51
In spite of the range of impacts of Scandi-
navian influence on Proto-Sámi language, the
loanwords do not seem to correlate directly
with significant impacts on religion. There is
no clear indication that the loan
*mānō was
linked with beliefs about the moon, and the
Proto-Scandinavian model for
*sāvje
̮ seems to
have been a simple secular word.
*Rāvke
̮ was
clearly adopted in connection with conceptions
of the supernatural and quite probably
*stālō
was as well, but the contacts that produced
these loans appear centrally associated with
narration rather than ritual and cosmology. Of
course, the Scandinavian loans spread through
Proto-Sámi rather than in conjunction with it.
Scandinavian impacts may have been much
more significant on a local or regional basis but
there is no evidence of sweeping religious
change connected with them. When
*rāvke
̮ and
*stālō potentially spread in connection with
narrative discourse such as legends and tales, it
warrants considering whether
*sāvje
̮ may have
also spread through the same or similar
conduits, but differed in that it referred to
places or things in the landscape rather than
only
to
supernatural
agents
without
corresponding empirical counterparts.
Proto-Finnic Loans after the Vowel Shift
Vocabulary borrowed from Proto-Finnic can
be distinguished according to whether it was
borrowed before or after the Great Sámi Vowel
Shift. Two Proto-Finnic loans listed as related
to religion and beliefs by Lehtiranta have
closely related semantics:
(7)
*hāvtē (§68) (
hávdi)
‘grave, hole’
(8)
*kālmē (§353) (
gálbmi)
‘grave’
Both loans are linked to the materiality of
practices related to death. Proto-Sámi
*hāvtē
[‘grave, hole’] corresponds to the common
Finnic term for ‘grave’ as a physical hole in the
ground in which one is buried (~ Fi.
hauta
[‘grave, hollow, hole’]). Proto-Sámi
*kālmē
corresponds to the more dynamic concept of
forces and (physical) locations associated with
death and its supernatural connotations (~ Fi.
kalma [‘place of the dead, force of death’]).
Whereas terms for supernatural beings like
*rāvke̮ and
*stālō may simply accumulate in a
language, these terms suggest either the
replacement of existing terminology or the
assimilation of the terms with new concepts
and/or practices surrounding the dead that may
have eventually displaced alternatives. These
are the only terms identified by Lehtiranta as
Common Proto-Sámi vocabulary related to
locations of death.
27
Three additional loans from Late Proto-
Finnic can be mentioned:
(9)
*heaŋke
̮ (§235) (
heagga)
‘breath; spirit’
(10)
*vājmō (§1345) (
váibmu)
‘marrow; heart’
(11)
*tāvte
̮ (§1238) (
dávda)
‘illness, malady’
*Heaŋke
̮ is a loan from Late Proto-Finnic (~
Fi.
henki [‘breath; spirit’]);
*vājmō has
cognates in Finnic and Mordvin languages: it
is a soul-word linked to feeling and impulse,
which in (North) Finnic became the word for
‘wife’ (~ Fi.
vaimo). Although
*vājmō is
commonly
treated
as
an
independent
inheritance from Uralic (e.g.
SSA III,
s.v.
‘vaimo’), the first vowel does not exhibit the
effects of the vowel shift and it must be
considered a loan (Saarikivi 2009: 130),
presumably from Proto-Finnic. Again, the two
terms seem to be connected with a single
semantic domain, although their significance
remains somewhat ambiguous owing to both
terms’ potential for semantic fluidity.
Vernacular models of illness generally fall
within the purview of what would be
considered the supernatural today. Proto-Sámi
*tāvte̮ potentially belongs to the same group (~
Fi.
tauti [‘illness, malady’]), even if the
significance of this loan remains ambiguous in
the extreme. Taken together with
*heaŋke
̮ and
*vājmō, the three words suggest Proto-Finnic
influence on vernacular physiology relevant to
understanding bodily experiences, which
presumably extend to the physiology of death.
Fi.
henki and its cognates derive from Proto-
Uralic (cf.
SSA I,
s.v. ‘henki’), while the
etymology of
hauta is traced to Proto-
Germanic
*sauþa- with its probable semantic
fields of ‘pit, hole; well, spring’ (
SSA I,
s.v.
