The ‘Bear Ceremonial’ and Bear Rituals among the

Khanty and the Sami

HÅKAN RYDVING
University of Bergen

Abstract
Researchers from different fields of study agree on the importance of
comparison, but debate over how to compare. Rather than comparing
globally, on the basis of secondary literature and looking for similari-
ties alone, the article argues for a limitative approach that restricts
itself to just a few cultures, is based on local sources, and takes both
resemblances and differences into account. In contrast to the idea
of a uniform and transcultural bear ceremonial in North Eurasia, it
focuses on plurality and diversity in discussing and comparing the
bear rituals found among the southern Khanty (about 1900) and the
southern Sami (about 1750).

Keywords: bear rituals, comparison, Khanty, limitative approach, Sami

When the non-theological study of religions began at European universities

during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, analysis by means of various
forms of comparison became the characteristic method of this new field
of research; as a result, at a number of universities the subject was named
‘comparative religion’.1
In most cases, the comparative enterprise consisted of macro-comparison
and a search for similarities. Data were collected from all over the world
– generally from secondary sources – and arranged according to types,
based on evolutionary theories. When these theories were abandoned dur-
ing the 1950s, various non-evolutionary and non-historical morphologies
were developed. These were often called ‘phenomenologies of religion’, a
confusing term, since they had little or nothing to do with philosophical
phenomenology. Even in studies of singular religions, parallels and analo-
gies drawn from one or another of the ‘phenomenologies of religion’ were
used to interpret the data, without paying any attention to time and place.

1  I am most grateful to Peter Cripps and Ellen Valle for their careful correcting of the English
language, and to Veikko Anttonen and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable
comments on a preliminary version of the manuscript.

© The Finnish Society for the Study of Religion Temenos Vol. 46 No. 1 (2010), 31–52
32 HÅKAN RYDVING

While the study of religions still adhered to comparison as its main

analytic tool, anthropology had taken another direction, not least due
to the seminal local studies of British anthropologists such as Bronislaw
Malinowski and E. E. Evans-Pritchard, whose investigations were based
on prolonged fieldwork. This anthropological focus on the local required
scholars to learn local languages, and – rather than using phenomena from
elsewhere to interpret the culture under consideration – to try to understand
the elements of that culture in relation to its own context. The era of the
armchair anthropologist was over.
It was not until the 1970s that this reorientation towards the local began
to exert any significant influence on the study of religions, but during that
decade the criticism of earlier global constructions (especially those of Mircea
Eliade) became increasingly pronounced. This of course did not mean that
scholars stopped comparing (since making comparisons is a natural and
necessary human activity), but merely that the ‘comparative method’ – at
least when applied on a global scale – was effectively dead. It is only in the
past two decades that scholars of religion have once again begun to discuss
comparison as a method (cf. Segal 2006).

Debating Comparison
During the 1990s, both the American Academy of Religion and the North
American Association for the Study of Religion arranged seminars on com-
parison, or, as it was called, the New Comparativism. This American debate
was inspired by the publication in 1994 of the second edition of William
Paden’s Religious Worlds: The Comparative Study of Religion, a book that is
used as an introductory text at many universities both in the USA and in
Europe. Both Paden and most of the other participants in the debate were
searching for a middle way between on the one hand Eliade’s essentialism,
based on universals, and on the other the anti-comparative trend found at
the extreme of what has been called (at least by its opponents) ‘post-struc-
turalist’ or ‘post-modern’ thought. However, to quote one of the mantras
in the debate, the question is not whether we should compare, but how to do
so. Even if most of the participants in the debate agreed on the importance
of discussing appropriate modes of comparison, it is clear that they were
using the term in at least three different ways. Some of them emphasised
that comparing is a universal cognitive process of human beings; others
discussed various methodological questions, in relation for example to the
comparison of two different forms of Judaism or of Judaism and Hinduism
 THE ‘BEAR CEREMONIAL’ AND BEAR RITUALS ... 33

