Kinship seides. Characteristic features of the seide cult of hunting grounds have been that (1) the seide was located in the hunting territory of the ‘user of the land’, a kinship group or family, and may have been passed on down the line. The seide rite was based on (2) reciprocity: the seide was promised an offering or a share of the catch, if fishing, hunting or reindeer husbandry in the area governed by the seide was successful. If the catch was poor or the seide was not deemed to possess sufficient ‘power’, it might have been abandoned, desecrated or destroyed altogether. Bad seides have been burned in fires. The seide’s (3) status among other seides has been dependent on the status of those who made offerings to it, the performers of the rite. The seide stone was deemed to have power only if people had faith in it and it was
‘consecrated’ for its purpose of receiving offerings. The seide was the object of the more religious rever-ence, the better the success and prosperity of the person who offered to it, of his family or kinship group.
Some seides became widely renowned and outsiders also came to make offerings to it. This way were created kinship or village seides that may have been the sites of communal offering festivities.
Seide offerings were (4) a rite among men only and excluded from women; the offering ritual was usu-ally performed by the head of the family. The original form of a hunting or fishing offering may have been (5) anointing of the seide stone with the innards, blood or fat of the catch, although other kinds of offer-ings have also been made to seides.
Seides have been erected for the supernatural guardian of a certain natural site, called among the Sami e.g. suurjunkkari (Swedish storjunkare), the master of the place and owner of its wildlife. Seides dedicated to supernatural guardians reflect the relationship of hunting community man to his environ-ment, to the other-worldly inhabitants of natural sites, and to the supernatural guardians of quarry ani-mals. Hunters had to return a part of their catch, perhaps originally the innards, the beating heart in which the soul of the fish or animal resided, so that it could be reincarnated back into nature. A belief has also been prevalent among Finns, as well as the Sami, that the supernatural guardian of a place or female progenitor of animals will give a catch to a successful hunter who is also able to give the guardian its rightful share.
Seide stones or cairns, easily visible in the treeless landscape of the fells, were also landmarks of hunting grounds. They reinforced usage rights in the same way as the graves of ancestors in early culti-vating communities (map 3). In the period of large-scale reindeer husbandry, the seides in the fell region signposted the annual migration routes of kinship groups, as well as marking the boundaries of pasture-lands. The supernatural guardian gave man the right to the surrounding nature.
Extensions of the seide tradition. Many kinds of local traditions were created around seides. Because women had to avoid seides, so-called ‘women’s ways’ [naistenmatka] or roundabout routes were created on some waterways or footpaths, and women had to take these in order to bypass the seide site (cf. map 70). Some seides became travel seides that were offered tobacco, money and jewelry to ensure good weather for a journey, or a stone would be cast into the seide site in passing; such bypassing seides have been widespread in the Eurasian culture circle. In the course of the last centuries, hunting and fishing seides increasingly became general ritual sites, with offerings of cash, spirits or other gifts made for a variety of purposes, such as to secure happiness in matrimony. Seides have also been used in
healing rites, in fact, some seide springs have originally been so-called healing springs or dual-bottomed saivo lakes, beneath which the deceased resided.
Decorations, offering platforms with their statuary and enclosures around the seide are similar to cult sites devoted to the deity of heaven or thunder (Thor). It is possible that natural sites designated as sei-des have been adorned with wooden images of supernatural guardians, like in the sacred sites of north-ern Fenno-Ugrian hunter peoples, but knowledge of them no longer exists.(1 In the fell region, the stan-dard type of a handmade stone seide has been a statue erected with rocks piled on top of each other.
There might have been several, as if a whole family of supernatural guardian spirits were in residence, or a principal spirit was surrounded by various assistants.
Interpretations
Original European culture. Evidently, there are three forms of ritual activity (representation) in seide offerings. They were 1. reciprocal hunting rites, 2. rites of returning the catch (soul of the animals) and 3.
