45
spread of aspects of culture through networks
where Proto-Sámi was
already spoken, at least
to some degree. The spread of these changes
through the networks suggests convergences in
social (and to some degree probably also
religious) organization in relation to the
landscape.
13
Rather than presuming that Proto-
Sámi’s spread was accompanied by abrupt
local language shifts, local language shifts may
have been precipitated by the spread of other
aspects of culture. Changes in settlement types
suggest the spread of societal frameworks
becoming shared across groups, reinforcing
collective identity and possibly an ascendance
of inter-group communication over in-group
communication.
The
processes
remain
uncertain, but warrant reflection.
Manifesting degrees of correlation between
language areas and tradition areas is a natural
historical outcome, even if the boundaries of
these may never fully coincide at any given
time. Evidence of changes during the centuries
following initial Proto-Sámi language spread
may have had levelling effects on earlier
linguistic and cultural diversity.
Common Proto-Sámi Vocabulary
Even if religion and language can be
transmitted separately, continuity in links
between them can be expected where they are
transmitted together. One indicator that Proto-
Sámi language spread with a common form of
Proto-Sámi religion would thus be evidence of
a Common Proto-Sámi religious vocabulary.
To test this, a list of religious vocabulary was
developed on the basis of the fourteen words
indexed under religion and beliefs in Juhani
Lehtiranta’s (2001) lexicon of Common Proto-
Sámi vocabulary. This set was expanded with
some additional vocabulary in that volume,
and a few others relevant for discussion.
14
However, this survey does not presume to
exhaust potential vocabulary that could be
relevant to such discussion.
Religious vocabulary is not exceptionally
stable. Uri Tadmor’s (2009) research illustrates
that vocabulary related to religion and beliefs
can be among the most salient for borrowings.
Vocabulary linked to religion and beliefs can
thus be expected to both receive and lose
words over time. However, not all such
vocabulary is exchanged with equal ease. The
ability of such terms to be mobilized across
languages should be considered in relation to
several
factors,
including:
the word’s
frequency and range of uses in the lexicon; the
centrality
15
of the concept or symbol identified
by the word in discourse or beliefs; and the
degree to which a borrowing is complementary
to existing general vocabulary (e.g. one more
word for ‘monster’), identifies practice-specific
concepts for which existing vocabulary was
lacking (e.g. a term for a particular ritual,
religious paraphernalia or action like making
the sign of the cross), or competes with
existing terms to greater or lesser degrees that
are eventually displaced (e.g. base vocabulary
and proper names). If religion spread with
Proto-Sámi
language,
some
distinctive
evidence can be expected at least in central
areas of the lexicon of mythology and ritual.
Lehtiranta’s lexicon strikingly reveals that
the southwest, northwest and northeast dialects
formed a fairly coherent language network.
The shared vocabulary indicates that loans which
entered the language after Proto-Sámi had spread
geographically were communicated through
long-distance networks from the southern
extension on the Scandinavian Peninsula across
the Kola Peninsula in the east. Such loans are
not limited to new concepts and phenomena
and extend to core vocabulary. Lehtiranta
(2001: 162–163) indexes ca. 100 lexical items
for the human body. In round terms, ca. 5% are
identified as of Scandinavian origin, ca. 10%
appear to be Proto-Finnic loans,
16
less than
50% are otherwise linked to
an Uralic heritage
through cognates, and more than 35% are of
uncertain etymology. The number of uncertain
etymologies may be somewhat exaggerated.
Nevertheless, a potentially substantial number
of loans penetrated the core vocabulary of the
language and spread through the Proto-Sámi
dialects. Loans of such vocabulary easily occur
in the context of language shifts and can also
more easily take place in contexts where an
asymmetrical relation is perceived by speakers
of the respective languages. Such situations
may account for this loan-word vocabulary
locally or regionally, but the innovations are
more striking for being shared through a
geographically dispersed area. They therefore
underscore the role of the language in contact
networks. They simultaneously indicate that
46
the vocabulary was in dynamic negotiation
across those networks, at least until it stabilized.
