Horagalles

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Wikipedia

Horagalles
God of the sky, lightning, thunder
Depiction of Horagalles from a Sámi shaman drum found in Norway. The drum symbols were copied by the Christian priest Thomas von Westen in the 18th century.[1]
WeaponHammers
SymbolRowan tree (allegedly)
ConsortRavdna (allegedly)
Equivalents
NorseThor[2]

In Sámi shamanism, Western Sámi Horagalles, often equated with Eastern Sámi Tiermes, Baján, and Aijeke or Äijih (lit. 'old man'), is the thunder god. He is depicted as a wooden figure with a nail in the head and with a hammer, or occasionally on shaman drums, two hammers.

Names

The name Horagalles does not occur in older dictionaries of Sámi languages, for instance in the mid-19th century.[3] He is often equated with Tiermes; in 1673 Johannes Scheffer, who did not use the name Horagalles, wrote that when Aijeke thundered, he was called Tiermes.[4][5] There is considerable regional variation in the names; Horagalles (with its various spellings, including Thoragalles) is characteristically southern Sámi and Tiermes and variants being commonly used among Northern Sámi, and the rainbow is referred to by a variety of names referring to thunder.[6][7][8][9][6][10]

Early scholars noted the similarities between Horagalles and the Norse thunder-god Thor and that some Sámi called him Thoron or simply Thor, and were unsure which had influenced which.[11] But the name Horagalles is now interpreted as a loanword from the Old Norse Þórr Karl 'the Old Man Thor',[6][12] 'Thor, the Elder',[13] or 'Thor fellow',[14] "Thor Karl" (possibly from Norwegian Torrekall),[15][16] or Swedish Torsmannen 'the thunder man'.[17] This is not certain as a Southern Sámi variation of the name is Hovrengaellies, from hovre 'make noise'.[18]

Among eastern Sámi groups, the thunder god is called Tiermes or Tiirmes, in Northern Sámi Dierpmis (no longer used but was known among Sea Sámi).[18] The word could be a loanword from a Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate language[19] or related to the Khanty thunder god Torem.[18]

Baján (also spelled Pajonn, Pajǟn, Bajánalmmái and Pajanolmai) is the commonly known name of the thunder god in Northern Sámi,[18][20] from the word pad'd'i 'above'. According to Zacharias Plantin, Pajonn is an alias of Doragass, which in turn is a distorted version of Horagalles.[21] This name might have been loaned into one of the names of the Finnish god Ukko, Pajainen.[22]

Äijih (also Aijeke and Ajeke, Northern Sami: Áddjá), 'old man', is the primary name of the thunder god in Inari Sámi. According to tradition and archeological evidence, he had a local cult on the Äijih-sualui island in Inari, where reindeer antlers and metal objects were still sacrificed in the late 19th century.[18]

Characteristics and functions

Sámi people worshipping Horagalles or Tiermes. Copper engraving by Bernard Picart from Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (1723–43)

Idols of Horagalles are made of wood and have a nail or spike and a piece of flint in the head.[6][23] He has a hammer called Wetschera, Aijeke Wetschera,[4][24] or Ajeke veċċera 'grandfather's hammer'.[7] The Lule Sámi people built a stage for the idol of Horagalles holding a hammer, while one description states that Áddjá's tree had to be out of birch and be set upside down.[18]

Horagalles and Tiermes are described as the god of the sky, thunder and lightning, the rainbow, weather, oceans and lakes.[25] He punishes "hurtful demons" or "evil spirits" (i.e., trolls)[26] who frequent the rocks and mountains; Horagalles destroys them with his lightning, shoots them with his bow, or dashes their brains out with his hammer. The rainbow is his bow, "Aijeke dauge".[4][24][5] For Eastern Sámi groups, the sky god Radien-attje seems to have fused into Tiermes, as Tiermes is also seen as the ruler over human life, health, and well-being.[27] According to the mid-18th century Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, "Thiermes or Thoron" is the first in a trinity, of whom the other members are Storjunkare and Baivre or Jumala.[28] In Kildin Sámi, the rainbow is tiirmes-jukks 'Tiirmes's bow', and the lightning is tiirmes-tooll 'Tiirmes's fire'. A bow and fiery arrows could then be the thunder god's original weapon.[18]

The thunder god was also capable of hurting the Sámi and their sacred sites. A noaidi could connect with him through drumming and yoiking to release reindeer from a spell or hurt enemies. Among eastern Sámi groups, the thunder god has a closer connection to the creation and destruction of the world: Skolt Sámi tradition states that thunder teached the world's first humans how to build a goahti, Ter Sámi myth states that he is the highest sky god capable of destroying the world, and in general eastern Sámi eschatology, he is a heavenly hunter hunting a heavenly reindeer on the sky and when he shoots it with a fiery arrow, the world will fall into chaos and set on fire, the sky collapsing.[18]

The two hammers of the thunder god depicted as a blue cross on a late 18th-century shaman drum from Porsanger Municipality, Western Finnmark, Norway, described by the Christian missionary Knud Leem.[29]

According to Jacob Fellman, Horagalles's consort is called Ravdna, and the red berries of the rowan tree are sacred to her. The name Ravdna resembles North Germanic names for the tree, such as Old Norse reynir, and according to the Prose Edda book Skáldskaparmál, the rowan is called "the salvation of Thor" because Thor once saved himself by clinging to it. It has therefore been theorized that the Norse goddess Sif, Thor's wife, was once conceived of in the form of a rowan to which Thor clung.[12][14] Uno Harva raised doubts on the existence of Ravdna as she is not mentioned in other writing but Fellman's, and Fellman refers to the thunder god with the Finnish name Ukko in this instance. Harva suggested Fellman might have been simply trying to find a Sámi equivalent for Rauni, as the Skolts had never heard of the thunder god having a wife.[22]

