![Ancient Nordic Sami people offering to Diermes or Thor by Picart 1724](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Ancient_Nordic_Sami_people_offering_to_Diermes_or_Thor_by_Picart_1724.jpg)
In
Sami shamanism
Acronyms
* SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft
* Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company
* South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...
, Horagalles, also written Hora Galles and Thora Galles and often equated with Tiermes or ''Aijeke'' (i.e. "grandfather or great grandfather"), 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. It has been suggested that name is derived from that of the
Norse god
In Germanic paganism, the indigenous religion of the ancient Germanic peoples who inhabited Germanic Europe, there were a number of different gods and goddesses. Germanic deities are attested from numerous sources, including works of literature, ...
Thor
Thor (; from non, Þórr ) is a prominent god in Germanic paganism. In Norse mythology, he is a hammer-wielding æsir, god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred trees and groves in Germanic paganism and mythology, sacred groves ...
.
Characteristics and functions
Idols of Horagalles are made of wood and have a nail or spike and a piece of flint in the head.
Kaarle Krohn
Kaarle Krohn (10 May 1863 – 19 July 1933) was a Finnish folklorist, professor and developer of the geographic-historic method of folklore research. He was born into the influential Krohn family of Helsinki. Krohn is best known outside of Finlan ...
, "Lappische Beiträge zur germanischen Mythologie," ''Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen'' 6 (1906) 155–80
p. 164
He has a hammer called Wetschera, Aijeke Wetschera,
[Scheffer, cited in Castrén,]
p. 50
[Johannes Schefferus, ''Lappland'', tr. Henrik Sundin, ed. John Granlund, Bengt Löw, and John Bernström, Acta Lapponica 8, Stockholm: Gebers, 1956, OCLC 468993787]
p. 130
or Ajeke veċċera, "grandfather's hammer."
Jens Andreas Friis
Jens Andreas Friis (2 May 1821 – 16 February 1896) was a Norwegian philologist, lexicographer and author. He was a university professor and a prominent linguist in the languages spoken by the Sami people. He is widely recognized as the found ...
, ''Lappisk Mythologi, Eventyr og Folkesagn'', Christiania: Cammermeyer, 1871
p. 69
Horagalles is the god of the sky,
thunder
Thunder is the sound caused by lightning. Depending upon the distance from and nature of the lightning, it can range from a long, low rumble to a sudden, loud crack. The sudden increase in temperature and hence pressure caused by the lightning pr ...
and lightning, the rainbow, weather, oceans, and lakes and rules over human life, health and wellbeing.
[Friis]
p. 68
citing Erich Johann Jessen, ''De norske Finners og Lappers hedenske Religion'' (1765). He punishes "hurtful demons" or "evil spirits" (i.e., trolls) who frequent the rocks and mountains; he 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".
[''The History of Lapland'', 1674 translated ed., facsimile ed. Suecica rediviva 22, Stockholm: Rediviva, 1971, ]
p. 37
Horagalles depicted on Sami shaman drums
On Sami 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 damage.[
]
Name and relationship to other gods
The name ''Horagalles'' does not occur in older dictionaries of Sami languages, for instance in the mid-19th century. 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.[ There is considerable regional variation in the names; Horagalles (with its various spellings, including Thoragalles) is characteristically southern Sami, and the rainbow is referred to by a variety of names referring to thunder.][
Early scholars noted the similarities between Horagalles and the Norse thunder-god Thor and that some Sami called him Thoron or simply Thor, and were unsure which had influenced which. But the name Horagalles is now interpreted as a ]loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
from the Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...
''Þórr Karl'', "the Old Man Thor,"[ 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
"Thor, the Elder," or "Thor fellow,"Jaan Puhvel
Jaan Puhvel (born 24 January 1932) is an Estonian comparative linguist and comparative mythologist who specializes in Indo-European studies.
Born in Estonia, Puhvel fled his country with his family in 1944 following the Soviet occupation o ...
