Secrets Beneath the Aurora

The crackle of burning wood filled every silence between human voices. Within that sound was a kind of stillness, a power that belonged to the forest.

I stared at the fire for a long time, greedily listening. There was a rhythm of nature in it, perhaps a rhythm in accord with the universe.

I once met an elderly Sámi woman who told me her people believe “a flame can be gazed at forever”. A modern shaman later confirmed it: “Looking into fire is a form of meditation.”

I had returned once again to Finnish Lapland. Here, again and again, I have been healed.

Lapland covers northern Sweden, Norway and Finland and extends east to Russia’s Kola Peninsula, all within the Arctic Circle. The word means “remote land”. This is Sámi territory. The Sámi are Europe’s last Indigenous people.

First Snow

Before Lapland’s first snow, I saw the aurora in Inari and thought myself lucky. That was tourist thinking. The aurora has nothing to do with temperature, snowfall or polar night. It appears when the sky is clear, dark enough and geomagnetic activity is strong.

Inari is the central town of northern Finnish Lapland. The Sámi living around Lake Inari are known as Inari Sámi, the smallest Sámi group, with only about five hundred people. They have their own language, now spoken by only about three hundred and listed by the United Nations as severely endangered. Unlike the Northern Sámi, who traditionally followed reindeer, the Inari Sámi were hunters and fishers living by the lake’s abundant waters. I wanted to find a real Inari Sámi family.

“I can take you to meet a joik singer here,” my guide Tarja said with a smile. “His name is Aslak. But they no longer live only by fishing and hunting; they also herd reindeer.” This mixed reality seemed acceptable.

Joik is a Sámi form of throat-like singing. Legend says that the songs of Lapland were brought to earth by the Daughter of the Sun. She represented happiness and joy, came willingly among the Sámi and taught them to sing, dance and weave beautiful clothing. Before she was framed by jealous people, she sang one final elegy, the most beautiful joik in Sámi memory. After she died, the Sámi carried the melodies in their hearts and passed them down. Whenever they joik, they feel the sun’s warmth within them.

Joik differs across Lapland, but its subjects are usually nature or people. Words are few, often only naming the one being called. If strangers are present, the singer may add lyrics to explain. Among people who already know, no explanation is needed. For Sámi people, joik does not describe a person or thing. “We do not joik about someone; we joik them.” When they joik someone or something, that presence appears.

Before Christianity entered Lapland, joik singers and shamans were inseparable. Through singing and drumming, they entered ecstatic states and connected with ancestors and spirits. From the sixteenth century, missionaries banned Sámi languages, burned shaman drums and denounced joik. For almost half a millennium, Sámi animist beliefs were suppressed and children were sent south away from their parents to prevent tradition from continuing. Yet people with real power secretly passed joik to their children, and it did not break. Drum-making survived too. Today, although ways of life have changed, more Sámi people are returning to their culture. Young people learn Finnish and Sámi in school; elders can return to cultural centres to recover what was lost.

Aslak is of a fortunate generation. His great-grandfather studied Sámi rock paintings and totemic culture. Three thousand years ago, reindeer, drumming shamans and symbols of spiritual power and wisdom appeared in rock art. His great-grandfather was also an artist. He cast palm-sized iron shields from these symbols and gave them to friends in the village for luck. He never passed down the unique colouring method. Three generations later, the family still has not worked it out. “All the shields mix green, gold, pale blue and purple-pink,” Aslak said, showing me the old objects. “They are the colours of the aurora.”

Along with totemic knowledge, Aslak’s family inherited joik. He modestly claimed to be the worst singer in the family because his memory was poor. There are no scores; songs are passed orally. That day his mother and siblings were all tending reindeer, so he had to perform.

In winter, reindeer are released into the wild to fend for themselves, but logging and climate warming have changed the snow. There is less soft new snow and more hard ice over the lichen. Reindeer cannot reach food through ice, so herders must go into the forest to supplement them.

The life of a reindeer is enviable in one sense: free yet belonging. In spring, after the polar night, females give birth in the wild. Each herder has a personal mark, almost like a totem, carved into calves’ ears at midsummer. Autumn is mating season and also the season of slaughter and castration. Reindeer are at their best, longing for love; herders bring them into enclosures, castrate those not selected as breeders, turn some into working animals and some into food and clothing. Every part is used.

