Hõimlane verejõe tagant: Saami muinaslood tootempõhjapõdrast. II

Abstract

In the second part of the research is treated the most important event of the adult life of Meandash - getting married. Marriage between a man and an animal is based on totemistic conceptions. The stories of Meandash finding a wife and marrying her can be divided into two or three Subgenres. Of the first, the author knows only three versions, of the second twelve versions, but of the third - unless it is a forage or a combination of occasions - only one.The first subgenre is characterized by marrying a wife from beyond the river of blood, the second by a threesome of suitors (a raven, a seal and a reindeer), and the third by the bride observing how the food is prepared, which is forbidden. In the first subgenre, the totemistic and shamanlike way of thought is reflected, in which a reindeer man marries a mortal. The river of blood is in the Lapp conceptions the border separating the human and the mythical reindeer world. It is a border between the world of life and death, companions and ancestors. This border can only be crossed by a shaman, who turns into an otter (compare "Kalevala" XVI: 369-372), or uses incantations to make the river dry. In the latter case he uses alder cambium which is analogous to blood. In these stories is represented the motif of a house built of reindeer bones (Compare "Kalevala«, XXI: 159-162). Thus the house of the mythical reindeer is the reindeer himself. Here is expressed the microcosm of the Lapps and the traditions connected with the skeleton. The threshold of the reindeer's house were neckbones. It seems that the semantics of the neck has not been awarded proper attention in the Finno-Ugric religion history. The purposes of telling stories of getting married were 1) passing on information about the ancestors of the tribe and 2) separating the moral from the immoral for didactic purposes.Subgenres of the second kind express the way the reindeer people were imagined to be and to emphasize the benefits of originating from the reindeer rather than from the raven or the seal (distinctions are drawn between the own and the foreign). Everything connected with the house in the stories of this subgenre reflects the opposition pair culture - nature. Meandash is in the house as an anthropomorphic being, but in nature he acts as an animal. He enters the house through the backdoor that is usually used to bring in prey; but the reindeer of our story is at the same time the hunter and the prey as he is hunting those like him.