(seasonal) livelihood rites. The most original are the seides of fishing waters and deer-hunting grounds, at which fishermen and hunters were in contact with the other-worldly owners of the hunting or fishing site or the entire surrounding nature. In hunting communities, the supernatural guardian had a reciprocal relationship with man: a successful fisherman or hunter had to be able to win over the guardian spirit of the hunting site or the animal's female progenitor, and equally, if the seide did not yield a catch, it was abandoned. The offering to the seide was the gift (offerre) to other-worldly forces described by Marcel Mauss, and required a gift in return, man's share ('good fortune'). In the hunting period, man and super-natural guardian were equal, as if living side by side, each in his own sphere of the super-natural environment.
Particularly the offerings to deer and reindeer seides were returning rites in nature; hard body parts of the quarry animal were returned to nature, antlers, bones, or the heart and innards (blood), where the animal’s soul was generally believed to reside. Through these rites, the hunters ensured the return or reincarnation of the quarry animal’s soul, and sustained the continuance of the natural cycle and a se-cure future (cf. map 1).
In the large-scale reindeer herding period, seides became altars used by reindeer-herding Sami peo-ple in an effort to ward off the dangers threatening their livelihood and to influence the preservation of their resources. The reindeer offering stood for ritual killing (sacrificium).(2 Reindeer herders’ ideas of human success differed from those of hunter-fishermen: increasingly important elements of their inten-tions became the growth of their reindeer herd, good reindeer fortune, and the power relainten-tions of the reindeer herding community, or competition over property.
A reindeer buried alive, if such offerings have indeed been made, is an exception; in the Sami envi-ronment it would have been an attempt at extreme control of life and death, even a conscious breach of the natural order. The idea of the rite has perhaps been to transport the reindeer ‘alive’ for the use of the deceased or other-worldly residents or earth folk [maahinen, map 71], or to create from the animal a new supernatural guardian for the site particularly to take care of reindeer. Alternatively, sacrificial offerings have been anti-Christian witchcraft, offering to evil forces, the devil.
The seide is a sacrificial site of hunter-fisher-gatherers. Archaeological finds have been deemed to show that early hunters and also European peoples, e.g. ancient Germanic peoples and Celts, would
have performed human sacrifices.(3 Such interpretations are suppositions of researchers of the evolu-tionary school or so-called primitivists, based on ideas of the cruelty of ‘primitive man’. In reality, human sacrifices belong to ‘high cultures’, cultivation societies with a prevailing centralized religious dynasty;
human sacrifices have been used to show that the god-king also governed life and death, and to seal the absolute authority structures concentrated around sacral power.(4 They have been totally alien to north-ern hunting cultures. The Sami seide cult, if any, has sustained the religious interpretations and concepts of the environment of early fishermen-hunters: it is true original culture of Europe and the human race.
Bäckman 1975. Daunius 1926. Fellman 1906 (1820-1831). Friis 1871. Grönlund 1848. Hallström 1910;
1921-1922; 1932. Hammmarstedt 1915. Harva 1915a; 1927; 1928b. Hultkranz 1955 1962. Högström 1980 (1747). Itkonen T. I. 1948 II, 316-. Jessen 1767. Johansson C 1941; 1942. Johansson L 1946.
Karsten 1952. Kildal 1807. Kivikoski 1934. Krohn J. 1894, 62-. Manker 1957; 1963. Mattila M. 1974. Me-bius 1968; 1971. Paulaharju K. 1962. Paulaharju S. 1932. Pirak 1933. Qvigstad 1926. Ravila 1934.
Reuterskiöld 1910; 1912. Schefferus 1963 (1673). Setälä 1901. Tallgren B. 1908. Thurenius 1910 (1724). Tuderus 1773. Turi 1979 (1910). Vilkuna, A. 1956. Vorren 1987. Westen 1773 (1956). Wiklund 1916; 1947.
1. Karjalainen 1918, 158-. Cf. Lehtisalo 1924a, 57-. 2. Mauss 1967 (1925) . Baal 1976. 3. Cf. Lincoln 1986, 182-. 4. E.g. Valeri 1985.