Project title

Religious contacts and religious changes: interdisciplinary investigation of site biographies of Sámi ritual places

The project "Religious contacts and religious changes: interdisciplinary investigation of site biographies of Sámi ritual places" I studied the changes in the ritual practices related related to Sámi sacred places and the site biographies of these places. The analyses of bone material from 17 offering places in Finland, Sweden, and Norway revealed remarkable continuity in the Sámi animal-offering tradition, from the sixth to the seventeenth centuries AD. Major shifts in the dominant species selected for religious offerings occurred roughly simultaneously over most of the Sámi area, which suggests that the offering rituals were a part of wider Sámi identity. The use of offering places has continued in the contemporary times. The documentation of contemporary offerings during several years revealed an increase in finds related to neo-Pagan rituals in the 2010's. These kind of finds are nevertheless, not as common in Finland as they are in Norway or in Estonia.