by Karen Nyenhuis | Oct 29, 2024 | Just Knud Qvigstad, Norse Mythology, Sami History
The 1723 Naerøy Manuscript contains a rambling interpretation of this drawing of a Sami ceremonial drum attributed to Thomas von Westen. The god in the top half of the drum, to the right of Thor, holding a hoe with a claw at the end and having an arch with serrations...
by Karen Nyenhuis | Sep 3, 2024 | Early Scandinavia, Just Knud Qvigstad, Norse Mythology, Sami History
This is the drawing of the Sami ceremonial drum found in the Naerøy Manuscript, attributed to Thomas von Wessen, 1723. It is in the public domain, and there are other versions of it that render more detail. Johan Randulf, the author of the Naeroy manuscript, rambles a...
by Karen Nyenhuis | Sep 1, 2024 | Early Scandinavia, Just Knud Qvigstad, Norse Mythology, Sami History
I am certain there has been new scholarship on the Naeroy Manuscript since Just Qvigstad published his summary of it in 1903, but since he was my great-grandmother’s brother and he looks like my late father, I have been slowly translating his work for my own...
by Karen Nyenhuis | Aug 15, 2024 | Just Knud Qvigstad, Sami History, Tales from Sapmi
Many of Just Knud Qvigstad’s works are out of print, and most are not in English. This is my paraphrased translation of stories from Sápmi from a French translation of his work. The Angry Loon God made the magnificent birds and let them fly away. The loon grumbled...
by Karen Nyenhuis | May 23, 2024 | Just Knud Qvigstad, Norse Mythology, Sami History, Tales from Sapmi
This story is hard to make sense of. It has a bit of shape-shifting in it, a phenomenon mentioned in Norse myth. The Sami had a broad understanding of Norse myth in the eighteenth century, as evidenced by the journal of Isaac Olsen, Lutheran missionary to Sapmi in the...
by Karen Nyenhuis | Mar 6, 2024 | Folklore of Scandinavia, Just Knud Qvigstad, Sami History, Tales from Sapmi
Two stories in Just Qvigstad’s Contes de Laponie illustrate that giants in the stories of the Sami were nocturnal and would turn to stone if caught by the rays of the sun. In one story, “Au royaume du géant,” a group of sailors sail their ship to the realm of the...
