FOLKTALES OF MEANDASH, THE MYTHIC SAMI REINDEER Part II

• Main Author: Enn Ernits
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Imandra; Kildin; sami
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.484.5516; http://folklore.ee/folklore/vol13/pdf/meandash.pdf

The first subgroup contains three recorded stories, but as one of the recorded extracts is far too short to analyse, we can only speak of two quoted variants from the Imandra region, and even then the tribal origin of the narrator remains uncertain. Both variants have a similar structure (Table 3). We could distinguish between four parts: 1) the building of the reindeer home, 2) marriage, 3) the reaction of the old man’s daughters and 4) their fate. All variants (incl. the fragmentary third variant) contain references to the river of blood separating the two spheres of the universe, which may be crossed only with the help of chanting. The motif of building the reindeer home, which symbolises the young reindeer starting a family life, is not mentioned in the second story, as the widow already had a home. This very motif is also present in two stories of another subgroup from Kildin (9, 10). Thus we might assume that all of the marriage-related stories of the first sub-