“Most Beautiful Favorite Reindeer” : Osteobiographies of Reindeer at a Sámi Offering Site in Northern Fennoscandia

• Main Authors: Salmi, Anna Kaisa, Fjellström, Markus
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis 2023
• Subjects: Archaeology; Fennoscandia; Northern Sweden; reindeer husbandry; Sámi
• Online Access: https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/2ce64677-3fff-4886-8154-b63f1967112b; https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429456947-7

Animal offerings made at various sacred sites were an integral part of the ethnic religion of the indigenous Sámi people of northern parts of present-day Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia from ca. 800 AD onwards. The offering tradition was interwoven with subsistence patterns and human-animal relationships, as in the Sámi worldview offerings were a means to communicate with gods and guardian spirits of animals to negotiate things such as success in hunting or reindeer husbandry. This chapter focuses at the unfolding life histories of the reindeer individuals selected for offering by looking at age, sex, and size of the individuals, the stable isotope composition of their teeth and bones, and the offering site context where their bones were deposited. The lives of two individuals offered at the Paddusas offering site in Northern Sweden in ca. 1170-1280 AD and 1445-1635 AD are examined in detail. The lives of these reindeer were entangled with those of humans and other animals against a backdrop of changing social and economic environments, colonial contact between the Sámi and Scandinavian state powers, and the historical process of reindeer domestication.