New Age in Norway - Ingvild Sælid Gilhus

New Age in Norway - Ingvild Sælid Gilhus

Sami-shamanism in Norway: A Patchwork of Traditions and Organizations

New Age in Norway - Ingvild Sælid Gilhus

Trude Fonneland [+-]
University of Tromsø
Trude Fonneland is currently professor in the Department of Culture studies at Tromsø Museum, the University of Tromsø—The Artic University of Norway. Her research interests revolve around contemporary religion in society, particularly Sami shamanism, tourism, and popular culture. She is the author of several scholarly articles on the subject. Recent publications include Nordic Neoshamanisms (2015) (co-edited with Siv Ellen Kraft and James Lewis), “Approval of the Shamanistic Association: A Local Norwegian Construct with Trans-Local Dynamics” (In Nordic New Religions), “Spiritual Entrepreneurship in the High North: The Case of Polmakmoen Guesthouse and the Pilgrimage ‘the Seven Coffee Stops’”(International Journal for the Study of New Religions 2014) and “Spiritual Entrepreneurship: Tourism, Spirituality and Politics” (Temenos 2012).

Description

‘Shamanism is a 30,000-year-old spiritual practice where one uses trance techniques to communicate with the forces of nature and the world of the spirits’. This is how shamanism is presented on Shamanistic Association’s homepage, an association which was recognized as a distinct religious community in Norway in 2012. This means that, according to the laws regulating religious bodies in Norway, they may perform such religious ceremonies as baptisms, conformations, weddings and funerals, and, additionally, gain financial support from the membership. In Norway neo-shamanism has been part of the religious landscape since the early 1980s and from the late 1990s professional neo-shamans like Ailo Gaup and Eirik Myrhaug have been depicted as representatives of an ancient Sami shamanic tradition. The Norwegian New Age-scene has also increasingly been filled with Sami shamans, symbols and traditions, along with a new focus on local- and place specific characteristics unique to the Northern region. A central theme of this paper is to highlight the developments within the neo-shamanistic environment in Norway - showing how transnational religious ideas and practices take on local distinguishing features to acquire meaning and define community. It describes the dynamics of a cultural creation whereby abstract concepts and ideas find moorings in a local community and in participants’ reality here and now – gradually generating a distinct cultural field, the field of northern shamanism.

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Citation

Fonneland, Trude. Sami-shamanism in Norway: A Patchwork of Traditions and Organizations. New Age in Norway. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 205-216 Mar 2017. ISBN 9781781794173. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=28886. Date accessed: 11 Dec 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.28886. Mar 2017

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