Back in the Middle Ages, the reputation of the most powerful magicians in the world was established for the Lappish shamans. Even the Finns, who were also reputed to be brilliant magicians, bowed before their knowledge and strength.
Noida (noyd, kebun) is the name of a shaman among the Saami people (Lapps), common in the territories of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the north of Russia. According to one version of the Sami beliefs, the Noids are considered “good” shamans who help people, in contrast to the “bad” geydu (witches) who can harm people.
For a long time, Lapland shamans have been credited with incredible abilities - as if they not only see the future and know the past, heal from any ailments, but even know how to fly, control the winds, reincarnate, and at the right moment they cost nothing and disappear altogether.
They say, however, that now there is no trace of the former skill: the last shaman was allegedly shot back in the 30s of the last century. Although, who knows, maybe even today, real keepers of ancient mysteries and magical secrets live in Lapland. After all, it is not for nothing that the northern region is full of rumors that strange people are hiding in the mountains, hiding from human eyes in mysterious underground caves and unknown stone labyrinths.
A large witch's tambourine, covered with deerskin and decorated with magical symbols, with a dull sound, responds to the rhythmic beats of its owner. Whirling in an outlandish dance, the shaman begins to hum strange melodies, unusual for our ear. This is how the noids, the shamans of Lapland, began their magical activity in ancient times.
Lapland is the northernmost territory of Finland, Sweden and Norway, located mainly above the Arctic Circle. This is an amazing magical corner of our planet, the silver land of eternal winter, the kingdom of cold and snow, the harsh land of sorcerers and witches, the land of the Sami - the indigenous inhabitants of Finland.
The Sami, those who in Russia have long been called Lapps or Laplanders, are one of the most ancient peoples of Europe, the descendants of mammoth hunters. The first Sami settlements appeared in the north of the country about five thousand years ago. The old-timers of Lapland managed to tame the restive deer and learn the secrets of the harsh northern nature.
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And although now the owners of the North live in their chums only in summer (and those plagues are not made of skins, but tarpaulins), they still try to maintain ancient traditions: they are engaged in reindeer herding, perform rituals on Lake Inari, where their pagan gods live and, of course, a little "shaman".
The sorcery rite of the Noida shaman has come to us from time immemorial.
With the help of spells and a tambourine wizard, the shaman brought people present at the magical action into a state close to hypnotic sleep.
Then he took out a deer bone and threw it on the plane of the tambourine. The sign on which the bone fell, and told about what awaits a person in the future.
Once the great fame of the Sami shamans thundered throughout Europe, and in 1584 Tsar Ivan the Terrible himself ordered as many as 60 sorcerers from Lapland to explain the strange phenomenon - a comet that appeared in the sky - which the king for some reason perceived as a sign of his death.
It should be noted that Lapland, at a time when Russia and Europe did not yet know Siberia, was considered the place where the most powerful wizards of the Old World lived, and many occultists went there to study.
It is not known with the help of what actions, but absolutely unanimously, the Lappish sorcerers came to the conclusion that the emperor would indeed very soon leave this world and this would happen on March 18. Ivan the Terrible, not believing that he could live like this in May, flew into a rage and ordered to burn all the sorcerers for such a blatant lie on March 18.
On the morning of the indicated date, the Lapps were ordered to prepare for the execution, but the shamans answered philosophically that "it is not over yet." And they were right: in the evening of the same day, Ivan the Terrible suddenly fainted and died by nightfall. And after the death of Ivan the Terrible, loud talk about Lappish wizards resumed in the Russian capital with renewed vigor.
They especially stirred up the people after the coup of 1606, when the impostor Grigory Otrepiev was killed. His body with many wounds lay on Red Square for several days, on display. But the supporters of the Troubles immediately spread a rumor that “Grishka was a sorcerer who learned witchcraft from the Lapps: when they let themselves be killed, they can resurrect themselves,” that is, they say, everything is not lost.