Reindeer are emotionally unstable in autumn, partly because of hormones, partly because they seem to know the moment of fate has arrived. They sense their destiny more keenly than humans and show their emotions more directly. Herders have their own ways of comforting reindeer before slaughter. In Aslak’s family, they joik for them.

In the past, herders migrated with reindeer. Now, with snowmobiles, most live settled lives. Aslak does not approve of snowmobiles. The engines roar, and after long use they can make one’s ears ring. His elders try to use them less, travelling through forest on snowshoes to check on their animals. If the distance is not too great, they return at night to a house where a fire waits. On clear nights, the aurora twists with energy, ancient trees rise around them, humans seem small and their place subtle. At such times herders begin to joik without noticing.

Aslak sang the joik he knew best. “It is obviously not the best joik,” he said. We sat around the fire. His voice mingled with the crackle of wood, and I was satisfied.

When I left Aslak’s house, the first snow of the year began to fall in Inari. The Sámi say only snow that settles counts as first snow, but falling flakes were enough to thrill me. After the first snow came blizzards and polar night. Lapland put on its heavy white coat. Natural light came only from the moon, aurora and reflected snow.

Craftspeople in the Forest

Irene Kangasniemi and Ari Kangasniemi live near Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland. Snow and ice merge roads and rivers into one long plane; forests stand upright and make the world three-dimensional again. Their wooden house sits by the Ounasjoki River.

Though near the city, they keep a traditional way of life. Irene is Northern Sámi; Ari is from Inari and has Inari Sámi ancestry. Their nephew Jukka is a full Inari Sámi. “He stopped going to ordinary school once he could read and write,” Irene said with some pride. Uncle and nephew preserve an older mode of learning: apprenticeship. “Part of Inari Sámi culture depends on him.”

Like most Sámi, Irene and Ari keep reindeer and live semi-nomadically. In summer, Irene gathers berries in the forest, making jam or distilling juice for winter. Lingonberries can be picked at the end of July; raspberries, cloudberries and bilberries in August; cranberries and red berries grow until first snow. She handed me a glass of lingonberry juice, thick-looking yet fresh, not overly sweet. “In winter, berries nurture new life beneath the snow. Then comes ice fishing.”

Ice fishing is another little-known Sámi form of meditation. Whether or not modern tools are used, the state of mind remains: cut a hole in the ice, lower bait, calm yourself, gently tremble the line from time to time. The sky is dim; time is long.

Shy Jukka watched from behind his aunt and uncle. After much coaxing, he showed me an inherited craft: a tiuhta, a handheld loom for weaving Sámi patterns, made of polished reindeer antler with a flat tool for arranging threads. It was itself a beautiful object. The loom in my hand held an unfinished piece. Jukka asked me to hold one end while he wove from the other. Red, blue, white and yellow threads moved up and down through the holes, and a dense, bright Sámi pattern quickly emerged. Some crafts cannot be explained by words. A full handmade traditional Sámi outfit now costs around 4,000 euros.

Irene taught me to make a simple reindeer-skin pouch. Pleased, she burned the family’s unique reindeer-ear mark onto a small ear-shaped piece of hide, then added two shamanic symbols: spiritual power and wisdom. I placed it in the pouch with local herbs as a keepsake. Irene is hospitable; friendly guests, she said, bring her energy.

I also received a pendant made from kelo bark. In Finnish Lapland, kelo refers to pine trees that stopped growing three or four hundred years ago and then stood dead in nature for another century before being uprooted and reused. The bark is grey, sometimes silver. My pendant had a hollow circle with a small piece of antler inside; when I walked, it made a quiet, muffled natural sound. Sámi people believe beautiful-sounding objects can drive away evil spirits.

The Day Polar Night Ended

Humans can grow used to heat, cold, damp and dryness, but perhaps never to the chaos of no daylight. I arrived in Luosto at the tail end of polar night. Because the latitude is lower, closer to the Arctic Circle, polar night ends earlier here. On the day the sun rose above the horizon, I climbed Lampivaara, an ancient Sámi sacred hill, and watched the sky change from pink-purple to bright gold.