(i.e. the limitative approach to comparison, illustrated in this essay); but the
majority were concerned with appropriate principles for global comparison,
based on ideas either of universals or of resemblances.2
The universals/resemblances dichotomy is reminiscent of one of the
most basic questions in philosophy, the relation between individual things
on the one hand and general terms on the other (cf. Saler 2000, 152 f.).
The philosophical debate has long been leaning towards various kinds of
resemblance theories. The comparative methods used by students of reli-
gion, however, have so far focused almost exclusively on comparison on
the macro-level, and has related the actual comparative work to various
theories of universals or particulars, resemblances or differences, on a global
level. Most of the proponents and opponents of the ‘comparative project’ or
the ‘new comparativism’ have discussed it solely in terms of comparisons
where the researcher is dependent on secondary literature for most of his
or her examples.

A Limitative Approach
If modernist research has been (and is) characterised by grand theories and
generalisations that are often global in their reach, research inspired by
more recent theories has focused on the particular and on contextuality.3
Such a perspective, however, does not make comparison impossible; there
is a type of comparison that restricts itself to a single region or just a few
cultures. This limitative approach to comparison – a term coined by Jan
Platvoet (1982) – can be combined with a focus on the local, as well as with
demands for contextualisation and with the scholar’s knowledge of the local
language and culture, which we now consider so important. Good examples
of this type of study are Clifford Geertz’ comparison of Islam in Indonesia
and Morocco, and Roberte N. Hamayon’s studies of indigenous religions in
Siberia (Geertz 1973; Hamayon 1990). It is a type of comparison that starts
from the local and compares syntheses based on the study of a few local
cultures.4 Where an individual scholar does not personally have the local
knowledge necessary for a comparative study, a group of specialists might
co-operate on a comparative project. I hope (and believe) this type of joint
venture will be more common in the future.

2  See Method and Theory on the Study of Religion, vol. 8, 1996; Patton & Ray 2000.
3  Cf. the different suggestions in, for example, Gingrich & Fox 2002; Gothóni 2005; Idinopulos
et al. 2006.
4  Another type of comparison is exemplified in Rydving 2010.
34 HÅKAN RYDVING

The example of a comparative analysis that I present in the following is

a very limited one, a comparison of two rituals that share (at least) the com-
mon feature of having a bear as the focal point of their respective activities:
these rituals are the bear ceremonials of the southern Khanty (about 1900)
and the southern Sami (about 1750). My interest in these two ceremonials
was initially merely linguistic, and consisted in collecting material about
the language used in the Sami bear ceremonials.5 However, the differences
I found when I also began to study Khanty and the literature on the Khanty
bear ceremonials made me increasingly sceptical towards the common idea
that all the different types of bear ceremonials found in northern Eurasia,
from the Sami in the west to the Ainu in the east, were to be regarded as
concrete forms, or representatives, of a single ritual, the bear ceremonial (la
fête de l’ours, das Bärenzeremoniell).
The occurrence of bear ceremonials among several North Eurasian
peoples has in other words been used as an argument to support various
generalizing theories (two classic comprehensive comparative monographs
are Hallowell 1926 and Lot-Falck 1953; cf. Paproth 1976 and Pentikäinen
2007): about religions in northern Eurasia, about hunting peoples, about
certain ecological conditions etc. These theories, however, were not based
on any careful comparison of the different ritualizations occurring in local
settings. They merely focused on similarities while disregarding dissimilari-
ties. Since I agree with Lauri Honko that ‘the religious beliefs and practices
of the Finno-Ugric peoples provide an interesting test case for comparative
methodology in the history of religions’ (Honko 1987, 330), I here attempt
to test the claim that the bear rituals of the Khanty and the Sami are in fact
so similar that they can – and should – be regarded as concrete forms of
one and the same ‘North-Eurasian Bear Ceremonial’. As I hope to show, the
result is not as self-evident as scholars have tended to think.

Contexts
Before describing and comparing the two rituals, I present some basic in-
formation about the two peoples under study.

