Religion of the Lapps - Uno Harva

The internationally respected religious scholar Uno Harva (1882-1949) published his work The Religion of the Lapps in the series Suomen suvun religionet in 1915. The book is based on his master's thesis The History of Lapland, which was approved in 1910, which he supplemented, expanded and edited into a new book.
The religion of the Lapps was for a long time the only work in Finnish about the pre-Christian religion and worldview of the Sami people. The importance of the rare book to Lappology is indicated by the fact that the book was made into a Swedish-language institution in Uppsala in 1987.
The religion of the Lapps clearly deals with the religious life of the Sámi. The book introduces its readers to the worship of the dead and seida, saivo spirits, bear worship, nature gods, goddesses of childbirth, and household, forest and water elves. The final chapter focuses on the importance of witches in the religious life of the Sámi.

About the author
Uno Nils Oskar Harva (until 1927 Holmberg, 1882-1949 Turku) was an internationally known Finnish scholar of religion. In his work, Uno Harva emphasized the nature of scientific research in religious studies and worked hard to demonstrate the critical perspective of the field of research he founded, which was somewhat of a new way of relating to religions for Finns. He approached religions primarily from the perspective of traditional research and was particularly interested in the visibility of myths in the practical life of the community, such as in law, customs and ceremonies.

Harva collected a lot of material during his life, especially about the customs and belief traditions of peoples of Finnish origin, but did not develop any particular theory based on his material. In his research work, he focused on studying the meaning and function of myth. He especially researched the birth and origin of religion, the effect of myth on practical life, world explanation models of peoples of Finnish descent, and shamanism.

Harva has a wide significance as a documenter of the cultural tradition of Finns and peoples of Finnish origin. His work covers a wide geographical area and contains information about, among other things, the belief in fairies, Sammo, family customs, counting time and shamanism.

One of Harva's best-known individual theories is the theory developed with EN Setälä about Sammo as a world pillar or world tree. Harva published several articles and two works on the subject.

Unlike previous researchers (Heikki Paasonen, KF Karjalainen, Kai Donner, MA Castren), the interest of Uno Harva's research focused exclusively on the study of customs and belief systems. Previous researchers had been linguistically focused. Harva's expeditions were mostly aimed at areas inhabited by peoples of Finnish origin in Siberia and southern Russia.