65
to potential etymologies. An etymology of
*siejtē
that relates it to Late Middle Proto-Finnic
*šiite (~
Fi.
hiisi) would thus date it to between the Great
Sámi Vowel Shift and the shift from /š/ to /h/ in the
transition to Late Proto Finnic (ca. AD 200).
Historically,
hiisi sites were places associated with
death and ritual engagements with supernatural
powers (e.g. Bergsland 1964; Koski 1990: 434–435;
Anttonen 2013: 26–28). If Middle Proto-Finnic
*šiite and Proto-Sámi are related,
*siejtē would have
spread with Proto-Sámi, but the etymology requires
postulating
ad hoc sound changes or hypothesizing
involvement of a third, unknown language.
39. For a full discussion of this topic with a review of the
evidence, see Frog 2017: §1; cf. Rédei et al. 1986–
1988: 81.) An isolated cognate appears in a late
borrowing of the (North?) Finnic form
Ilmari >
North Sámi
Ilmaris, attested in a 17
th
century trial
(Krohn 1915: 13–14; Rydving 2010: 48–49, 95) and
Anders Fjellner presents a name
Ilmaračče (Donner
1876: 85, see also 82 and note to line 195), which
could reflect the same loan or an adaptation
influenced by Finnish
Ilmarinen learned from
Kalevala (on which see also Lundmark 1979).
40.
SSA I:
s.v. ‘aimo’; Sammallahti 1998: 227; Kuokkala
2016 and works there cited; Kuokkala suggests that
the Finnic term could potentially have been
borrowed from Sámi.
41.
Cf. also the early Germanic loan yielding Proto-Sámi
*vērttō (
fiettâ(g)) [‘clear weather’] (§1412) which
again does not manifest as a theonym.
42.
In Finno-Karelian languages, see Harva 1948: 79–
80;
in Estonian, see Loorits 1949–1957 II: 6–10.
43.
The stem
Hovre- <
Þór- [‘Thor’] is a post-syncope
form; it could not have been borrowed much before
the Viking Age at the earliest, though it could have
been borrowed later. The theonym
Hovrengaellies is
customarily interpreted as a borrowing of
Þórr karl
[‘Old Man Thor’], but
gaellies is a pre-syncope loan
from an earlier period than
Horve-. I have elsewhere
argued that the loan of
Þórr would likely have
undergone semantic correlation, becoming a
common noun for ‘thunder’, and thus the genitive
construction with
Hovre-n would likely have
originally meant ‘Old Man of Thunder’ (Frog 2017).
44.
Karsten 1955: 53–54; Pettersson 1985; Kulonen et
al. 2005: 339–340; see also Manker 1950; 98–103.
45.
See Zachrisson et al. 1997: 195–200; Svestad 2011:
43 and works there cited; 2013: 118–119, 123, 131–
132 and works there cited.
46.
The Finno-Karelian and Komi traditions refer to
vernacular ritual specialists who are not shamans in
the classic sense but fill that role in society.
47.
E.g. Erich Kasten (1989) argues that shamans’
ineffectiveness during the Black Death and
subsequent societal changes linked to reindeer
pastoralism displaced this specialist role from earlier
areas of activity and authority.
48.
In Finno-Karelian cultures, see Siikala 2002a; 2002b;
see also Haavio 1967: 313–314; Frog 2013: 83–91.
49.
The lack of a special costume and range of (male)
members of the community who might use a drum
can similarly be compared to the so-called ‘family
shamanism’ of the Koryaks, which is also debated
(e.g. Eliade 2004 [1964]: 252 and works there cited).
50.
Anders Fjellner (1795–1876) sought to fill this gap
on the model of Elias Lönnrot’s epic
Kalevala (1835;
1849), producing a few poems that were initially
received as oral epic (Donner 1876; for discussion,
see Lundmark 1979). Although these poems bring
together a number of traditional elements, there does
not seem to be any evidence that such stories
circulated socially in a form or mode of expression
that would be considered ‘epic’.
51.
The word could have been borrowed into the North
Finnic languages or the corresponding dialect of
Proto-Finnic from Proto-Sámi. However, the Proto-
Sámi word can reconstruct to either a Pre-Sámi form
*jojki- or
*jajki-; the former makes it possible that
the term could belong to a shared vocabulary of the
two language families, or that it was borrowed into
Proto-Finnic at that stage. Use of the Finnic term
generally seems encoded with cultural deixis: it is
something that culturally ‘other’ (Sámi) people do.
The word is also only found in the North Finnic
languages to the north of the Gulf of Finland, which
would be consistent with a loan. Yoik has an
established tradition in Karelian language but only in
the northern region of Viena (Frog & Stepanova
2011: 206–207), where Sámi groups had been
gradually undergoing a shift
in language and culture
(e.g. Pöllä 1995). It is possible that yoiks were part
of a Proto-Finnic heritage, but the relatively recent
spread of Karelian through these regions makes it
seem more probable that they are an outcome of
cultural creolization.
52.
The Scandinavian loan
*stālō, which probably
simply meant something like ‘big guy’ in the source
language, could thus simply have been a local word
that superseded other local words in the
communication network that lacked a shared word
for ‘troll, ogre, giant’.
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