The Khanty
The traditional settlement area of the Khanty – the easternmost of the peoples
that speak a Finno-Ugric language – stretches in an arc along the Ob’ river

5  I am preparing a Sami counterpart to Bakró-Nagy 1979.

 THE ‘BEAR CEREMONIAL’ AND BEAR RITUALS ... 35

and its tributaries, from Vasyugan in the south-east towards the mouth of
the Ob’ in the north (See Map 1). There are today about 25,000 Khanty, some
70 percent of whom speak Khanty. One usually reckons with eight main
dialects. Of the five different literary languages in use, the most important
is the one based on the Middle Ob’ dialects (Skribnik & Koshkaryova 1996).
Culturally, the Khanty in the different areas are closely related to the other
Ob-Ugrian people, the Mansi, but linguistically the two ethnic groups are
clearly differentiated. This means for example that the northern Khanty
have a culture that is more similar to the culture of the northern Mansi
than to that of the southern and eastern Khanty, although their language is
distinctly Khanty. A typical characteristic of the social culture of the Khanty
is the division into two exogamous patrilineal phratries, the por and the
mosh: the Por are linked to the bear and the Mosh to the hare (or goose)
(Balzer 1999, 184). Since the Khanty are a small people spread over a large
area, there are considerable cultural and linguistic differences between the
different regions.6 Even so, scholars have tended to generalise and write as
if all Khanty (or even all Ob-Ugrians) shared an identical (or at least very
similar) culture and religion, although this tendency has not been as com-
mon in studies of the Khanty as in those of the Sami (see below).
The earliest information we have about Khanty bear rituals dates from the
beginning of the eighteenth century, but it was not until the late nineteenth
century that descriptions became more detailed. The most important infor-
mation was collected and published by Russian scholars, such as Nikolay
Gondatti (1888) and Serafim Patkanov (1897–1900), and, at the beginning
of the twentieth century, by the Finnish scholar K. F. Karjalainen (1914;
Karjalainen 1927, 193–235). In the post-revolutionary era, the material col-
lected by V. N. Chernetsov is especially valuable. Chernetsov documented
bear rituals in 1936–37, succeeded in filming dances at a bear ritual in 1948,
and collected new material during the 1960s (Tschernjetzow 1974, 285, n.
1). During the Soviet era the bear ceremonials did not cease, at least in the
north and east. They were so popular that the authorities even thought of
declaring them secularised (Balzer 1999, 190), bringing them under a general
policy of folklorisation. However, such a decision was never made. Since the
fall of the Soviet Union and the renaissance of indigenous customs, some of
the bear festivals have become important political manifestations of Khanty
(and Ob-Ugrian) unity. Today, we might echo the Russian folklorist Olga
Balalaeva in distinguishing two types of bear festival: ‘quite private, elder-
led festivals that occur on the back rivers of Eastern Khanty camps and the

6  Cf. the excellent introduction to the Khanty world-view in Jordan 2003.

36 HÅKAN RYDVING

larger, more popular festivals led by [members of the political Association

for the Salvation of the Ugra] as well as elders’ (Balzer 1999, 197). The tra-
ditional bear ceremonials differed from one Khanty region to another. In
the north there were only few rituals during the actual hunt or in bringing
the bear home to the settlement, with more elaborate ceremonies occurring
during the bear festival itself; in the south, rituals connected with the hunt
and the homeward journey were dominant; in the east, the bear ceremonials
were relatively insignificant (Karjalainen 1927, 194, 200).
The example I discuss here concerns the rituals of the southern Khanty,
as that area is best documented in the oldest sources. Today, the southern
Khanty are Russified and totally integrated into mainstream society.