Horagalles depicted on Sámi shaman drums

On Sámi shaman drums Horagalles is occasionally depicted with a sledgehammer in one hand and a cross-hammer in the other, or symbolized by two crossed hammers. He made thunder and lightning with one hammer and withdrew them with the other to prevent harm to the Sámi or their animals.[30]

References

  1. ↑ Friis, p. 35.
  2. ↑ Turville-Petre, E. O. G. (1964). Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia. Weidenfeld and Nicolson p. 98.
  3. ↑ Nils Vibe Stockfleth, Norsk-lappisk Ordbog. Christiania: Cappelen, 1852.
  4. 1 2 3 Scheffer, cited in Castrén, p. 50.
  5. 1 2 The History of Lapland, 1674 translated ed., facsimile ed. Suecica rediviva 22, Stockholm: Rediviva, 1971, ISBN 978-91-7120-001-3, p. 37.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Kaarle Krohn, "Lappische Beiträge zur germanischen Mythologie," Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen 6 (1906) 155–80, p. 164 (in German)
  7. 1 2 Jens Andreas Friis, Lappisk Mythologi, Eventyr og Folkesagn, Christiania: Cammermeyer, 1871, p. 69 (in Norwegian)
  8. ↑ Friis, pp. 65–66.
  9. ↑ Håkan Rydving, The End of Drum-Time: Religious Change among the Lule Sami, 1670s–1740s, doctoral dissertation, Acta universitatis upsaliensis, Historia Religionum 12, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1993, ISBN 978-91-554-3065-8, p. 19.
  10. ↑ Jens Andreas Friis, Lappisk Mythologi, Eventyr og Folkesagn, Christiania: Cammermeyer, 1871, pp. 65–66, 69 (in Norwegian)
  11. ↑ Friis, p. 66.
  12. 1 2 E. O. G. Turville-Petre, (1964). Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964, OCLC 3264532, p. 98.
  13. ↑ Folklore 25–28 (2004) p. 49.
  14. 1 2 Jaan Puhvel, Comparative Mythology, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1987, ISBN 978-0-8018-3413-4, p. 204.
  15. ↑ Georges Dumézil, Gods of the Ancient Northmen, ed. Einar Haugen, Publications of the UCLA Center for the Study of Comparative Folklore and Mythology 3, Berkeley: University of California, 1973, ISBN 978-0-520-02044-3, p. 124.
  16. ↑ Leopold von Schroeder, "Germanische Elben und Götter beim Estenvolke," Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 153.1 (1906) p. 92 (in German)
  17. ↑ Ørnulv Vorren and Ernst Manker, tr. Kathleen McFarlane, Lapp Life and Customs: A Survey, London: Oxford, 1962, OCLC 264994678, p. 119.
  18. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Porsanger, Jelena; Pulkkinen, Risto. "Ukkosenjumala". Encyclopaedia of Saami Culture. University of Helsinki. Retrieved 11 December 2025.
  19. ↑ Ante Aikio, "An essay on Saami ethnolinguistic prehistory", in: A Linguistic Map of Prehistoric Northern Europe, Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia / Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne, 266, Helsinki 2012, pp. 63–117.
  20. ↑ Manfred Lurker, The Routledge Dictionary of Gods and Goddesses, Devils and Demons, Taylor & Francis, 2015, ISBN 9781136106200, p. 272.
  21. ↑ John Balys, "Pajainen", in: Götter und Mythen im alten Europa [Gods and myths in ancient Europe], Wörterbuch der Mythologie 2, E. Klett, 1973, ISBN 3-12-909820-8, pp. 330–31 (in German).
  22. 1 2 Harva, Uno (1948). Suomalaisten muinaisusko. Helsinki: WSOY. pp. 79, 124.
  23. ↑ Johannes Scheffer, The History of Lapland: wherein are shewed the original manners, habits, marriages, conjurations, etc., of that people, Oxford, 1674, cited in Matthias Alexander Castrén, Nordiska Resor och Forskningar volume 3, Helsinki: Finska Litteratursällskapet, 1853, p. 206 (in Swedish)
  24. 1 2 Johannes Schefferus, Lappland, tr. Henrik Sundin, ed. John Granlund, Bengt Löw, and John Bernström, Acta Lapponica 8, Stockholm: Gebers, 1956, OCLC 468993787, p. 130 (in Swedish)
  25. ↑ Friis, p. 68, citing Erich Johann Jessen, De norske Finners og Lappers hedenske Religion (1765).
  26. ↑ Matthias Alexander Castrén, Nordiska Resor och Forskningar volume 3, Helsinki: Finska Litteratursällskapet, 1853, pp. 49–51 (in Swedish)
  27. ↑ Porsanger, Jelena; Pulkkinen, Risto. "Esikristilliset jumalat". Encyclopaedia of Saami Culture. University of Helsinki. Retrieved 11 December 2025.
  28. ↑ Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, ed. Jean Frédéric Bernard and Jean-Charles Poncelin de La Roche-Tilhac, 2nd ed., volume 1 Amsterdam/Paris: Laporte, 1783, OCLC 13814643, p. 57 (in French)
  29. ↑ Friis, p. 141.
  30. ↑ Nærøya manuscript, c. 1723, attributed to Johan Randulf, cited in Friis, p. 69 (in Norwegian).

Further reading

  • Axel Olrik. "Nordisk og lappisk gudsdyrkelse." Danske Studier 1905, pp. 39–63. (in Danish)
  • Axel Olrik. "Tordenguden og hans dreng i lappernes myteverden." Danske Studier 1906, pp. 65–69. (in Danish)