SHAMANISM & THE DRUM · LESSON 2 OF 12 · 13 MIN
The Noaidi and the Sámi Drum
The Sámi noaidi, the painted drums with their pointer for divination, the missionaries who burned and seized them, and the drums coming home.
The Sámi are the Indigenous people of the far north of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia's Kola peninsula. Before Christianisation their religious specialist was the noaidi, who could fall into trance, send his "free soul" out of his body to the spirit world, and bring back healing, knowledge and the future. His great instrument was the drum.