The Sami
The traditional settlement area of the Sami – the westernmost of the peoples
that speak a Finno-Ugric language – stretches in an arc from the central parts
of Scandinavia to the Kola Peninsula (See Map 2). There are today about
80,000 Sami, of whom approximately 40 % speak Sami. Like the Khanty,
the Sami are a small group of people spread over a large area; the Sami
language is therefore split into a number of different dialects and dialect
groups. One usually reckons with ten main dialects, further divided into
dialects and sub-dialects. Of the six Sami literary languages in use, North
Sami is the most important. Despite the great linguistic and cultural vari-
ation, most scholars who have studied Sami culture have disregarded this
variation and written about the Sami as if they all shared an identical culture.
The oldest information about Sami bear ceremonials dates from the
beginning of the seventeenth century, but the most important sources are
from the late seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth. The
first monograph was published as early as 1755 (Fjellström 1755). We know
that there were regional differences, but even today no study has tried to
map them. Unlike the Khanty, Sami bear rituals are no longer performed,
since most of the indigenous religion perished during the eighteenth
century. A few examples of bear ceremonials, however, are mentioned in
nineteenth-century sources. The area that is best documented is that of the
South Sami, and my example is therefore from that region. Despite several
centuries of linguistic influence from Norwegian and Swedish, as well as a
cultural impact, many South Sami still speak their original language. This
is accounted for by several factors: the South Sami have lived isolated from
Norwegians and Swedes, with an economy based almost exclusively on the
 THE ‘BEAR CEREMONIAL’ AND BEAR RITUALS ... 37

reindeer; Sami is used as a means of communication within families; the

language has a high status, and is an important social and cultural symbol
of identity (Jernsletten 1997; Rydving 2004; 2008).

The Rituals
How should rituals be compared? One possible way is to break them up
into elements, as Anna-Leena Siikala (1978) did in her study of indigenous
ritual specialists (‘shamans’ in her terminology) in Siberia. I did the same
in my study of ritual aspects of the process of religious change among the
Lule Sami, although I used another terminology, adopted from Melford E.
Spiro, which is the terminology I will use here as well (cf. Rydving 2004,
93). This means that I use ‘ritual’ as ‘the generic term for any kind of cult
be­haviour, regardless of its degree of elaboration or complexity’, while ‘rite’
de­notes ‘the minimum significant unit of ritual behaviour’, ‘ceremony’ ‘the
smallest configuration of rites constituting a meaningful ritual whole’ and
‘ceremonial’ ‘the total configuration of ceremonies performed during any
ritual occasion’ (Spiro 1982, 199).

Bear ceremonials among the southern Khanty in the decades around 19007
Among the southern Khanty, in the decades around 1900 the bear hunt was
undertaken roughly as follows.8

A. The hunt
(1) Preparations for the hunt. The bear hunt was never to be planned and
it was regarded as dangerous to try to track a bear (Karjalainen 1927, 194).
Those who were going to participate in the hunt first had to go through a
purification ritual. Both the participants and their food were purified with
incense, and they prayed to the bear that it would let them kill it without

7  After Patkanov 1897; Karjalainen 1914; Karjalainen 1927, 193–235; cf. Gondatti 1888; Kharuzin
1895; Kálmán 1968; Tschernjetzow 1974; Schmidt 1989; Glavatskaya 2005.
8  Since the level of analysis in this short article is restricted to the comparison between
Khanty and Sami bear rituals in relation to the idea of a ‘North Eurasian bear ceremonial’, I
have neither here, nor in the next section (about bear ceremonials among the southern Sami),
discussed variations and changes within Khanty and Sami bear rituals, only between them.
Discussing internal variations as well as differences between different types of sources (texts,
archaeological material, participant observation) within each of these two cultures would be the
next step in the investigation. Of course, I also need to discuss bear rituals among other North
Eurasian groups than the two here under examination in order to test the general applicability
of the results of this pilot study.
38 HÅKAN RYDVING

hurting any of the hunters. After the participants had made the sign of the
cross in front of the icons they set out.
(2) The hunt. Once the bear had been killed, the man who had killed it
would throw snow (in the winter) or earth (in the summer) on himself before
all the hunters ate the food they had brought with them. The bear too was
regarded as participating in this meal. Then the body of the bear was laid
on its back, with its head towards the east, and was skinned. During the
process of removing the skin, the one doing the skinning said a short phrase
and broke a few9 short sticks that were placed beside the bear.
(3) On the way home. Where the eating of bear meat was prohibited,10
the meat was left at the site of the kill, otherwise it was taken to the village.
In either case, the skin, with the head, was taken to the village. On the way
to the village, those who carried or dragged the bear told it about the places
they were passing by.
(4) Returning to the village. When the hunters and the bear arrived at the
village they were greeted. The hunters fired their weapons and the people in
the village answered with shots and came out to meet them. The bear skin
was sprinkled with water and incense, and the one who had killed it was
thrown into the water. Despite the clear division between male and female
rituals, both men and women participated in these rituals.

