all serving the purpose of making the life of parents in a very watery country a bit easier!
I found a few more interesting things from the Nordic region:
The Finnish Sami people from Lapland believed the Northern Lights were made by whales spouting, created when the animals blew water out of their blowholes.
“Sillblixt” (Swedish for Herring Flash!): In some parts of Sweden the aurora was thought to be made by light reflecting off vast schools of herring swimming in the sea. Herring was the fish that fed them and kept them alive through the harsh winters. SOURCE
The Old Norse word for the aurora borealis is norðrljós, "northern lights". The first occurrence of the term norðrljós is in the book Konungs Skuggsjá (The King's Mirror, known in Latin as Speculum Regalae), written in 1250 AD, after the end of the Viking Age (the Viking Age dates ca. 800-1100AD), describing the Northern Lights as seen by settlers in Greenland. SOURCE
While I was in Sápmi, Åsa taught me a new cool term (in English, for once!): Aurora Stress! It means that during busy periods (when the aurora is out every single night) it seriously deprives you of sleep. You are tucked up in your warm bed and think: “Do I really need to put on my snow boots and five layers of clothing to attend the show)?” But, if you decide against getting out of bed you feel haunted by the spectacle you missed. It might just be the best display of the year! So you climb out of bed after all… And after many days of this, you catch yourself praying for one clouded night, just so you can get some sleep!
Well, I guess some of my readers would say aurora stress is a huge privilege, dear Åsa! Thank you so much for you willingness to teach us all about Sámi traditions and cosmology!
I try (but sometimes fail) to get out at least one essay a week (sometimes more), due to travel, international teaching commitments and family care responsibilities (our family lives with Alzheimer’s and I have written several posts about that). If you would like to see regular posts about about Nordic spirituality and my life as a Forest Witch (and of course short videos of all the wildlife here!), please follow me on Instagram or Facebook, thank you!
Imelda Almqvist, London UK
Photograph of me taking photographs of the aurora borealis at the Golden Light Healing Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin USA, by Jolene Kunde
BIO FOR IMELDA ALMQVIST
Imelda Almqvist is an international teacher of Sacred Art and Seiðr/Old Norse Traditions (the ancestral wisdom teachings of Northern Europe). So far she has written four non-fiction books and two picture books for children. Natural Born Shamans: A Spiritual Toolkit for Life (Using shamanism creatively with young people of all ages) in 2016, Sacred Art: A Hollow Bone for Spirit (Where Art Meets Shamanism) in 2019, Medicine of the Imagination - Dwelling in Possibility (an impassioned plea for fearless imagination) in 2020 and North Sea Water In My Veins (The Pre-Christian spirituality of the Low Countries) was published in June 2022.
The Green Bear is a series of picture book for children, aged 3 – 8 years. The stories and vibrant artwork, set in Scandinavia, invite children to explore enchanting parallel worlds and to keep their sense of magic alive as they grow up.
Imelda has presented her work on both The Shift Network and Sounds True. She appears in a TV program, titled Ice Age Shaman, made for the Smithsonian Museum, in the series Mystic Britain, talking about Mesolithic arctic deer shamanism.
Imelda currently has a handbook for rune magicians (about the runes of the Elder Futhark) in production (it will be published by Moon Books in 2026) and the book after that will be about Inuit culture and mythology. Imelda runs an on-line school called Pregnant Hag Teachings, where all classes she teaches remain available as recordings, which can be watched any time.
Website:
http://www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk/
YouTube Channel: youtube.com/user/imeldaalmqvist
Online School: https://pregnant-hag-teachings.teachable.com/courses/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/imelda.almqvist/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/almqvistimelda/
Lovely to hear of different views of the northern lights. I know there are tales from North Scotland about the lights being "Nimble Men" who are spirits battling or the "Mirrie Dancers" who are dancing spirits.
Thank you. What is attractive to us is often is seen as less so in indigenous tradition, if not dangerous. An Australian elder who came to Britain informed many British women that when the full moon was out, that in her tribe, their women had to hide their hair. This did not go down very well among the Britons who had different cultural values amd associations with the moon!