The potential for vocabulary to spread
through the Proto-Sámi language networks
opens methodological difficulties. Geographical
factors and the history of Proto-Finnic’s roles
in networks of interaction
in the North make it
seem most likely that loans of potentially core
religious vocabulary from Late Proto-Finnic
into Proto-Sámi occurred before Proto-Sámi
spread significantly. The likelihood then would
seem to decrease in inverse proportion to the
geographical spread without corroborating
evidence of some impact passing through
relevant areas. Proto-Finnic’s potential for
influences then increases again toward the
Viking Age (Ahola & Frog 2014). On the other
hand, indications that Proto-Sámi was open to
lexical innovation even in core vocabulary
make it less certain what language words might
be taken from or how far they might spread.
Discussions of
loans from Proto-Finnic and
words with other Uralic cognates are conditional
on understandings of other Uralic languages’
relationships to Proto-Sámi. Loanwords from
Scandinavian and Palaeo-European languages
can be more clearly identified as spreading
through a Proto-Sámi dialect continuum. Para-
Sámi languages – i.e. language that evolved
independently from Pre-Sámi – and probably
other Uralic languages were encountered in
Proto-Sámi’s spread,
17
and these also present
potential sources for loans. Proto-Finnic
underwent distinctive sound changes which
should make it possible to differentiate
whether a loan is Proto-Finnic in many cases,
although in others they remain ambiguous (or
the phonology has simply been considered
irregular). Some of the vocabulary identified as
borrowed from Proto-Finnic could thus reflect
non-Finnic languages of which the speakers
also underwent a language shift, as could some
vocabulary identified with cognates in other
Uralic languages. In terms of individual
etymologies, this issue is generally impossible
to resolve empirically. It has become customary
to acknowledge that vocabulary may have been
mediated by a chain
of dialects and languages,
but the possibility that loans may derive from
these undocumented languages remains outside
of discussion. Methodologically, this tendency
creates the issue that Proto-Finnic may be over-
represented as a source of loans. Interpretation
of a loan as Proto-Finnic also implies certain
relations between
groups
of speakers.
However, if the loan actually derives from
another Uralic language, it may have a very
different social-historical background, such as
the language shifts of a mobile hunting culture.
It is necessary to acknowledge a degree of
uncertainty with some words of Uralic
etymology, and the general lack of discussion
of whether Proto-Sámi borrowed from extinct
Uralic languages as it did from Finnic,
Scandinavian and Palaeo-European languages.
Another issue is that Lehtiranta’s ‘common’
Proto-Sámi vocabulary is based only on Sámi
languages that survived. It thus remains
conjectural for Sámi languages which were
spoken in most of Finland and Karelia and
perhaps farther east. This is not problematic for
vocabulary inherited from Pre-Sámi. However,
it remains unclear whether or to what extent
loanword vocabulary that spread through Proto-
Sámi speech networks of the Scandinavian and
Kola Peninsulas also penetrated south through
Finland and Karelia to become ‘common’
there as well. It warrants noting that areal
linguistics suggests that variation in Proto-
Sámi language forms would most likely have
been greater closer to the area from which it
spread (Frog & Saarikivi 2014/2015: 69–70;
for varying forms and distinctive features of
Sámi loans in Southern Finland’s placenames,
see e.g. Aikio 2007b: 172, 190). The great
differences in ecology, climate and associated
livelihoods between, for example, Lapland and
the Lakeland region of southern Finland raise
questions about whether these speakers of
Proto-Sámi would have maintained meaningful
networks across all of these regions, and
whether all vocabulary spreading through
networks of Lapland should be expected to
have also spread to the south.
Another issue of reconstructing ‘common’
Proto-Sámi concerns initial consonants and
consonant clusters of loanword vocabulary that
do not reconstruct consistently for the Proto-
Sámi dialects on which reconstruction is based.
Lehtiranta follows the principle that, if the
initial consonant or consonant cluster cannot
be reconstructed for all of these branches of
Proto-Sámi, it cannot be reconstructed as the
Common Proto-Sámi form. This approach