‘hauta’;
LägLoS I,
s.v. ‘hauta’). The Proto-
Sámi loans have a
terminus post quem of the
change /š/ > /h/, which was among the last
changes marking the transition from Middle to
Late Proto-Finnic (Kallio 2007: 237). This
52
transition is currently considered to be at roughly
the same time as the transition to Proto-
Scandinavian (ca. AD 200; see e.g. Schalin
2014: 405, Table 1), even if the chronologies
of Finnic and North Germanic languages
should not be considered to coincide exactly.
28
According to this
chronology,
the loans would
not have been earlier than the 3
rd
century AD.
The loanwords of the semantic fields of this
vocabulary can also be contrasted with those of
Scandinavian origin. The shared semantic
domain of
*hāvtē and
*kālmē seems more
likely to reflect Proto-Finnic influence connected
with death and burial
rather than the two loans
being independent. The corresponding shared
semantic domain of
*heaŋke
̮ and
*vājmō is
also noteworthy, although they do not
correspondingly both connect to a common
area of practices (which for
*hāvtē and
*kālmē
extend to the construction of the landscape).
As vocabulary connected with the semantic
sphere of ‘souls’, however, it is possible that
these loans became established in connection
with religious concepts such as what happens
to an individual’s identity at death, or related
to the power, agency and supernatural activity
of a ritual specialist like a shaman.
When one of a shaman’s primary roles in a
community is the maintenance of health,
*tāvte
̮
would also presumably connect with these roles.
*Tāvte̮ could complement existing vocabulary
no less than accumulating words for ‘monster’.
Although core vocabulary seems like it would
be more resilient to innovation, the Proto-Sámi
vocabulary for the physical body leaves it open
to question whether words for imaginal aspects
of the body – ‘souls’ – may also have spread
through dispersed language networks.
The spread of
*mānō shows that even words
for prominent cosmological features could
spread through those networks. Nevertheless,
it seems unlikely that
*hāvtē and
*kālmē would
have spread independently of both one another
and also of related concepts or practices. A
possibility that seems still less likely when the
words group with terms for ‘souls’ and
‘illness’ rather than with a more varied range
of words connected with religion and belief.
The clustering observed in these Finnic
borrowings is more striking when considered
in relation to the history of Finnic languages,
which seems unlikely to have had extensive
geographical reach in the Proto-Scandinavian
period. This situation may have changed with
the transformation to trade networks in the
second half of the 6
th
century (see Tvauri 2014:
44–47 and works there cited). However, changes
in patterns of borrowing vocabulary into Proto-
Sámi by that time (Aikio 2012) may be an
indicator that its vocabulary had become more
stable (see also Frog & Saarikivi 2014/2015:
107). The Proto-Finnic vocabulary borrowed
into Proto-Sámi seems to exhibit a fairly tight
semantic clustering in vocabulary that seems less
open to free renewal. When this is considered
in relation to the contact history with Proto-
Finnic, it seem most likely that both loanword
vocabulary related to burial and to vernacular
physiology entered Proto-Sámi at an earlier
stage and were carried with the language rather
than entering later and spreading pervasively
through Proto-Sámi dialects.
29
According to this hypothesis, the
terminus
post quem of
*hāvtē and
*heaŋke
̮ makes the
most likely scenario that the borrowings
occurred during or immediately prior to the
first stages of Proto-Sámi’s expansion and
were carried with it.
The window for the loans
is thus fairly limited. If this chronology is
correct, it increases the probability that
*heaŋke̮ was borrowed in the same processes
that produced loans related to places of the
dead, and perhaps also of
*vājmō. What these
processes may have been is a mystery, but they
collectively suggest a significant Proto-Finnic
impact on at least an area of religious life of
speakers of Proto-Sámi at roughly the time it
began to spread. The
terminus post quem of
such vocabulary also adds to the indicators of
the rapidity of Proto-Sámi’s spread.
30
Proto-Finnic Loans into Pre-Sámi
The third term that Lehtiranta identifies as a
Finnic loanword connected with religion and
beliefs was borrowed already into Pre-Sámi:
(12)
*pearke
̮ le̮ (§914) (
beargalat)
‘evil spirit, devil’
The noun
*pearke
̮ le̮ [‘devil’] is semantically
similar to the Scandinavian loans above but
differs in that the Finnic term (~ Fi.
perkele
[‘devil’]) is prominent in legends and mythology
of the source language as an adversary of the
thunder-god and later of the Christian God.
The Finnic term is itself considered an early