, ''Comparative Mythology'', Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1987,
p. 204
"Thor Karl" (possibly from Norwegian ''Torrekall''), or Swedish ''Torsmannen'', "the thunder man."
Horagalles' consort is called Ravdna, and the red berries of the rowan
The rowans ( or ) or mountain-ashes are shrubs or trees in the genus ''Sorbus
''Sorbus'' is a genus of over 100 species of trees and shrubs in the rose family, Rosaceae. Species of ''Sorbus'' (''s.l.'') are commonly known as whitebeam, r ...
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
The ''Prose Edda'', also known as the ''Younger Edda'', ''Snorri's Edda'' ( is, Snorra Edda) or, historically, simply as ''Edda'', is an Old Norse textbook written in Iceland during the early 13th century. The work is often assumed to have been t ...
'' book ''Skáldskaparmál
''Skáldskaparmál'' (Old Norse: 'The Language of Poetry'; c. 50,000 words; ; ) is the second part of the ''Prose Edda''.
The section consists of a dialogue between Ægir, the divine personification of the sea, and Bragi, the god of poetry, in ...
'', 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
In Norse mythology, Sif (Old Norse: ) is a golden-haired goddess associated with earth. Sif is attested in the ''Poetic Edda'', compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the ''Prose Edda'', written in the 13th century ...
, Thor's wife, was once conceived of in the form of a rowan to which Thor clung.[
]
Tiermes
Tiermes is a Sami
Acronyms
* SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft
* Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company
* South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...
god of thunder
Thunder is the sound caused by lightning. Depending upon the distance from and nature of the lightning, it can range from a long, low rumble to a sudden, loud crack. The sudden increase in temperature and hence pressure caused by the lightning pr ...
and rain, also called Aijeke or Ajeke and often identified with Horagalles.
Tiermes is god of the sky and thunder and lightning, the rainbow, weather, oceans, and lakes and rules over human life, health, and well-being. He protects people and their animals from "hurtful demons" and "evil spirits" (i.e., trolls). 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. He is also called Aijeke, "grandfather" or "great-grandfather"; in 1673 Johannes Scheffer wrote that when Aijeke thundered, he was called Tiermes.[
The names of the god vary considerably between regions, with Tiermes and variants being commonly used among northern Sami and Horagalles and variants among southern Sami,][ The word "dierpmis" could be a loanword from a ]pre-finno-ugric substrate
Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate refers to substratum loanwords from unidentified non-Indo-European and non-Uralic languages that are found in various Finno-Ugric languages, most notably Sami. The presence of Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate in Sami languages ...
language.
Pajonn
Pajonn is a Sami
Acronyms
* SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft
* Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company
* South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...
god of thunder. Other name and spelling variants include Bajann, Pajǟn and Pajanolmai, found in Finnish as Pajainen, all derived from the word ''pad'd'i'', meaning "above". According to Zacharias Plantin, Pajonn is an alias of Doragass, which in turn is a distorted version of Horagalles.
See also
*Buga
Buga may refer to:
Places
* Mount Buga, an inactive volcano in Zamboanga del Sur province, the Philippines
* Buga (barangay), a barangay in San Miguel Municipality, Bulacan, Philippines
* Buga, Valle del Cauca, city and municipality in the Colom ...
References
Further reading
* Axel Olrik
Axel Olrik (3 July 1864 – 17 February 1917) was a Danish folklorist and scholar of mediaeval historiography, and a pioneer in the methodical study of oral narrative.
Olrik was born in Frederiksberg, the son of the artist Henrik Olrik. Artist ...
. "Nordisk og lappisk gudsdyrkelse." ''Danske Studier'' 1905, pp. 39–63.
* Axel Olrik. "Tordenguden og hans dreng i lappernes myteverden." ''Danske Studier'' 1906, pp. 65–69. {{in lang, da
Sámi gods
Thunder gods
Sky and weather gods