B. The bear festival

(1) Preparations for the bear festival. The skin with the head were taken
through a back window into the room where the festival was to be held;
there it was placed in the sacred corner, with its head resting on its front
paws and facing the door. A male bear was provided with a cap and a scarf,
a female bear with a head cloth and a neck collar with pearl embroidery
and rings on the claws. Usually the eyes were covered (in some places the
nostrils as well) with coins or pieces of birch-bark. Different types of food
were then placed in front of the bear (Karjalainen 1927, 203 ff.).
(2) The bear festival (îke-pore). This ceremonial consisted primarily of
entertainment for the bear and the participants. It continued over several
(often three) evenings. All the participants were sprinkled with water or
snow and they greeted the bear with kisses. The host (or someone else)
said to the bear: ‘Turem’s son […]! With an arrow made by Russians you
were killed, with a spear made by Russians you were killed. Don’t be

9  Five or seven if it was a male bear, four or five if it was a female bear (Karjalainen 1927, 197).
10  Depending on which phratrie one belonged to, the mosh (who could eat the meat) or the
por (who could not eat the meat).
 THE ‘BEAR CEREMONIAL’ AND BEAR RITUALS ... 39

angry with us!’ Thereafter everyone sat down in a fixed order and the
festival could begin. It consisted of three elements: bear songs, dancing
performances and short plays (Karjalainen 1927, 206 ff.). (a) The bear songs
were sung by male singers without masks and they described the life of the
bear.11 (b) The dancing performances took place in intervals between songs
and plays. Among certain southern Khanty, for example those living along
the river Konda, these dances were the most important element of the bear
festival. The dances were performed by men and women in garments that
differed from their ordinary clothes and with their faces covered. One
of the dances, the so-called bear dance, gave an account of the life of the
bear. (c) The plays (which were a considerably less important part of the
bear festival among the southern Khanty than among the northern) were
performed by men in red masks, often made of birch-bark. The masks that
represented men had large noses, while those who performed women
wore women’s clothes and head-scarves. The actors distorted their voices.
The themes were everyday subjects; they could be serious or humorous,
made use of many puns, and were sometimes offensive (even to persons
that were present).12 Each play was very short, but the number of plays
could in some areas (but not among the southern Khanty) be very large
(Karjalainen 1927, 229 f.). In the breaks between the plays songs were
sung. The bear festival ended with games to decide when and by whom
the next bear was to be killed.
(3) After the bear festival, the skin was taken out through the back win-
dow near the sacred corner. If the bear meat was to be eaten, it was cooked
so as to be ready when the festival was completed.

C. Afterwards
The skin was given to the host (the one who had found the bear and arranged
the festival), who could use it as he wished. Generally it was sold to cover
the expenses of the festival. However, it could not be sold until forty days
had elapsed, and the host had to celebrate memorial days on the 9th, 16th
and 36th day after the festival.

11  Such South Khanty bear songs are reproduced in, for example, Karjalainen & Vértes 1975;
Paasonen & Vértes 1980.
12  Some plays are presented in Gondatti 1888 and Karjalainen 1927, 215 ff.
40 HÅKAN RYDVING

Bear ceremonials among the southern Sami in the mid-18th century13

Unlike among the Khanty, the Sami bear festival was generally celebrated in
springtime (although it could also be celebrated during autumn or winter).
It thus functioned as a calendrical spring ritual. The following synthesis is
based on sources describing the southern Sami festival during the first half
of the eighteenth century.