Moreover, there may have been some realities behind the rumors. In any case, the serious historian N. M. Karamzin cites the following passage from the Moscow Chronicle in his History of the Russian State:
“Around the False Dmitry's body, lying on the square, light shone at night: when the sentries approached him, the light disappeared and reappeared, as soon as they left. When his body was taken to a wretched house, a terrible storm broke out, tore off the roof of the tower on Kulishka and knocked down the wooden wall at the Kaluga gate. In a wretched house, this body was carried from place to place by invisible force, and they saw a dove sitting on it. There was great alarm. Some considered False Dmitry an extraordinary person, others - a devil, at least a witch, taught this hellish art by Lapland wizards, who ordered to kill themselves and then revive”.
Such facts, rumors or speculation, whatever they were, in any case played a role - after a while people relatively easily accepted the news that a second False Dmitry appeared in Poland. This is how the shamans of Lapland influenced Russian politics for the first time "on a large scale."
Sami. Photo of 1928
The supernatural powers of the Sami shamans have been believed for a long time. People had no doubt that the Lappish sorcerers had power over the winds. During the Middle Ages, it was generally accepted that the spirits of Lapland are very powerful and can raise the wind or bring down a hurricane according to the conventional sign of Noida, when it unties magic knots.
As they wrote at that time, "Noida, untie three magic knots one after the other, caused the appearance of first a moderate wind, then a strong and, finally, a hurricane with thunder and lightning from one edge of the sky to the other." Adam of Bremen, an eleventh-century chronicler, mentioned that the Lappish shamans could find out what people were doing in distant places, and cast whales ashore with the power of spells. The mystical glory of shamans was transferred to the entire Sami people.
The Swedes put an end to the witchcraft and paganism of the indigenous inhabitants of Finland at the end of the 17th century. destroyed the cult buildings of the Sami. Shamanism was banned, and everyone who dared to take up the witch's tambourine was severely punished. The traditional Sami songs "youiku", which the shamans sang during the kamlaniya (magic ceremony), were also banned.
Shaman tambourines - the shaman's auxiliary means - were ordered to burn every one of them. In the documents of the 17th century that have survived to this day. describes the trials of shamans who were engaged in "harmful" magic. From 1593 to 1695, 175 people were convicted of "witchcraft" in northern Norway alone.
But the small people, lost in the tundra, managed to preserve their ancient traditions. The Sami have also preserved the technology of making tambourines from deerskin to this day. Perhaps the tambourine is the only musical instrument in the world that is tuned by heating over a fire. The shamans have a special, reverent attitude towards him.
Sami tambourine
“The tambourine, like all things, is alive. Hear how he sings! I slightly touch it, and it already sounds, - says the modern shaman, Estonian Tiit Teras, the happy owner of a real tambourine from Lapland. - But only when I care about him, when I communicate with him. My old tambourine was offended when I got a new one.
Since then, the old tambourine no longer sounds so beautiful when I hit it. But I gave it to a friend, and the voice returned. You need to be able to beat the tambourine. I have two sticks for this. The frequency of blows is important: 4-7 beats per second.
In other words, it helps to stop the activity of the left hemisphere of the brain and activate the work of the right hemisphere, to go into a state of altered consciousness. It is no coincidence that the tambourine is round. This circle includes east, south, west and north, it is a model, a symbol of peace."
In addition to tambourines, the Sami shamans had other powerful devices - "chuerv-garts". These "devices" were made of deer antlers and stones. By moving the horns, the shaman could control the weather, hunting and fishing. One of these structures is located on Mount Ninchurt - several ancient half-rotted horns are neatly laid out on a large stone.
But the most powerful patrons of the Sami are the places of worship of their ancestors - seids ("sacred place"). Seid can be a stone, a hill, a reservoir, and a tree - everything where the power of nature is concentrated. The Sami considered nature to be alive and had to be reckoned with. Seydam have long been worshiped, they were looking for protection. It was believed that through ritual ceremonies of respectful behavior, it was possible to strengthen the spiritual connection between man and natural forces.