Timo Seppälä invited me inside his small café opposite the main house. I had reached the summit at ten in the morning and the sky was still dark. Wooden houses on the hill were covered in snow, most uninhabited. Only Timo’s house had smoke rising. His wife was clearing snow from the doorway; another fifteen centimetres had fallen the day before. Over the winter, trees here become so heavily draped in snow that branches, leaves and basic forms disappear. In mist, they look more like giants than trees.

Timo owns an amethyst mine on the hill, but he permits no industrial mining and relies only on tourism.

Inside, as usual, he began telling the history of the amethysts: geology, archaeology, ice movement. He said little about the local three-coloured amethyst. “This is a shaman stone,” he said. “Sámi people believe it has energy. Only shamans can wear it.”

I became obsessed with knowing more. After leaving the mine, I ran through calf-deep snow and caught him before he entered the house. A little helplessly, he explained that the three colours represent the three worlds of shamanic cosmology: black for the underworld, purple for the sky, and white, usually a thin line, for our world.

Timo wore such a stone himself, which made me suspect the story was for tourists. I pointed to it and challenged the claim that only shamans could wear it.

“How do you know I am not a shaman?” he asked.

“You are too tall. You cannot have Sámi ancestry,” I said.

“A shaman does not have to be Sámi.”

I realised the limits of my knowledge and apologised.

Timo laughed, unconcerned. “Many Sámi further north are shamans. Of course there are many here too.”

“Many?”

“Yes. Some are in their seventies; some are young; some are apprentices. You must come again, away from the crowds. I will take you to meet them and complete a real shamanic journey.”

I knew this belonged to the classic tests of the shamanic world and was unsure whether I could complete it. Such things depend on timing and affinity. I was not eager to meet more shamans. They would find me themselves.

“Have you completed a shamanic journey?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“Through drumming or meditation? You pass through a tunnel and then...”

Timo laughed again and interrupted. “I do not need a tunnel. I can enter non-ordinary reality directly. Drumming or meditation are ritual methods for different occasions, but one does not always need them. In everyday life, especially in deep winter, the simplest and fastest way to quiet oneself and enter that state is to gaze into fire.”

“Ah!” I exclaimed, suddenly understanding.

“It seems you understand,” Timo said. “Some Sámi and shamans use mushrooms for shamanic journeys. They are not difficult to find in Finland, but I have never used any drug. I do not need to. I can even tell you the general principle: adjust the frequency of your body, tune it to a slower channel.”

“To the same frequency as fire?”

“Yes. It seems you really do know what I mean.”

“It sounds very simple,” I joked.

“It is,” he said seriously. “In daily life, this way of adjusting frequency is very practical. Suppose I forget where I put my keys. My body remembers. I adjust my frequency and feel into myself, and the keys will be found during that journey, or the journey will tell me where they are.”

The old man’s words had finally opened. I did not want to leave the mountain and kept asking about his past. Finland seems full of strange, mystical people; this was not the first modern shaman I had met there.

Timo had studied shamanism for more than twenty years. Since childhood, he had sensed “energy” and followed that feeling in search of his own power place. He finally stopped at Lampivaara. In ancient times, Sámi people regarded this hill as sacred and held rituals here, offering reindeer antlers.

“A hill is still a large area,” he told me. “You have to narrow the energy place down to one real position. The method is not to focus your eyes, but to open your peripheral vision as widely as possible. Then your energy place will call you in its own way. It is an inexplicable feeling, but you must trust it.”

“In general,” Timo concluded, “Finnish Lapland has good energy.”

He gave me a shaman stone. I held it uneasily and finally asked before leaving: “How can I know whether its energy suits me? I know not everyone can wear it. If it is unsuitable it might bring...” I did not want to say bad luck.

Timo answered simply: wash it when you return, hold it while you sleep, and your dream will tell you.

“And if it does not suit me?”

“Give it away.” He laughed heartily.

That night I washed the stone and, in order to test its energy, gave up taking alprazolam. The result was not exactly a good night’s sleep, but the nightmare that had troubled me for more than a month ended. It has never returned.

The next day it snowed again, but the endless night was over. Daylight was still brief; by afternoon, night had fallen.