Sami drum

Copper carving (1767) by O.H. von Lode showing a Sami shaman with his rune drum (meavrresgárri)

Saami drum (goavddis) with the Beaivi Sun symbol that resembles a sun cross.

Copy of the rune drum belonging to the 100 year old Sami Anders Paulsen. Cultural Department of the Museum in Oslo, Norway. The rune drum was confiscated by the authorities of Vadsø in 1691. In 1694 it was transferred to the Royal Art Cabinet in Copenhagen, Since 1979, it has been kept in the Saami Museum in Karasjok, county of Finnmark, Norway.

A Sami drum (also known as "rune drum" or "runebomme", "magic drum") is a membrane-covered oval or circular drum used as shamanistic ceremonial drum by the Sami people.

A missionary gave this picture of usage:

A ring or some other accoutrement, probably symbolizing a frog, was during rituals moved around on the drum membrane, which contained some hundreds of runes (elks, sun, thunder, etc.). From its spontaneous selection of a given rune, predictions and conclusions were made from the matched rune itself and the path that the ring would take in selecting it.^{[citation needed]}

Only about 70 drums have been preserved until today. Probably the most well known is the Linné drum – a drum that was given to Carolus Linnaeus during his visits in the northern Sweden. He later gave it to a museum in France, and recently it was brought back to the Swedish National Museum.

See also

• Goavddis
• Sami shamanism

External links

• Sámi Drums – Then and Now, University of Texas

This article contains content from the Owl Edition of Nordisk familjebok, a Swedish encyclopedia published between 1904 and 1926, now in the public domain.