Even now in Lapland, the seids are treated with trepidation and respect, but in the old days, faith in their power was absolute. People believed that the souls of ancestors and spirits dwell in the seids, even that the seids are the spirits themselves. It was sometimes believed that some seids were enchanted people.
The connection between the cult of seids and Lappish magic was so great that legends described cases when a shaman-noida, dying, "turned" into a seid, helping his fellow tribesmen from the other world. For example, a legend has been preserved about how a Noida named Syrets after death became a seid of Rept-Kedgi. This seid was able to manipulate the weather, both by fulfilling requests for good weather, and by sending a storm on those who went to the mountains to destroy it.
According to some legends, the seids, as incarnate shamans-noids, connected the world of the living with the world of the departed. It was believed that seid lives as long as people worship him, otherwise he loses magical properties.
Thus, from the point of view of the Sami, the seids were inhabited by spirits capable of helping a person both in magic and in everyday life in exchange for offerings. An old legend says that the sacred stone is beautiful and shines when it is all smeared with reindeer fat. The destruction of sacred stones was severely punished, for it was believed that it would bring terrible disasters.
Nikolai Volkov, a Russian researcher of Sami shamanism, wrote in great detail about the cult of the Seids:
“Seyd was usually the object of veneration of the entire village and, apparently, was associated with the veneration of the ancestors. Initially, the seids were undoubtedly ancestral fetishes. As the tribal lands were fragmented, the seids turned into family fetishes.
Seid, in contrast to the material objects of magic, is an object of worship and veneration. First of all, a person considers the interests of the seid. Seid not only requires respect for himself, but also the observance of certain rules in the area of his influence, especially nearby, in plain sight.
Compliance with silence, unconditional refraining from swearing and even joking are ubiquitous rules. Seid also loves gifts and food that the Sami love. In return for paying attention, he drives fish into the nets, helps in hunting and grazing reindeer. For inattention, ridicule and rudeness, seyd severely punishes the guilty not only by deprivation of crafts, but also by disease and even death …"
The Saami seids, of which there are a great many in Lapland, are associated with amazing phenomena. It is impossible not to pay attention to some anomalous phenomena that are observed in the places where the seid complexes are located.
These are both subjective feelings of some mental impact (both positive and negative), and strange problems that arise with photo and video equipment during shooting seids. So, it often happens that when shooting a particular seid with an ultra-modern digital camera, a strange effect is observed - the surrounding landscape is clearly visible in the picture, and the contours of the seid are slightly blurred.
The seids plateau on Vottovaara Mountain is well known for such foci. One of the seids of this plateau is also the source of a magnetic anomaly - the compass needle literally moves in a circle around the seid. Whether the stone itself is the cause of the magnetic anomaly or is simply placed over it remains unclear, but the fact itself suggests the vast knowledge of the ancient shamans, including the magnetic properties of the Earth.
It is possible that the famous Laplandic magic is nothing but scraps of absolutely scientific knowledge of a forgotten prehistoric people. It is likely that only a special caste of Sami shamans managed to adopt and adapt this knowledge, while the rest of the inhabitants of Lapland were left with only a primitive veneration and a set of prohibitions associated with stones.
The mythological and “materialistic” phenomena associated with the seids are unusually multifaceted. Although the ancient Sami explained everything by the fact that a “spirit” lives in the stone, modern researchers of the seid phenomena have yet to unravel the mysteries of Lapland's “arctic megaliths”.
True, the fantastic northern country is in no hurry to reveal its secrets. Today in Lapland, where the population density is 1 person and 2 deer per square kilometer, there is everything: cities, resorts, water parks. And all this the land of the Sami hospitably offers to the tourists visiting it.
Here are just about sorcerers, shamans and mysterious seids, the masters of the North prefer not to talk to strangers, although other traditions, inherited from their ancient ancestors, are demonstrated with pleasure. Well, perhaps, over time, everything will change and we will learn the secrets of the Lapland seids.