The History of Lapland

Written by John Scheffer
Oxford 1674

Comparison of some illustrations with their sources and derivations

The illustrations in the 1674 English translation of the book are imitations of those in the Latin source text from 1673. Apart from being mirror-images of the originals, some noteworthy changes were made; a few of these are commented below. As in the main text, I have here reversed the English illustrations back to their intended orientation, and then individually reversed all letters in the legends, as well as colouring these and any scale bars red.

Chapter X contains two illustrations, both depicting the worship of idols. In the original, the idols' heads are crudely shaped as described in the text, while their English couterparts have been changed to have clearly visible facial features, contrary to the description.

In the illustration representing Thor (Tiermes), the text says that he has a hammer [in] his right hand. In the original illustration it is either erroneously placed in the idol's left hand (to the observer's right), or the idol must be supposed to face away from the worshipper and the sacrifice. In the English version, a face is added to the Idol making the latter interpretation impossible here, but the usual reversal of the illustration also inadvertently changes the hand with the hammer to the right side of the idol (though it is here reversed back again).

The English version of the worship of the Storjunkar idol has some background scenery cut away to avoid having to rotate the image 90 degrees in order to fit onto the page as the original.

Chapter XI contains pictures of several drums, some lost and some still surviving. Comparison with the surviving drums give a favourable verdict on the accuracy of the drawings, but unfortunately the pictures of the lost drums seem to be made on the basis of inaccurate drawings, and not of original drums.

Drum A in particular is demonstrably highly inaccurate. It utilises the typical early modern European naïve way of drawing the sun and the moon with facial features which is unknown from any Sámi drum and wholly alien to the entire scope of their style. Similarly the humanoid figures are also atypically given facial features. Equally distorted are the depictions of animals and water. Here too a naïve superficial resemblance of shape has supplanted the deeper way of representation common in many drums, where an often simpler and more abstract representation is used, and small but keenly observed details or abstract attributions determine what it denotes.

Schefferus seems to have been aware of this, though. The source of this particular drawing is another surviving drawing, made by Samuel Rheen in 1671 – one of Schefferus' informants. This drawing has the same weaknesses to a significantly larger degree. Schefferus' drawing is highly inaccurate as a representation of its source; the reason is of course that he knew enough about Sámi drums to see that Rheens drawing was visually hardly even similar to its source, but rather an interpretation of it. He then proceeded to try to undo this damage by simplifying the figures to something at least approaching the style of a real drum.

In drum B, the clumsy lettering of the original has caused several problems in the English version. While each of the three zig-zags on the horizontal dividing line has been correctly identified as the letter h, one of them has also been copied as a part of the drum decoration (shown in green here, corrected in the main text). Further, the letter r is erroneously interpreted as u; for most of the following letters, the original is very confusing: it has one letter less than the translation, t and x cannot be distinguished, and it has two letters that each could be intended as u, y or γ. In the English version attempts to sort this out have been made, but it is uncertain whether or not these clarifications truly represent the original intent.

Similarly, the accessories in illustrations G and H are drawn more elegantly in the English version, but as there is no reason to believe that this is based on a reexamination of the original objects, they cannot be regarded as equally accurate.

In the illustration showing a noaid first using his drum, then afterwards lying in a trance with the drum on his back, the English version is again somewhat more elegantly executed. In addition, it shows a subtle but significant improvement: in the original, the top end of the drum is slightly more pointed than the bottom, whereas the opposite is the case in the English version, as well as in most if not all drums showing such an asymmetry.

Unfortunately, the drum itself does not seem to be a particularly precise rendering of any drum. The only element easily correlated to real drums is the ladder-like structure at the bottom which is found in several drums.

This illustration was used as the basis for many later writings eager to demonise the Sámi people in general and the noaids' practices in particular – quite contrary to the intent of Schefferus' work. One such illustration is seen below, where the posture, clothing and facial features of the noaid has been significantly altered, the decoration of the drum has been changed to that of drum A above (the Rheen drum), and the beater has been changed has been changed into something looking more like a carpenter's hammer. In the right hand picture, the drum is erroneously shown with the drumskin upwards, and two demons have been added above the noaid for emphasis.

Another derived illustration inserts a much more faithful representation of the scene below a fairly accurate representation of both sides of a surviving drum and its accessories. Here both the drum and the accessories depicted at the top is substituted for those of the original, but in a way consistent with the intent of the original. Apart from this obviously motivated change, the noaid's face is changed somewhat, and some features are added to the background. While an aesthetic improvement, the latter could possibly be said to slightly undermine the original's intent of showing two scenes following each other in time, not space (as in a comic strip).