A. The hunt
(1) The bear was tracked (or encircled) during the autumn after the first
snow had fallen, so that it would be easy to know where it was hibernating.
(2) Before the hunt. Among the southern Sami, no preparatory rituals are
known from this period comparable to the strict order in which the hunters
approached the place where the bear was hibernating, found among the
Lule Sami during the 1670s. In the latter case, the person who had tracked
the bear went first, followed by the others in a specific order.
(3) After the hunt. Once the bear had been killed the hunters walked over
it on their skis. Then a twig was attached to the bear’s mouth and one of the
hunters sang a vuelie (chant) and pulled the twig three times. He could also
aim a spear three times at the bear. After that the bear was covered with
twigs and left at the hunting ground.
(4) Returning home. As the hunters approached the huts they sang a
special vuelie in order to let the women and children know they had killed
a bear. The vuelie also told the persons in the settlement whether it was a
male or a female. Using the back door, the men entered the tent, where the
women were sitting with their heads covered. The women looked at the
bear hunters through rings of brass, spat chewed alder bark on them and
fastened brass rings on the men’s clothes (cf. Paproth 1964). Then they feasted
on the best food they had, the hunters in a tent that was erected especially
for the purpose of the bear rituals, the women and children in the ordinary
tent. After the meal everyone went to sleep.
(5) Collecting the bear. On the second day, the bear was collected with
great honours. On the way home the hunters sang different vuelieh (chants)
and prayed to the bear to protect them from evil.

13  After Fjellström 1755; cf. Niurenius [about 1640] 1905, 18 f.; Rheen [1671] 1897, 43–46;
Lundius [late 1670s] 1905, 18; Högström 1747, 209–211; Holmberger [1770s] in Hasselbrink
1964; cf. Zachrisson & Iregren 1974; Edsman 1994; 1996; Korhonen 2008.
 THE ‘BEAR CEREMONIAL’ AND BEAR RITUALS ... 41

B. The feast
(1) The feast. The bear was carried to the special tent and the women spat
red chewed alder bark at it. It was then skinned by the men while they sang
various vuelieh. In one of the vuelieh they sang to the bear that it had been
killed by men from Sweden, Poland, England and France. The other vuelieh
were about where the bear had been taken, about the honour it would be
shown, about what the women might be doing in the ordinary tent, etc.
Per Fjellström, who wrote the first monograph about the Sami bear rituals,
gives the following characterization of the vuelie to the bear:

[...] the so-called bear song is not the same and does not have the same con-
tents among all [groups], nor would they decide in advance and prepare a
precise order in which to sing it. Instead they probably adjusted [the song]
both to existing circumstances and to the bear hunt itself, as well as to the
Lapps’ own conditions and nature. […] Thus, it is believed that their bear
song is performed more with voice and sound than with words. Even if
their song makes use of pure words, they are such as are unusual and not
used at all in the ordinary Lappish language, and therefore they cannot
be understood by anyone, regardless of how skilled they might be in their
language, other than those who are instructed and trained in their supersti-
tion. (Fjellström 1755, 21 f.)

After the bear had been skinned, the meat was carved from the bones and
boiled in a certain order. The men ate certain parts of it (which parts de-
pended on the sex of the bear) in the special tent, the women and children
other parts in the ordinary tent. After that everyone rested. Then the hunters
washed themselves in lye, and then ran three times around the place where
the bear had been cooked and into and out of the ordinary tent, through
the ordinary door and the back-door, while imitating the growl of the bear.
(2) After the burial. The skin or the liver was used in a game that decided
when and by whom the next bear was to be killed.

