A Skolt Sámi Folktale from Neiden

 

The Guoddan

Mother Ondrej had come from Suonjel [Suonjel, or Suõ’nn’jel, wasone of seven Skolt Sámi sijdds; Suõ’nn’jel is on the Russian side of the border with Norway.] Herchildhood home was Vilggis-vandet. She told me that once as a girl she went tosee the wild reindeer pit traps there. The pits were between two lakes, as isthe custom.

As she was walking and looking atthe pit traps, she heard a faint cry from up in the sky, and then it sounded abit stronger, and then she heard the crying coming closer. Then she saw afearfully large bird coming. It flew with the claws of both feet curledtogether, and in between the feet hung a young Russian woman crying. The birddropped her on the ground under a tree; it perched in the tree itself, and thetree began to sway this way and that, because the bird was as big as a reindeerox. The Russian woman said to the young Skolt girl, “You must tie yourself to apine tree or the bird will take you.” The bird could have left the Russianwoman, but it was better if it flew away with her since it had already almostcrushed her to death.

But when the bird noticed that theywere talking, it shook its head, and the feathers on its neck all sounded likebells, clanging so that they could no longer hear to keep talking.

The bird perchedin the tree for a while. It tried to attack the Skolt girl, but it only got thehat off her head, then it settled in the tree again. It perched there a while,and then it took hold of her again. But as she was tied to the pine tree, itcould not take her this time either. Still the bird grabbed her hair and herskin along with it. The girl fainted and fell to the ground. When she woke upagain, the bird was about to fly off. The Russian woman was again between itsclaws, crying, and then it flew westward. The Russian woman's cry was heard fora very long time in the air. Then that cry also disappeared

Such a bird was formerly called aguoddan. The guoddan was also the kind of bird that an evil man set on anotherman. From that comes the Sámi proverb: “He screams as though he’s in aguoddan's claw.”

MotherOndrej, to whom this happened, had come to Neiden and married. She had regainedsome hair, but it wasn’t much. And there were claw marks on her neck. 

(Translation copyright, Barbara Sjoholm, 2024)

           

 

Isak Saba, politician, teacher, folklorist
This Skolt Sámi story was transcribed in 1918 or 1919 byIsak Saba in the village of Neiden, Norway. The storyteller was either Ivan orNikolai Ondrevitsj, the sons of “Mother Ondrej,” Marie Avdatje Vasilevna. It’sone of many tales that Saba collected in Neiden withfinancial support from the Norwegian Folklore Archives in Oslo. Saba also collectedother tales about animals, about the hidden folk, andabout noaidis, revenants, and the robbers from “the East,” called Chudes. Saba’soriginal transcriptions and translations into Norwegian of this material becamepart of J.K. Qvigstad’s four volume work, Lappiske eventyr og sagn (SámiFolktales and Legends), published in 1927-29.

My translation from Norwegian is part of a selectedcollection of around three hundred tales collected by J.K. Qvigstad and IsakSaba, to be published in late 2025 by the University of Minnesota Press.