C. The burial
The bear’s bones were buried in a precise order. It was important that no
bone was broken and that all of them were buried.14

14  The fact that the bones in excavated bear graves generally have been split (cf. Zachrisson
& Iregren 1974, 39, 96 f.) is a good example of the gap between hunting ideology and actual
behaviour that Smith (1982, 53 ff.) called attention to in a classical article.
42 HÅKAN RYDVING

D. Afterwards
The man who had tracked the bear received the skin and sold it.

Comparison
If we now compare these two ritual complexes, we have to look at both the
structural level (how elements are connected, the order of the different ele-
ments) and the individual rites (the elements of each complex) (cf. Tables
1–2). This is possible even if we do not know the exact meaning of all the
rites performed. Earlier ritual theories regarded rituals as something scholars
could use to ‘read’ the respective culture, since rituals were regarded as com-
municative acts; the more recent theories formulated by Frits Staal, Catherine
Bell, Caroline Humphrey & James Laidlaw, and Roy Rappaport, in contrast,
emphasize, among other things, the role of rituals as tools for enculturation
and for the ‘disciplining of the body’, even if their ‘meaning’ (as suggested
by ritual specialists or by scholars) is not understood by all – or indeed any
– of the participants (Staal 1975; Bell 1992; Humphrey & Laidlaw 1994; Rap-
paport 1999). This means that the activities involved (movements, sounds,
etc.) are interesting objects for analysis even if they only help us answer the
question ‘how’, not ‘why’. However, for the purpose of the comparison of
Khanty and Sami bear rituals, I will compare both outer form (how the rites
were performed) and ‘inner meaning’, where it is known to us.
Apart from banal resemblances, such as the fact that among both the
Khanty and the Sami there is first a hunt and then some kind of festivity,
it is evident, even from the very brief summaries of the contents of the two
rituals presented here, that the main structures are different. Most of the
individual elements also differ, each of them occurring in only one of the
two rituals. The focus is different: for the Khanty the most important ele-
ment was the festival and its entertainments, while for the Sami it was the
feast and the burial. Thus the principal conclusion to be drawn is that the
structural differences between the bear rituals of the southern Khanty and
the southern Sami are considerable.
However, there are a few elements that are strikingly similar: from the
perspective of ‘meaning’, both rituals involved (a) purification rites (even
if different ones) for both the hunters and the bear, and (b) games to decide
when and by whom the next bear was to be killed; while in terms of resem-
blances in outer form, both rituals involved (c) prayers and songs to the bear
(in one case with similar content, namely that others were to blame for the
death of the bear), (d) several meals (feasts), and (e) the use of the back door.
 THE ‘BEAR CEREMONIAL’ AND BEAR RITUALS ... 43

It might appear that these resemblances do indeed suggest a close con-

nection between the two ritual complexes. However, there are various types
of resemblance. Purification rites, prayers, songs, and meals (feasts) are all
found in various types of ritual context (not only bear rituals), and their
occurrence in the two bear ceremonials thus cannot be used to support the
hypothesis of a connection. What remains are three (more specific) elements:
(a) the fact that the killing in both contexts is blamed on someone else, (b) the
games to decide about the next hunt, and (c) the use of the back door during
the ritual. But since the first two elements are found in hunting ceremonials
around the world (cf. Hutter 2001), neither of them can be used to support
the hypothesis. The sacred back door is the most interesting resemblance,
and may indeed be a connecting element (cf. Ränk 1949). However, one or
two elements do not make a ritual.

Conclusion
A comparison of the bear ceremonials among the southern Khanty and the
southern Sami gives a negative result when we consider both resemblances
and differences, rather than resemblances alone, as was the case in earlier
versions of the comparative enterprise. It seems as if the main connecting
point is the bear itself. The conclusion has to be that the two examples of
bear rituals do not support the hypothesis that the different bear rituals in
northern Eurasia are concrete forms, or representatives, of one common
ritual. This conclusion calls into question the whole idea of a North-Eurasian
bear ceremonial. However, this negative result does not mean that the reli-
gions of the Finno-Ugric peoples cannot ‘provide an interesting test case for
comparative methodology in the history of religions’ (Honko 1987, 330). On
the contrary: it is in my opinion evident from the case presented here that
they can indeed function as exemplary sources for comparative analysis.

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 THE ‘BEAR CEREMONIAL’ AND BEAR RITUALS ... 49

Appendix: Maps and Tables

Map 1. The main dialect areas of Khanty.

A: extent of the Khanty area of settlement; B: approximate borders of the
main dialects of Khanty; C: the area on the main map.
Northern Khanty: O.: Obdorsk Khanty; Ber.: Berezino Khanty; Kaz.:
Kazym Khanty; M.O.: Khanty dialects at the Middle Ob. Southern Khanty:
Irt.: Irtysh Khanty (incl. Konda and Demyanka). Eastern Khanty: Sal.: Sa-
lym Khanty; Sur. Surgut Khanty (Pim, Yugan, Trom’yugan, Agan, etc.),
V.-Vy.: Vakh and Vasyugan Khanty. Mainly following Schmidt 1989 and
Martynova 1994.
50 HÅKAN RYDVING

Map 2. The main dialect areas of Sami.

A: extent of the Sami area of settlement (as depicted in most modern surveys,
despite the fact that the South Sami language area, for example, extends to
the Gulf of Bothnia); B: approximate borders of the main dialects of Sami;
C: the area on the main map.
Western Sami: S.: South Sami; U.: Ume Sami; Arj.: Arjeplog Sami; L.: Lule
Sami, N.: North Sami. Inari Sami: I.: Inari Sami. Eastern Sami: Sk.: Skolt
Sami; Akk.: Akkala Sami (extinct in 2003); Kld.: Kildin Sami; T.: Ter Sami.
After Rydving 2004b, 358.
 THE ‘BEAR CEREMONIAL’ AND BEAR RITUALS ... 51

Table 1. Bear ceremonials among the southern Khanty (the decades

around 1900).

Ceremonial 1: The Hunt

Ceremony 1: ritual before the hunt
rite 1: purification with incense
rite 2: prayer to the bear
rite 3: the sign of the cross in front of the icons
Ceremony 2: rituals after the hunt
rite 1: (purification) the throwing of snow or earth
rite 2: a meal
rite 3: the skinning (skinning + utterance of words + breaking and
placing of sticks)
Ceremony 3: rituals on the way home
rite 1: telling the bear about the way
Ceremony 4: rituals on returning to the village
rite 1: shooting and greeting
rite 2: (purification) sprinkling of bear skin with water and incense
rite 3: the person who killed the bear was thrown into the water

Ceremonial 2: The Bear Festival

Ceremony 1: preparatory rituals
rite 1: the bear (skin and head) was taken to the place for the ritual
rite 2: the bear was dressed
rite 3: food was offered to the bear
Ceremony 2: the bear festival
rite 1: purification with water or snow
rite 2: the bear was greeted
rite 3: introductory words (the Russians killed you, not we)
rite 4–6:
a) bear songs
b) dancing performances
c) short plays
rite 7: games to decide when and by whom the next bear was to be
killed
Ceremony 3: concluding the festival
rite 1: the bear (skin and head) was taken out
(rite 2: a meal in places where bear meat is eaten)
52 HÅKAN RYDVING

Ceremonial 3: Remembrance Rituals

rite 1–3: remembrance of the festival on the 9th, 16th and 38th days
after the end of the festival

Table 2. Bear ceremonials among the southern Sami (mid-18th century).

Ceremonial 1: The Hunt

Ceremony 1: rituals before the hunt
(no such rituals documented)
Ceremony 2: rituals after the hunt
rite 1: skiing over the skin
rite 2: a chant was sung
allorite 3: a twig in the bears mouth was pulled three times
or
allorite 3: a spear was aimed at the bear three times
Ceremony 3: rituals on returning to the village
rite 1: a chant was sung
rite 2: (purification) the women spat chewed alder bark on the men
and fastened brass rings on their clothes
rite 3: meal

Ceremonial 2: The Bear Feast

Ceremony 1: the bear was collected
rite 1: several chants were sung to the bear
rite 2: prayer to the bear
Ceremony 2: the bear feast
rite 1: the women spat chewed alder bark on the bear
rite 2: the bear was skinned and several chants were sung
rite 3: meal
rite 4: (purification) the hunters washed themselves in lye
rite 5: the men ran around the bear imitating it
rite 6: a game to decide when and by whom the next bear was to
be killed

Ceremonial 3: The Burial

rite 1: the bear was buried